Wisdom, scientific expertise, and laypeople:

some remarks on Paul Feyerabend’s philosophy of expertise

Abstract

Throughout his career, Feyerabend was seriously concerned with the authoritative role claimed by experts within democratic societies. He repeatedly argued that citizens should not be intimidated by the authority of science, and they should resist any attempt to strip themselves of their right to have a say in important social matters of public concern. We do not share Feyerabend’s anarchist approach to philosophy of science; nevertheless, we believe that some aspects of his philosophy of science can easily be incorporated into a constructive philosophy of scientific expertise. The aim of this essay is to argue for two theses that we believe have an unequivocal Feyerabendian “flavour”: a) that to be a good scientific expert, the scientist must be endowed with wisdom; and b) that public opinion is not limited to setting the goals that the scientific expert should take as exogenous data. In this way, we outline a normative model of the epistemic contributions that citizens and scientific experts can make to solve public problems.