Abstract
Scientific expertise is a key issue in the concept of the knowledge society. While the focus of much of the current research is on the user- or the demand-side of scientific expertise, the focus of this paper is on its formation. To achieve this, it aims at establishing a connection of the history of scientific methods with the history of scientific expertise. In my view, competence in methods is the basis for the building of capabilities that are needed to help in the solution of others’ problems. Furthermore, because competence in methods is not an easily accessible – but often even an exclusive – qualification, it contributes to the demarcation of expert and layperson. Though historical in perspective and methodology, this paper involves epistemological and sociological issues as well. The first part deals with the topic of methods in the history of science, illustrating it with the example of the impact of physical methods on chemistry in the second half of the twentieth century. The second part tackles the notion of scientific expertise, exemplified with a case study on analytical chemistry in mid-nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Synonymously with methods, I use the term techniques. Examples for laboratory procedures are numerous. An example for a method as a knowledge domain is nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a technique having gained such importance and momentum that it has reached almost the status of a scientific discipline. This paragraph relies on my previous work published in much more detail in Reinhardt (2006a).
- 2.
The apparatus that greatly facilitated organic elementary analysis was the Kaliapparat, invented by Justus Liebig in the early 1830s. Liebig (and the historians dealing with the history of this apparatus follow him in this regard) claimed that the Kaliapparat changed elementary analysis from being a task requiring great dexterity, time, and experience (thus, being taken care of by specialists or experienced researchers only) to a more-or-less routine job that could (and had to) be mastered by any graduate student in the laboratory. Thus, in this case a novel tool led to methods transfer in a scientific community. See Usselmann et al. (2005) and Rocke (2000).
- 3.
In 1842, Fresenius gave a vivid, and rhetorical description of the work in Liebig’s laboratory, emphasizing the learning of analytical methods with samples of known composition (the famous 100 substances that every beginner in Liebig’s laboratory had to analyze). For Fresenius, as for Liebig, experiment was the key to learning the language of chemistry. See Fresenius (1842).
- 4.
After mentioning knowledge of chemical theory, orderliness, cleanliness, and dexterity, Fresenius emphasized trust in natural law as one of the preconditions of success in analytical chemistry (Fresenius, 1874, 4).
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Reinhardt, C. (2011). Expertise in Methods, Methods of Expertise. In: Carrier, M., Nordmann, A. (eds) Science in the Context of Application. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 274. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9051-5_10
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