Science, Expertise, and Society

Call for Papers

It was fortunate for Charles de Bois-Valé, lawyer and natural philosopher, that he had an ingenious legal team. In May of 1780, he had affixed a lightning rod to his house to protect his community—the small French town of Saint-Omer—from thunderbolts. Unimpressed by the amateur physicien, Vissery’s neighbors sued him on the grounds that the rod might be dangerous. Vissery’s lawyer argued that judges could not force Viessery to take down his lightning rod unless the proper experts, accredited physiciens, deemed it unsafe, and he hired legal whiz kid Maximilien Robespierre to make the oral argument. Robespierre, however, reversed his boss’s position on the necessity of experts. Drawing on Rousseau, Robespierre argued that judges were perfectly capable of determining the safety of the lightning rod without knowledge of electrical phenomena; like all human beings, they possessed an innate ability to understand brute facts about nature. A decade later, as deputy of the National Convention, Robespierre imposed his distrust of expertise upon the new Republic: “All academies and literary societies established or endowed by the nation are eliminated.”

The story of Vissery in eighteenth-century France points to perennial and global questions about the phenomenon of “scientific expertise.” In a historical register, how have sciences, expertise, and the state been co-constitutive and mutually reinforcing? How have (and how do) practices of quantification and categorization contribute to colonial expansion and reification of racial hierarchies? Philosophically, how can we assess “good judgment” within scientific practices? Can such assessments be articulated and generalized to domains “outside the lab,” or are they inevitably “tacit” and context-specific? From a theological perspective, what are the tensions and synergies between scientific and religious epistemologies and authorities

These questions invite historical, local, and discipline-specific answers to these questions. We are seeking to bring together a variety of perspectives on the topic of scientific expertise in society in the hopes of bringing mutual illumination and clarity—perhaps even beyond the walls of the academy. To this end, the conference will feature keynote presentations from Dr. Mark Harris (Theology, University of Oxford), Dr. Mitra Sharafi (Legal History, University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Dr. Katharina Nieswandt (Philosophy, Concordia University).

We are currently accepting submissions for twenty-minute papers and for posters. Abstracts should be approximately 500 words for papers and 100 for posters. A limited number of travel bursaries are available. 

Possible topics include:

• “Epistocracy” versus “technocracy” 

• Science in the courtroom

• Political theology and epistemic authority

• Scientific expertise in the colony

• Global epistemologies of science

• Gender and expertise

• State-science institutions—how are science, expertise, and the state co-constitutive? How have their relations transformed through time?

• “Ethics” of science in theory and in practice

• Can expertise be “grounded”? Is “tacit knowledge” a productive concept in the history and philosophy of science?

• Science education and pedagogy

• Historical continuity and discontinuity in notions of epistemic justification

• Race science and its philosophical foundations

• Science and religion in society

Abstracts are due January 31st, 2026. Submit here: https://forms.gle/6hYanhvNn6EFnnDW9 

For additional questions, get in touch at [email protected].