Robert P Crease

Dreyfus on expertise: The limits of phenomenological analysis

Dreyfuss model of expert skill acquisition is philosophically important because it shifts the focus on expertise away from its social and technical externalization in STS, and its relegation to the historical and psychological context of discovery in the classical philosophy of science, to universal structures of embodied cognition and affect. In doing so he explains why experts are not best described as ideologues and why their authority is not exclusively based on social networking. Moreover, by phenomenologically analyzing expertise from a first person perspective, he reveals the limitations of, and sometimes superficial treatment that comes from, investigating expertise from a third person perspective. Thus, he shows that expertise is a prime example of a subject that is essential to science but can only be fully elaborated with the aid of phenomenological tools. However, both Dreyfuss descriptive model and his normative claims are flawed due to the lack of hermeneutical sensitivity. He assumes an experts knowledge has crystallized out of contextual sensitivity plus experience, and that an expert has shed, during the training process, whatever prejudices, ideologies, hidden agendas, or other forms of cultural embeddedness, that person might have begun with. One would never imagine, from Dreyfuss account, that society could possibly be endangered by experts, only how societys expectations and actions could endanger experts. The stories of actual controversies not only shows things do not work the way Dreyfus claims, but also that it would be less salutary if they did. Such stories amount to counterexamples to Dreyfuss normative claims, and point to serious shortcomings in his arguments.

Trust, Expertise and the Philosophy of Science

Trust is a central concept in the philosophy of science. We highlight how trust is important in the wide variety of interactions between science and society. We claim that examining and clarifying the nature and role of trust (and distrust) in relations between science and society is one principal way in which the philosophy of science is socially relevant. We argue that philosophers of science should extend their efforts to develop normative conceptions of trust that can serve to facilitate trust between scientific experts and ordinary citizens. The first project is the development of a rich normative theory of expertise and experience that can explain why the various epistemic insights of diverse actors should be trusted in certain contexts and how credibility deficits can be bridged. The second project is the development of concepts that explain why, in certain cases, ordinary citizens may distrust science, which should inform how philosophers of science conceive of the formulation of science policy when conditions of distrust prevail. The third project is the analysis of cases of successful relations of trust between scientists and non-scientists that leads to understanding better how ‘postnormal’ science interactions are possible using trust.

Edward Teller: friend and foe

A few years ago I heard Edward Teller speak at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Nearly 90 years old, he sat at the edge of the stage, hands crossed over his cane, as he delivered – without notes – a well-organized and insightful discourse on the interesting physics to be expected from the labs newest accelerator. When Teller finished, the moderator called for a round of applause for a fine lecture – and then for a second round in tribute to the only physics talk that anyone in the room could recall being given without a single transparency.

Hermeneutics and the natural sciences

Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences: Introduction R.P. Crease. Why a Hermeneutical Philosophy of the Natural Sciences? P.A. Heelan. On the Hermeneutical Nature of Modern Natural Science J.J. Kockelmans. Inderstanding Sustainability B. Gremmen, J. Jacobs. A Hemrneutics of the Natural Sciences? The Debate Updated T.J. Kisiel. Achievements of the Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Approach to Natural Sciences M. Eger. Thingly Hermeneutics: Technoconstructions D. Ihde. The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism E.T. Gendlin.

Quenched! The ISABELLE Saga, II

Abstract.The story of ISABELLE, a colliding-beam accelerator conceived in 1971, officially approved in 1978, partially constructed, and terminated in 1983, is an important episode in the history of post-World War II science in the United States.The events surrounding its planning, construction, and termination reveal much about the ambitions, strategies, and tensions of American high-energy physicists, their collaborations and rivalries, and the difficulties of funding and constructing a large scientific facility in the age of Big Science. In this article, the first of two parts, I cover the period up to the beginning of construction in 1978. I place ISABELLE in the context of the early history of colliders, outline the physics goals that motivated the machine, and describe the research and motivations behind its innovative but ultimately problematic superconducting magnet design. I cover the key technological and administrative steps that the laboratory took to get the project underway and steer it past several review committees. I also treat some of the conflicts within the laboratory, and between Brookhaven and other laboratories, especially Fermilab, that hampered the project.

Hermeneutics and the natural sciences: Introduction

One of the oddest quirks of the development of 20th century Continental thought has been its default of the investigation of the natural sciences.

The New Big Science

For several decades the character and culture of large-scale research at major facilities has been changing. Big Science isn’t what it used to be.

Jazz and dance

Jazz is often presented as a musical art form, which is fine for musical connoisseurship. But any serious inquiry into the nature, history, aesthetics and even future of jazz needs to examine the unique relation between music making and dancing that existed at its origin and was mutually nourishing for decades. The severing of this relation brought about tremendous changes in both the music and the dance. Popular dancing is an extremely important cultural activity, for bodily movement is a kind of repository for social and individual identity. The dancing body engages the cultural inscripting of self and the pursuit of pleasure, and dancing events are key sites in the working and reworking of racial, class and gender boundaries. For this reason Linda Tomko has argued that dancing is ‘a social and cultural process operating in the midst, and not at the margins, of American life – indeed, as American life’ (1999, xiii). Particularly significant are moments of transformation, when conventional forms of popular dancing are no longer sufficiently expressive, leading to experimentation with and development of new forms of bodily identity. New music emerges whose kinetic power reflects and reinforces the new bodily identity; the music and dance resonate with each other. These episodes of transformation inevitably generate alarm about the release of unbridled sexuality and trigger efforts to repress and supervise dancing and the places where it occurs.

This is your philosophy

Everybody – including scientists – makes seat-of-the-pants practical judgements about whats real and whats not. The commonsense assumptions underlying these judgements can be unrecognized, inconsistent and even untenable; they can be home-grown, inherited and absorbed from others. But when someone is engaged in an activity as complex as science, it is almost impossible to avoid making such practical judgements. No matter how implicit and readily revised these judgements may be, they are based on preconceptions of what the world consists of and what the worlds most important distinctions and categories are – in other words of how it all hangs together.

The quantum moment

Quantum mechanics, says Robert P Crease, has finally acquired as much cultural influence as Newtonian mechanics, though via a very different path.