Podcast - Scientific Expertise and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

About the Talk

How do we make reliable decisions when our scientific models cannot predict outcomes with absolute certainty? In this episode, Our Associate Director, Dr Roberto Fumagalli, sat down with the speaker of our first Public Lecture under the Market Economies and Green Ideals project, Prof Roman Frigg, to unpack the philosophy of science, physics, and environmental modeling. We explore why treating scientific models like literary fiction can actually improve our understanding of reality, the limits of climate predictions, and how policymakers and private insurers navigate deep uncertainty.

The Guest Roman Frigg is Professor of Philosophy and Head of Department at LSE’s Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method. He is the winner of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is a permanent visiting professor in the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy of the Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich, and he held visiting appointments in the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of the University of Western Ontario, the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Utrecht, the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science of the University of Sydney, and the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Barcelona. He was associate editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and member of the steering committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association. He currently serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards. Roman holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of London and masters degrees both in theoretical physics and philosophy from the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research interests lie in general philosophy of science and philosophy of physics, and he has published papers on climate change, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, randomness, chaos, complexity, probability, scientific realism, computer simulations, modelling, scientific representation, reductionism, confirmation, and the relation between art and science. His current work focuses on predictability and climate change, the foundation of statistical mechanics, and the nature of scientific models and theories.