Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Safety Science: the Foundations of Safety Science
Safety as a particular science can be claimed to have emerged in relation to social ambitions for increased safety and security – developing, experimenting and testing practical methods, tools and models with the aim of understanding and managing unwanted actions or events. However, being “applied” in nature does not mean that safety science is philosophy-free. All knowledge claims about safety are based on some form of foundational assumptions, rationality and logics. The ‘science’ part of ‘safety science’ seeks to ensure rigorousness of theories and methods for research, while providing credibility for the field and the community of people contributing to the domain.
Although established as a particular domain of knowledge, the status of safety science is in many ways contested. This can be related to its holistic character – through being constituted by a mix of scientists coming from different scientific traditions – and to its relatively young age as a scientific community. Moreover, over the last two decades safety science has been questioned in different ways and from different perspectives, for example: being found incoherent in its approach to risk (Clarke and Short, 1993); showing a disregard of safety as a social construct (Rochlin, 1999); and becoming embroiled in controversies over the role of culture in contributing to human actions in organisations (Hale, 2000). In addition to the concerns of safety science in particular, such questions are related to fundamental issues within scientific disciplines and the philosophy of science, such as the possibility for social modelling, the workings of the human mind, and the objective existence of the phenomenon of culture.
Perhaps one of the most profound foundational issues is the possibility of science being normative. The status of scientific knowledge can itself be questioned, for example by stating that science cannot be seen as anything more ‘value neutral’ than other knowledge, or by questioning whether scientific theories can be seen as true representations of reality. A large proportion of current debate within the philosophy of science can be argued as relating to the ongoing incommensurability of ‘realist’ and ‘constructivist’ scientific foundations. These hotly debated topics are nevertheless only the visible side of a wider debate on both science and technology, explored for some decades by different disciplines (philosophy, history, sociology) and addressing a number of classical questions about causality, determinism, laws, objectivity, induction, deduction, reductionism, facts, values, emergence, ontology, ethics, etc. These topics relate to any scientific endeavour, including safety science. We find, however, that such links to philosophical issues are not made in any consistent manner within the safety literature. New concepts, theories and models are often introduced with insufficient time and consideration devoted to clarifying and discussing their philosophical underpinnings and methodological foundations. In our view, this may be hampering the potential for fundamental and broadening scientific debate within the field. In fact, the diversity of disciplines involved in safety science is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the different underlying assumptions about causality, laws, determinism, reductionism, value, etc. that influence methodological, empirical and theoretical developments. The idea behind this call for papers is to motivate a wide range of thought on these foundational issues.
As an example, a question such as ‘Can we learn from past incidents and accidents in order to project useful predictions into the future?’ represents an issue central to safety science. The question, however, is closely related to the well-known ‘problem of induction’ that has interested and puzzled philosophers of science for decades (Taleb, 2007). On logical grounds, it is indeed impossible to justify prediction through the observation of specific cases to be generalised. Only deductive reasoning can ensure such a logical approach. The way in which logical foundations are applied within safety science is therefore an interesting question.
A statement such as ‘safety is an emergent property’ challenges the principle of reductionism when it comes to applying it to open and complex systems. From cognitive and social-psychological dimensions to the social and political, including their technological aspects, can a reductionist account of safety be a likely prospect for the future? Reductionism, though not a popular option for many at the moment (Bunge, 2003), has been an important methodological driver for past success in science, and is certainly still influencing the rationale of many researchers (Wilson, 1999). For example: looking for simple solutions to complex problems will always reassert itself over more complex models and answers.
With regard to the ‘realist versus constructivist’ debate (Hacking, 2000), many may argue that ‘accidents cannot be seriously seen as including a subjective or socially constructed dimension’; these must be viewed as purely objective phenomena. To a realist, the consequences of an explosion may demonstrate that accidents are real, and nothing can deny this. However, a constructivist may say that this type of reasoning is missing a crucial point. That consequences (such as damages) are experienced may be certain and undeniable; nevertheless, the models used to interpret them fail to demonstrate how close they are to a ‘true’ description of reality ‘as it is’. To a constructivist, our understanding and knowledge of accidents and consequences varies with history and is dependent on social contexts. These elements of discussion indicate the necessity – in order to better understand arguments on safety and accidents – to distinguish ontology from epistemology.
The ‘realist versus constructivist’ debate also questions the scientist in relation to the object he or she studies and to society (Gibbons et al., 1994). Is the safety scientist outside society, trying to describe and predict external objective phenomena? Is this ideal of a ‘value neutral’ scientist producing an objective knowledge – to be used by various decision-makers within society – representative of safety researches? One might instead be inclined to think that, for most safety studies, there is a much closer relationship between researchers and their object. For many, indeed, safety is also a societal value for which they want clearly to contribute by producing useful models for improving situations. This value somehow blurs the boundaries of the traditional divide between outsiders and insiders.
In fact, when one starts exploring foundational topics such as these, it becomes clear that there is no ‘philosophy-free’ safety science, and that any research introduces, more or less implicitly, a great number of preconceptions that have been taken for granted. This call for papers is intended to contribute towards making scientific foundations more explicit to the community of safety scientists. The aim of this special issue is to facilitate an understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of safety science and the construction of a more systematic view on the foundations of safety science.
Original contributions are invited that deal, for example, with the following questions:
Key concepts and underlying assumptions affecting safety science
The object of study and the aim of safety science
Moral implications of the philosophical foundations of theories of safety science
Explanation and causality in safety science
Prediction in safety science
Duality of subjective and objective in safety science
The question of emergence in safety science
Philosophical underpinnings of Resilience Engineering, Behaviour Based Safety, Safety Culture, High Reliability Organisations, etc.
The deadline for receipt of papers is 30 November 2012, with publication expected for the second quarter of 2013. All papers will be subjected to the standard peer-review procedures of the journal. Papers should be submitted online via the Elsevier Editorial System (http://ees.elsevier.com/safety/)
References
Bunge, M. (2003). Emergence and convergence: Qualitative novelty and the unity of knowledge. University of Toronto Press.
Clarke, L., Short, J. F. (1993). Social organization and risk: Some current controversies. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 375-399.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge: The dynamics of science and research in contempory societies. Sage.
Hacking, I. (2000). The social construction of what? Harvard University Press.
Hale, A.R. (2000). Culture’s confusion. Editorial in Safety Science, 34, 1-14. Elsevier Science Ltd.
Rochlin, G. I. (1999). Safe operation as a social construct. Ergonomics, 42, 1549-1560.
Taleb, N. (2007). The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Penguin Books.
Wilson, E. O. (1999). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. Vintage.
