The Precautionary Principle and Enlightened Doomsaying: RATIONAL CHOICE BEFORE THE APOCALYPSE

A LINGUISTIC PREFATORY NOTE The word “bestimmt,” in German, is fundamentally underdetermined. It can mean “festgelegt,” i.e., “determined,” “resolute”; or it can mean “gewiß,” i.e., “certain,” “sure”; or it can mean “genau,” i.e., “precise,” “specified,” “explicit.” When Werner Heisenberg chose to call his famous principle the “Unbestimmtheitsrelation,” his was a stroke of genius: thanks to the indeterminacy of the German terminology, he did not have to choose which interpretation of quantum physics was better: uncertainty or indeterminacy. The difference is essential, though: uncertainty refers to the epistemic domain, i.e., our knowledge about the system under observation; whereas indeterminacy refers to the ontological domain, i.e., things as they are. In French and in English, we are not so lucky and we do have to choose. Most often, Heisenberg’s principle is called the “Principle of Uncertainty,” rather than the “Principle of Indeterminacy.” My own interpretation of quantum theory would lead me to prefer the latter, but that is not the question. We are not here to talk about quantum theory but about human affairs.