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This article examines the dreams of Jakob Vaarask (1862-1936), an Estonian Orthodox teacher and priest who, from 1889 to 1926, lived and worked on the island of Vormsi, for much of that period part of the Russian Empire's Estland province. I intend to show that dreams, rather than random and purely individual manifestations of the subconscious, can be used as historical sources, in Vaarask's case demonstrating the extent to which political propaganda and social hierarchies were internalised by individuals in the late Russian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the global environmental science-policy interface has come to include a greater variety of knowledge. Social scientists have joined natural scientists at the policy table, and Indigenous and local knowledge is being taken ever more seriously. But this pluralisation raises political, normative, and epistemic challenges for environmental expert organisations, including with respect to how knowledge is managed, how it is judged to be valid, how it is made policy-relevant, and how it is presented to policy-makers and decision-takers. Based on an interview study of experts involved in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), we identify three broad approaches to these challenges: the integrationist logic, which seeks to combine all knowledge into a single ontology; the parallelist, which looks for similarities and connections between irreconcilable ontologies; and the pragmatist, which strives to apply knowledge when and where it will have the greatest positive impact. Rather than champion any one of these approaches, the paper explores their origins and how they negotiate paralyses to the timeliness of work. In avoiding ultimate formalisation of how value and knowledge pluralism are to be handled, IPBES allow more contextually sensitive practices to come to the fore. The paper concludes by discussing implications for environmental expertise more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI). This article is interested not only in what is known about these risks, but what remains unknown and how that unknowing is and should be approached. By reviewing and expanding on the scientific literature, it explores how social knowledge contributes to the understanding of AI and its regulatory challenges. The analysis is conducted in three steps. First, the article investigates risks associated with AI and shows how social scientists have challenged technically-oriented approaches that treat the social instrumentally. It then identifies the invisible and visible characteristics of AI, and argues that not only is it hard for outsiders to comprehend risks attached to the technology, but also for developers and researchers. Finally, it asserts the need to better recognise ignorance of AI, and explores what this means for how their risks are handled. The article concludes by stressing that proper regulation demands not only independent social knowledge about the pervasiveness, economic embeddedness and fragmented regulation of AI, but a social non-knowledge that is attuned to its complexity, and inhuman and incomprehensible behaviour. In properly allowing for ignorance of its social implications, the regulation of AI can proceed in a more modest, situated, plural and ultimately robust manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]