Ideally, expert-sounding language is the icing on a large cake of primary knowledge, but expertise can be built the other way as well. Collins is suggesting that we can learn the language of a subject and then build down to the details, which should be pretty widely understood but isn't.
Boddi
On 10/6/06, Alex <zap_path at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
>
> > Funny thing to happen even as we debate this stuff...
> >
> > http://platosbeard.org/archives/201
> >
> > Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist
> > By Jon Lackman - Slate Magazine
> >
> > In a recent experiment of his design, British sociologist Harry Collins
> > asked a scientist who specializes in gravitational waves to answer seven
> > questions about the physics of these waves. Collins, who has made an
> > amateur study of this field for more than 30 years but has never
> > actually practiced it, also answered the questions himself. Then he
> > submitted both sets of answers to a panel of judges who are themselves
> > gravitational-wave researchers. The judges couldn't tell the impostor
> > from one of their own.
> >
> > [...]
>
> I'm not sure what this is supposed to show. That non-scientists can
> intelligently discuss science? Who argues otherwise? What has it got to do
> with the Sokal Social Text hoax? The point of that wasn't to show that
> non-scientists can't understand science (of course they can), but that the
> particular discussion of science going on in the journal was fundamentally
> silly.
>
> -Alex
>
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