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The paradox of scientific expertise. A perspectivist approach to knowledge asymmetries

Alrøe, Hugo Fjelsted and Noe, Egon (2011) The paradox of scientific expertise. A perspectivist approach to knowledge asymmetries. Fachsprache - International Journal of Specialized Communication, 2011 (3-4), pp. 152-167.

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Summary

Modern societies depend on a growing production of scientific knowledge, which is based on the functional differentiation of science into still more specialised scientific disciplines and subdisciplines. This is the basis for the paradox of scientific expertise: The growth of science leads to a fragmentation of scientific expertise. To resolve this paradox, the present paper investigates three hypotheses: 1) All scientific knowledge is perspectival. 2) The perspectival structure of science leads to specific forms of knowledge asymmetries. 3) Such perspectival knowledge asymmetries must be handled through second order perspectives. We substantiate these hypotheses on the basis of a perspectivist philosophy of science grounded in Peircean semiotics and autopoietic systems theory. Perspectival knowledge asymmetries are an unavoidable and necessary part of the growth of scientific knowledge, and more awareness of this fact can help avoid blind and futile struggles between scientific perspectives, and direct efforts toward more appropriate ways of handling these fundamental knowledge asymmetries. Concretely, we show how different kinds of scientific knowledge, expertise, disagreement and learning can be correlated to the perspectival structure of science, and propose how polyocular communication based on (second order) observations of the observations made by specialised perspectives can be used to handle such perspectival knowledge asymmetries. This can help overcome the observed problems in carrying out cross-disciplinary research and in the collective use of different kinds of scientific expertise, and thereby make society better able to solve complex, real-world problems.


EPrint Type:Journal paper
Keywords:crossdisciplinary research, scientific perspectives, philosophy of science, semiotics, complex problems, MultiTrust
Subjects: Knowledge management > Research methodology and philosophy
Research affiliation: Denmark > Organic RDD 1 > MultiTrust
Denmark > AU - Aarhus University > AU, DJF - Faculty of Agricultural Sciences
Related Links:http://www.multitrust.org, http://hugo.alroe.dk, http://www.fachsprache.net
Deposited By: Alrøe, PhD Hugo Fjelsted
ID Code:19952
Deposited On:15 Dec 2011 10:09
Last Modified:29 Aug 2022 08:30
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted
Additional Publishing Information:Contributing to MultiTrust Deliverable 3.6.1 and 3.6.2

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