Robert Crease

Trust is a central concept in the philosophy of science. We highlight how trust is important in the wide variety of interactions between science and society. We claim that examining and clarifying the nature and role of trust (and distrust) in relations between science and society is one principal way in which the philosophy of science is socially relevant. We argue that philosophers of science should extend their efforts to develop normative conceptions of trust that can serve to facilitate trust between scientific experts and ordinary citizens. The first project is the development of a rich normative theory of expertise and experience that can explain why the various epistemic insights of diverse actors should be trusted in certain contexts and how credibility deficits can be bridged. The second project is the development of concepts that explain why, in certain cases, ordinary citizens may distrust science, which should inform how philosophers of science conceive of the formulation of science policy when conditions of distrust prevail. The third project is the analysis of cases of successful relations of trust between scientists and non-scientists that leads to understanding better how ‘postnormal’ science interactions are possible using trust.

The Second Creation is a dramatic--and human--chronicle of scientific investigators at the last frontier of knowledge. Robert Crease and Charles Mann take the reader on a fascinating journey in search of "unification" with brilliant scientists such as Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and many others. They provide the definitive and highly entertaining story of the development of modern physics, and the human story of the physicists who set out to find the "theory of everything."

The collection of essays in this special issue point toward the rich and diverse themes under which the phenomenologist might analyze quantum mechanics. The authors in the collection demonstrate that the tradition inaugurated by Husserl promises to dispel the many experiential quandaries of quantum mechanics. They interrogate the meaning of the theoretical entities described by the mathematical equations and analyze their manner of appearing to the physicist. To this end, the efforts of the authors show that increased clarity at forefront of physics requires more than progressively refined models and instruments, but understanding how the subject grasps nature.

What makes it hard to dance? Twentieth-century phenomenologists drew attention to the importance of the lived body, and dance is the art form for which the lived body is literally central. Why then isn’t dance the easiest art form to engage in? Phenomenologists are drawn to situations where a phenomenon breaks down, which can open insights into the phenomenon itself. Here the phenomenon is the ability to dance where one might normally expect to. This paper invokes Marion Milner’s book On Not Being Able to Paint. It discusses views of David Kleinberg-Levin, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Iris Young, and others. Parallel to Heidegger’s notion of the Enframing, what causes the disappearing dimensions of animate formanimate form is the Interring.

Arendt’s explorations of the dynamics of politics, facts, and truth in the public sphere contain important insights into the authority of science and science denial. This article reviews and contextualizes Arendt’s views on modern science and technology, discusses her views on authority, and identifies some insights that her writings provide on the dynamics of science denial. Arendt’s writings point to another possible source of authority besides Weber’s three categories (traditional, legal-rational, charismatic), based on a relationship between ruler and ruled that precedes the issuance of commands. Her writings help clarify what makes scientific findings vulnerable to denial, expose some of the specific tactics of science denial, and include some clues for what it would take to keep the public space open, and to nourish the compelling element that would have to underlie scientific authority.

This article investigates how lack of a phenomenology of technology has hurt understanding of the lifeworld. One way, as Ihde has shown, involves a failure to appreciate the instrumental mediation of experience and the extension of perception. But Ihde also fails to notice the background in which these mediations are taking place and which shapes the mediations themselves and our interpretation of them; not even the research of technoscientists takes place in a neutral atmosphere that does not affect how we work. This article also discusses hermeneutic distortion, or the gap in collective interpretive resources that occurs when the technoscientific infrastructure withdraws and becomes all but invisible, encouraging the tendency to treat scientific conclusions as mere opinions, and technoscientific devices as accessory rather than integral to the modern world.