Future Needs Wisdom

Wisdom means learning to live with ambivalence and to embrace uncertainty
Helga Nowotny’s memoir provides a detailed account of her life, highlighting the challenges and triumphs of a woman who defied convention in the male-dominated field of science. From her early days in science and technology studies, where she faced bureaucratic hurdles, to her influential role in shaping the European Research Council, Nowotny offers a candid look at her career. She shares personal stories of navigating the complexities of academia and policy, revealing the uncertainties and contingencies that shaped her life and work. This memoir resonates with anyone who has pursued a path less traveled, and offers a glimpse into the resilience and ambition required to succeed in challenging environments.
Future Needs Wisdom is not really a memoir, nor is it an intellectual history, nor is it entirely a personal
reflection or a summative philosophy. It is, in fact, all of these things fused together: her life, her scholarship, her thoughts, her triumphs, her misgivings, and above all, her hopes and utopic aspirations.
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—Anthony Elliott, Distinguished Professor, University of South Australia
A fascinating memoir about an exemplary life. Exemplary because the encounters and accomplishments (as a scientist and as a leader of scientific institutions) have been so exceptional. Exemplary also because Helga Nowotny’s story offers an example of a woman’s path that will be inspiring inside and outside sociology.
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—Elena Esposito, Professor of Sociology, Universität Bielefeld
I learned so much from reading this book written by a scholar known for her exceptional sharpness, insatiable curiosity, good judgment, foresight, and of course, wisdom! I urge researchers from across the disciplines to make time for this book, which imparts so many life lessons.
——Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
An account of a remarkable life full of diversions and detours that has given her a polymathic outlook of great wisdom and insight into the big problems of the day.
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—Peter Ho, Senior Advisor, Centre for Strategic Futures and former Head of Civil Service, Singapore

作者簡介：

Helga Nowotny is a Professor Emerita of Science and Technology Studies at ETH Zurich, a founding member, and former President of the European Research Council.
She has held teaching and research positions at universities and research institutions in Europe and Singapore and continues to be actively engaged in research and innovation policy at European and international levels. Among other things, she is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin; a Senior Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance; a member of the Council of Administration of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study; a member of the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation; and Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. She has received numerous honorary doctorates, including from the University of Oxford, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

She is the author of In AI we Trust: Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms (2021), The Cunning of Uncertainty (2015), Naked Genes: Reinventing the Human in the Molecular Age (with Giuseppe Testa) (2011), Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future (2008), and Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience (1994).