We still quote Mark Twain s all-too-venerable shibboleth, everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it (an utterance actually first pronounced by a Twain collaborator), but his observation on how forecasting depends on decision measures is nicely captured by Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer, we d all have frozen to death. Meteorological measurements are imperfect, always have been, even in a computer age. But Phaedra Daipha remarks on the fact that weather forecasts are continuously ...
Read More
We still quote Mark Twain s all-too-venerable shibboleth, everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it (an utterance actually first pronounced by a Twain collaborator), but his observation on how forecasting depends on decision measures is nicely captured by Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer, we d all have frozen to death. Meteorological measurements are imperfect, always have been, even in a computer age. But Phaedra Daipha remarks on the fact that weather forecasts are continuously getting better, not so much because of the instruments, but because of the ability forecasters have to reassess predictions as conditions change, aiming for coherence in the face of uncertainty. Weather and attempts to predict it, then, present an ideal setting for studying the ways uncertainty is mastered, and decisions are made. Daipha sees decision-making as a craft more than science, and tells us in this book how that craft works. It happens within an institution (with its own store of precepts and procedural repertoires), and the task to be done or problem to be solved is presented by a micro-context that shapes the options at hand. Improvisation and habit are, if anything, more important than rationality and rules as such. Weather takes place outside the office, and you have to look there as well as at your computer screens. Forecasting can then be understood as a process of assembling, superimposing, juxtaposing, and blurring of information. And what happens when forecasting goes wrong? Daipha has wonderful fieldwork descriptions of missed weather events and how they can cause havoc. This book will make a mark in science, technology, and society studies (STS) and, especially, in the sociology of decision-making."
Read Less
