This concluding chapter elaborates on the main themes that have run through this book. It argues for the unity of knowledge in the natural sciences, the arts and humanities, and the hard and soft social sciences (section 1); discusses eclecticism and experimentalism as a compelling intellectual response to navigating the risk-uncertainty conundrum (section 2); illustrates different forms of coping with the risk-uncertainty conundrum with the help of punditry, scenarios, and forecasts (section 3); draws out the implications of the complementarity of risk and uncertainty for moral luck, policy, and pragmatism (section 4); and, returning to worldviews, points to the affinities that science and religion share in our coping with the risk-uncertainty conundrum (section 5).

Worldviews ground different theories and models in their encounters with the risk-uncertainty conundrum. This chapter introduces the concept of worldview as elaborated by its two pre-eminent theorists, Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber (section 1). It then discusses worldviews in general, alluding briefly to two alternatives to Newtonian humanism (section 2). Elaborating on the metaphor of small and large worlds the chapter finally shows how objective and subjective probabilities are seeking (unsuccessfully) to sidestep the risk-uncertainty conundrum and how both are, implausibly, reinforcing the sweet common sense we call Newtonian humanism. That “common sense” predisposes us to focus on risk while neglecting uncertainty (section 3).

The entangled relations of humanity’s natural and digital ecosystems are discussed in terms of the risk-uncertainty conundrum. The discussion focuses on global warming from the perspective of the small world of geoengineering, with a particular focus on geothermal energy, marine geoengineering, and the political economy of mitigation and adaptation (section 1). It inquires into the large world of the biosphere, Anthropocene, and uncertainties created by the overlay of human and geological time (section 2). And it scrutinizes the technosphere, consciousness, and language as humanity’s arguably most important cultural technology (section 3).

This chapter takes its departure from the views expressed by Newtonian humanism, post-Newtonianism, and para-humanism that shape different conceptualizations of power as an instrument of calculable control in small worlds and as a source of incalculable protean power in large ones (section 1). By way of summary, it shows how both kinds of power have operated in the domains of risk and uncertainty in finance, nuclear crisis, and global warming/AI discussed in chapters 4–6 (section 2) and in another ten cases. As the main source of the modern conception of control power Thomas Hobbes articulates a rigid, authoritarian theory of language that fits into a Newtonianism formalized about forty years after Hobbes had published Leviathan. Niels Bohr’s post-Newtonian perspective and its permissive core construct of complementarity differ profoundly from Hobbes’s insistence on the necessity of a sovereign’s total control of language. During the last half century updates of these two positions by social theorist Michel Foucault and physicist-feminist Karen Barad have clarified further the yawning gap that separates them (section 3). The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of Machiavelli’s understanding of fortuna and the potentialities of protean power (section 4).

This chapter sorts out how we can distinguish small worlds and conditions of risk from large worlds and conditions of uncertainty along three dimensions (section 1). Unnoticed by students of world politics, in many domains of knowledge the twentieth century saw an important collective shift in terminological resources from Newtonian humanism to post-Newtonianism and para-humanism. These two worldviews are therefore discussed (in sections 2 and 3). Both engage uncertainty more openly than Newtonian humanism does. In any field of study, including world politics, “speaking differently” in a new conceptual language can make distinct contributions to understanding – contributions that can be as important as “arguing well” by relying on conventional terminology. In this case, speaking differently helps us rethink the risk-uncertainty conundrum.

Like a puppy playing with the long stick which is the risk-uncertainty conundrum, we chew energetically on the risk end, letting the uncertainty end drag in the dust. The stick is shaped, I argue, by Newtonian humanism. It combines the scientific and humanist stances that have co-evolved in modern times, constituting a commonsensical, internally inconsistent, worldview. And that view bends the analysis of the political world toward controllable risk, sidestepping or silencing unruly uncertainty.

The manipulation of risk and uncertainty by decision makers who are more or less rational and are experiencing more or less fear offers a first cut of the crisis (section 1). A second cut enriches the individual-level analysis by attending to organizational malfunctioning as a potential cause of inadvertent nuclear war. In this analysis political agency is widely dispersed across many layers of the American and Russian militaries (section 2). A symposium on nuclear politics refers briefly to “very innovative” work on nuclear issues without engaging with work in science and technology studies (STS) (section 3). Exemplifying large world thinking, it does away with dualities such as rational and irrational, politics and technology, risk and uncertainty. It integrates human agency, organizational functioning and malfunctioning, and politics across all levels. And embedding the observer fully in a world that does not exist “out there,” it acknowledges the importance of the risk-uncertainty conundrum. In the politics of the crisis, its meaning for different actors, and its effect on shaping the complementarity of risk and uncertainty language matters hugely (section 4). The analysis of nuclear politics has shaped profoundly a widely accepted rational model of war (section 5). And the conclusion illustrates the evolution of a crazy nuclear politics (section 6).

In this chapter I explore theories, models, and methods. The narrative turn in the social sciences and in the analysis of world politics has been fostered by and drawn attention to McCloskey’s work and the importance of story-telling (section 1). Theories and models tell stories that are created by acts of individual imagination and that exist as collective imaginaries (section 2). Experiments and experimentation are different ways of testing and test-driving scientific theories and models in a world that is both risky and uncertain (section 3). And the simplicity or complexity of the stories told by theories and models always grapples with the risk-uncertainty conundrum (section 4).

Bankers rely on sophisticated risk models when they place their bets, informed by what they understand to be the rational beliefs they and others hold about the world. In a financial crisis, however, on a moment’s notice those beliefs can morph into panics, revealing unacknowledged uncertainties that had existed all along (section 1). What bankers, traders, government officials, and many of us do all too rarely is to acknowledge the pervasiveness of an uncertain future that we may intuit but cannot know. Without firm knowledge about the future, actors are guided by confidence-instilling conventions. Social conventions, such as risk-management models, were widely believed in and adopted to control uncertainty. These models generated endogenously a systemic crisis (section 2). The complementarity of the small world of risk with the large world of uncertainty is reflected in economic practices such as accounting and arbitrage (section 3). The Federal Reserve has relied heavily on story-telling (section 4). Going beyond the analysis of finance this chapter ends by discussing the denial of the risk-uncertainty conundrum by the reigning theory in the field of international political economy (section 5).