The Role of Experts and Science in Democracy
09 May 2024 09:07
Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder
On the one hand: science does not advance by thinking that everyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's. I have a Ph.D. in physics, but if you asked me about (say) what approaches to controlled nuclear fusion were most promising, if any, I'd have to say I have no idea. (I might be able to reach an informed opinion if I actually studied the issue, much more easily than a layman --- or maybe not, plasma physics was one of those things I always meant to learn more about but didn't...) On the other hand: democracies in the modern world frequently have to decide on questions where scientific knowledge is crucial. (Even in the ancient world they needed experts in various crafts, which is not quite the same thing as modern science.) On the third hand: there certainly seems to be an affinity between democratic polities and societies and scientific advance. (Though obviously not an exclusive bond!) On the fourth hand: the sovereign demos would seem to be within its rights and power (assuming there's a difference between those...) to delegate its authority over some specialized matter to those it selects, perhaps experts...
Which is to say, I don't understand this complex of issues, either normatively or descriptively, and I am irritated by my own lack of understanding.
- See also:
- Democracy;
- Intellectuals;
- Political Decision-Making, Social Choice, Public Policy;
- Sociology of Science
- Recommended (very misc.):
- Harry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?
- Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Why Democracies Need Science
- John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems
- Daniel W. Drezner, The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans and Plutocrats Are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas
- Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
- Josiah Ober
- "Learning from Athens: Success by design", Boston Review 31:2 (March-April 2006)
- Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens [Review: Liberty was Born from Endless Meetings]
- Joseph Schumpeter, "Science and Ideology", American Economic Review 39 (1949): 346--359 [JSTOR]
- To read:
- Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor [Not listed under "recommended" because I have a rule of only doing so if I've read the book cover to cover...]
- Guy Benveniste, The Politics of Expertise
- Wiebe E. Bijker, Roland Bal and Ruud Hendriks, The Paradox of Scientific Authority: The Role of Scientific Advice in Democracies
- Steven Brint, In an Age of Experts
- Mark B. Brown, Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation
- Harry Collins, Andrew Bartlett and Luis Reyes-Galindo, "Demarcating Fringe Science for Policy", Perspectives on Science 25 (2017): 411--438
- Gil Eyal, The Crisis of Expertise
- Philip Kitcher
- Science, Truth, and Democracy
- Science in a Democratic Society
- Elliott A. Krause, Death of the Guilds: Professions, States, and the Advance of Capitalism, 1930 to the Present
- Alfred Moore, Critical Elitism: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Problem of Expertise
- Zeynep Pamuk, Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society
- James D. Savage, Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the Academic Pork Barrel
- Paige L. Sweet and Danielle Giffort, "The bad expert", Social Studies of Science 51 (2021): 313--338
- Stephen Turner, Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts
- Frank Vibert, The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of Powers
