COVID-19 and Catastrophic Epistemology: Assemblage, Design, Prudence

Abstract

COVID-19 has disrupted the world, and the epistemology of normal science is part of the world that has been disrupted. The pandemic challenges modernity no longer to settle for risk management while it denies culpability in current and pending catastrophes. Catastrophic epistemology attempts to learn from a disaster in which knowledge itself is one of the casualties. The STEM sciences, social sciences, humanities, and public administration are part of a system of disjointed incrementalism that provides only partial and provisional answers to the questions that now face us. We offer one very provisional point of departure, which includes supplementing normal science with inquiry oriented toward Design and Prudence.