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Chapter 10 - Against Expertise

A Lesson from Feyerabend’s Science in a Free Society?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2021

By
Matthew J. Brown
Edited by
Karim Bschir  and
Jamie Shaw
Karim Bschir
Affiliation:
Universität St Gallen, Switzerland
Jamie Shaw
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Summary

As my title suggests, I will examine a lesson from Feyerabend’s controversial work, Science in a Free Society: that free societies should not invest scientific experts with special epistemic or social authority. At least, I will ask, should we take this claim from Feyerabend as a lesson? In particular, I see Feyerabend’s argument about expert authority as a substantive challenge to a central commitment of many philosophers of science who reject the ideal of value-free science, a commitment to the ineliminability of expert judgment. An argument against this principle is articulated clearly and forcefully, if somewhat roughly, in both his Science in a Free Society (1978, hereafter SFS) and a related article, “How to Defend Society against Science,” originally published in Radical Philosophy (1975c, hereafter HDSS).

Type
Chapter
Information
Interpreting Feyerabend
Critical Essays
 , pp. 191 - 212
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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