Scientific legitimation rests on consensus among experts about language rules

Evidence

This necessitates a reformulation of the question of the legitimation of knowledge. When a denotative statement is declared true, there is a presupposition that the axiomatic system within which it is decidable and demonstrable has already been formulated, that it is known to the interlocutors, and that they have accepted that it is as formally satisfactory as possible. This was the spirit in which the mathematics of the Bourbaki group was developed. But analogous observations can be made for the other sciences: they owe their status to the existence of a language whose rules of functioning cannot themselves be demonstrated but are the object of a consensus among experts. These rules, or at least some of them, are requests. The request is a modality of prescription. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 324

Categorization

• XREF: The Bourbaki example connects to the reader’s Milgrom/law-merchant work: both show knowledge/trade depending on rules that are the object of consensus among practitioners rather than self-demonstrating. — connects to: The people’s consensus and scientific consensus are the same legitimation model — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 251; Modern science grounds truth rules in expert consensus, not transcendental authority — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 248; Rules governing scientific discourse are prescriptive, not denotative, claims — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 448 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Science’s trustworthiness rests on being intersubjective and collective #corroborates (0.80) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 748