Post-normal science founders awarded for contributions to ecological economics
University of Bergen guest researcher Silvio Funtowicz and his long-time colleague and friend Jerome Ravetz receive 2025 Boulding Award for lifetime contributions to ecological economics.
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The Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award for Ecological Economics is the highest honour the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) bestows on scholars and activists who have contributed to this field of research. It is made in honour of Kenneth E. Boulding, one of the founding fathers of ecological economics.
Awarded for their work on post-normal science
In communicating their decision to the 2025 recipients, the society writes:
"The idea of a joint award to honor your work on Post-Normal Science and quality in science for policy found unanimous support among us, who have all been disciples of those thoughts from the very beginning of your contributions to [Ecological Economics] in the 1980s".
Silvio Funtowicz, guest researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT) at UiB, says he was very moved when he received the news.
"It was so unexpected. I received the e-mail in the morning in Arizona, when I was having breakfast with my grandchildren. They were very proud!"
System uncertainties, values and facts in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent
Ravetz and Funtowicz developed the concept of post-normal science (PNS) in the 1990s, following their influential book Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy (1990).
This conceptual framework still holds a central position in the analysis of complex issues at the science-policy and science-governance interface, characterized by high system uncertainties, high decision stakes, values and facts being intertwined and disputed, and decisions urgent.
Transdisciplinary perspectives that help us make sense of it all
As a framework for understanding pressing scientific issues that has influenced many scholars since its inception, PNS fits well with the rationale of the Boulding Award:
"To recognize innovative interdisciplinary and collaborative perspectives that help us to make sense of it all".
In particular, the concepts and ideas of PNS were instrumental in ecological economists’ own efforts to define and understand their own discipline as it developed in the 1990s and in the early 21st century – as an intrinsically inter- and possibly transdisciplinary endeavour.
Aspects of Boulding’s special character
The award has been created to honor people "who exemplify aspects of Kenneth E. Boulding’s special character", and according to Roger Strand, Professor at the SVT, there is no doubt that Ravetz and Funtowicz are worthy recipients:
"Boulding was an intellectual, a polyhistor and a humanitarian – and few contemporary scholars can match these characteristics better than Silvio Funtowicz and the still highly active nonagenarian Jerome Ravetz".
According to Strand, the framework of post-normal science continues to be highly relevant, in particular because its creators always encouraged younger scholars and scientists to interpret and develop it further, rather than seeking to establish a hegemony of their own creations.
"This attitude has not only inspired new generations of researchers but is also fundamentally coherent with the message of post-normal science itself; that the focus should be on quality of knowledge, understood as fitness for purpose", says Strand.
A source of inspiration for young researchers
SVT’s Head of Centre, Professor Rasmus Slaattelid, says that young researchers at the SVT are among those who have been deeply inspired by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz:
"Many of them have studied under their supervision, collaborated with them in research projects, and in turn developed their own distinct approaches to questions of quality in science for policy".
"The academic community at SVT sends their warmest congratulations to these two singularly deserving recipients of the Boulding Award".
The winners will be honoured at the ISEE/Degrowth conference in Oslo June 24-27, 2025, where they will receive the award and deliver a short talk retrospective on their work.