Introduction

Abstract The introduction highlights how the relationship between experts and laypeople has changed significantly since the eighteenth century. Back then, people only occasionally had to rely on expert advice, and it was still possible to acquire expertise in a wide range of domains. Today, however, due to massive division of epistemic labor and increasing specialization, we are almost universally dependent on expert guidance—and this applies to everyone. Everyone is a layperson in almost every domain. This gives rise to a fundamental problem: on the one hand, laypeople ought to defer to experts; on the other, they should not do so uncritically. The introduction makes clear that this tension is not easily resolved. It sets the stage for the book’s central question: How can laypeople acknowledge the special epistemic authority of experts without abandoning their own critical thinking altogether? The introduction concludes with a brief overview of the book’s chapters.