The Crisis of Expertise

by Gil Eyal

Opinion, a pre-eminently social thing, is therefore a source of authority; and we can even speculate whether all authority is not the daughter of opinion. Some will object that science is often the combative antagonist of opinion, rectifying its errors. But science can succeed in this task only if it has sufficient authority and it can draw this authority only from opinion itself. All the scientific demonstrations in the world would have no influence if a people had no faith in science. Even today, if science happens to go against a strong current of public opinion, it risks losing its credibility. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. 1912 (p. 156) … as far as possible, our anti-intellectualism must be excised from the benevolent impulses upon which it lives by constant and delicate acts of intellectual surgery which spare these impulses themselves. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. 1962 (p. 23)