Contents

• About the Author vi

• Acknowledgments vii

• Foreword by Harry Collins ix

• Preface xi

1. Introduction 1

2. oneWhat Caused, and How Do We Fix, Our Crisis? 20
3. twoWorldviews as “Religious” Frameworks 36
4. threeThe Quasi-Religious Aspect of the Crisis 47
5. fourBelief as a Form of Expertise 52
6. fiveCommunicating across Worldviews 58

7. Conclusion 69

• Notes 72

• References 93

• Index 108

About the Author

• David S. Caudill is Professor and Arthur M. Goldberg Family Chair in Law at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law in Villanova, Pennsylvania, and Senior Fellow on the University of Melbourne Law Faculty. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a JD from the University of Houston Law Center, and a BA in philosophy from Michigan State University. He previously taught at Washington and Lee University School of Law; prior to that appointment, he clerked for Judge John R. Brown in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and practiced law in San Diego and Austin. He is the author of seven books and over 100 journal articles and book chapters in the fields of law and science, legal ethics, property law, and law and literature.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to those who have offered comments on, and criticisms of, the analyses and arguments in this book, especially: (1) the anonymous referees in the proposal and manuscript submission phases of Bristol University Press’s production process; (2) my fellow panelists and those who attended my presentation at the (virtual) Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, held at the University of Toronto, on October 6, 2021; (3) the participants, including Harry Collins and Rob Evans, in the (virtual) international workshop hosted by The Centre of the Study of Knowledge, Expertise and Science (KES), a research group based in the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Wales, on February 21, 2021; and (4) my colleagues at a Villanova Law Faculty workshop who responded to a presentation at an early stage in this project. Many of my contentions in this book were outlined in “Trust in science: the crisis of expertise as an ideological, and not only a scientific, controversy,” published in the Quinnipiac Law Review, 40: 237–87 (2022). Some of the materials on Bruno Latour were presented on December 9, 2019, in a keynote address to the 2019 Workshop on Law, Technology, and Humans, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, and published as “Expertise in political contexts: Latour avec the Third Wave in science and technology studies,” Law, Technology, and Humans, 2(2): 4–21 (November 2020). Some of the materials on Dutch Golden Age church interiors were published in “Emanuel de Witte’s Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft: images of life as religion, individualism, and the critique of legal ideology,” INDEX Journal, 2 (Symposium on Law and Art) (2020). I am grateful to the editors and peer reviewers of these journals for their assistance and advice. Thanks to Dr Darrin Durant, University of Melbourne, for his guidance with respect to Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and to Dr Martin Weinel, Cardiff University, for his helpful insights on counterfeit (as opposed to genuine) scientific controversies. Thanks also for the summer 2022 research grant to complete this book provided by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. Finally, I want to thank Paul Stevens, Publisher and Head of Interdisciplinarity and Digital, and Georgina Bolwell, Senior Editorial Assistant, both at Bristol University Press, for their discernment and generous spirit throughout the publication process.