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Normal Accidents of Expertise

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Abstract

Charles Perrow used the term “normal accidents” to characterize a type of catastrophic failure that resulted when complex, tightly coupled production systems encountered a certain kind of anomalous event. These were events in which systems failures interacted with one another in a way that could not be anticipated, and could not be easily understood and corrected. Systems of the production of expert knowledge are increasingly becoming tightly coupled. Unlike classical science, which operated with a long time horizon, many current forms of expert knowledge are directed at immediate solutions to complex problems. These are prone to breakdowns like the kind discussed by Perrow. The example of the Homestake mine experiment shows that even in modern physics complex systems can produce knowledge failures that last for decades. The concept of knowledge risk is introduced, and used to characterize the risk of failure in such systems of knowledge production.

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Notes

  1. Philosophers pointed out a large problem with this account: according to Taylor, intentional explanations were teleological and asymmetric. The intended end was the favored end of an intentional explanation. So there was a question of whether any account that relied, as the “Strong Programme” in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge did, on ordinary intentional language, could ever be symmetric in the relevant sense (Turner forthcoming 2010). This discussion was framed in the now passé language of the problem of reasons and causes. But it has now reemerged in the form of the concept of “normativity,” where it has the same implications. The term “belief” itself, for example, has been claimed to be a “normative” concept that cannot be understood “causally” (Rouse 2002, 99).

  2. The issues with this device are discussed in “Webs of Belief, Practices, and Concepts” (Turner forthcoming 2010).

  3. I have discussed the problem of aggregation of knowledge and the issues with the social organization of aggregation elsewhere. See especially “Political Epistemology, Expertise, and the Aggregation of Knowledge” (Turner 2005, 2007).

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  1. Department of Philosophy FAO 226, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Stephen P. Turner

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Correspondence to Stephen P. Turner.

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Turner, S.P. Normal Accidents of Expertise. Minerva 48, 239–258 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-010-9153-z

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