An accident infront of the mirrorwith Occam's razor ** Entia non suntmultiplicandaprternecessitatem

David AlexanderUniversity College London

Wisdom: ability to take decisionson the basis of principles,experience and knowledge

Knowledge:understanding of howthings function (or should function)

Information: description ofphysical and social situations

Data: basic facts and statistics

COMMUNICATION

Source: Yi - Fu Tuan..?

Carl Hempel

Karl Popper

Confirmation

Observation

Hypothesis

Theory Deduction

TheoryInductionTentativehypothesis

Pattern

Observation

An evidencebase for

everything

Knowledge, preparedness andaction will reduce losses

Robert Mallet andevidence- based seismology

Evidence can be:-precisedecisiveequivocalambiguouspuzzlinguninterpretable(evidence of what ?)ignoreddistortedused selectively.

Evidence is no good withoutinterpretation - and the ability to

interpret without misleading people.

Evidence can constrain uncertainty,but cannot eradicate it.

All use of evidence is selective:the criteria of choice determine

the value of the evidence.

Irregular and trending time series poseproblems for the gathering of evidence.

To what extent is evidence asurrogate for experience?

Is evidence "objective data" ormere perception of how the world is?

What is the connectionbetween evidence and wisdom?

How much evidence is enough?Can we do without evidence?.