Re: Re: rational expectations

[JKSCHW]

In a message dated 8/3/00 7:22:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

<< Jim D. wrote: "who is it that determines who a "real authority" is? Is 
there
 a World
 Congress of Philosophers who makes this decision?" >>

* * * 

A very interesting question. Steve Shapin has explored this question with 
respexct to early modern science in his Leviathan and the Air Pump (about 
Hobbes and Boyle) and The Social History of Truth. The short and banal 
version of a sophisticated and interesting answer is that it's partly the 
consensus of the powerful people in the profession, which itself is in part a 
function of who is trusted. Shapin argues that moral authority (and in early 
modern science, class) has a lot to do with it. --jks