Expert

“ I examine the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist’s opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward. ”

“ He is trained to a mental analysis of the causes of great events, to an expert understanding of their present importance, to a clear insight into their future influence. If he has studied, he knows the great influences that for centuries have governed human conduct. ”

“ In approaching this question, therefore, I have realized the importance of obtaining the opinions of experts who are alone qualified to express a well-balanced judgment upon a matter demanding knowledge and opportunities of observation of a very special nature. ”

“ It follows, then, that one who is endowed with more than ordinary acuteness of observation, and has had an experience so varied and extensive as to cover most of these lines, is likely to be best fitted for critical and reliable expert work. ”

“ They pass muster in our everyday discourse [6] only because we take them for granted and do not scrutinise them too closely. The expert alone can say what common sense means by mind; and even the expert must speak in general terms, qualifying and with reservations. ”

“ The reader will recall from his own experience an almost infinite number of instances in which the amateur has been fully prepared to deliver expert advice and to give final judgment in matters upon which his ignorance is patent to every one except himself. ”

“ Having triumphantly exposed one or more absurdities, and thus acquired the aplomb of a solid expert, he returns to his proper task, calculating that now he will inspire his reader with greater confidence. ”

“ And still more, when the astronomer or the physician or the carpenter appeals, as a man of science or of common sense, to the “general experience of mankind,” or to the experience of any selected company of experts, as the guarantee of the truth of any of his beliefs, each of them appeals to a body of fact which, as such a body of fact, has never been present to the experience of any man at any time. ”

“ What title has the opinion of experts to authority in matters aesthetic? Even if it showed that agreement in which it is so conspicuously lacking, why should men endeavour to mould their feelings into the patterns it prescribes? In the practical affairs of life we follow those who have made a special study of some particular problem, only because they have greater knowledge than ourselves of the relevant facts. ”

“ You can be sure about the conclusions you reach as a result of your specific, exact observation of details. The study and analysis of words, tones, and acts, coupled with a little painstaking practice, will make you an expert judge of other men. ”

“ The average scientist, the every-day physician, the followers, the gleaners and popularizers of knowledge, are expected to blunder and teach but half truths, if not positive error; but if all those who should be our experts fail us, where can we look for clear ideas? ”

“ We know that the knowledge of experts will continue to be integrated in the pragmatics of this age. The specific motivations of human practical experiences resulting in knowledge have to be recognized and stimulated. ”

“ Expertness in teaching consists in a scholarly command of subject-matter, in a better organization of character, in a larger and more versatile command of conscious modes of transmitting facts and ideals, and in a more potent and winsome, forceful and sympathetic manner of personal contact with other human beings.—Henry Suzzallo. ”

“ Our belief is that if facts and principles were clearly stated and thoroughly handled by experts, it would then be possible not only to utilize this impulse and gratify a wholesome appetite, but even to attract and organize a consensus of sound opinion which might influence and determine the practice of our best writers and speakers. ”

“ But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that experts are allowed a much wider range than ordinary witnesses in the expression of their opinions, and in the statement of facts on which their opinions are based. ”

“ For those to whom no such resource is open, there is no other way but to put the matter into the hands of certain experts, of great experience in such matters—a class of persons to be found everywhere. ”

“ Sicher ist's in alien Fallen,"—
for if experts are the hardest people to satisfy, they have at any rate the liveliest sense of the difficulties of one's task, and they know quickest when one hits the mark. ”

“ Those people again will not be pleased with the author’s remarks, who regard themselves as experts in practical life,—or in what, under the influence of fond habit, has come to be regarded as practical life. ”

“ The problem is that this imaginary case has nothing to teach us about our real one. In Mr. Biestek’s case, it is undisputed that the expert offered only a bare conclusion about the number of available jobs. No other relevant testimony was offered or received: no testimony about the underlying data, no testimony about its specific sources, no testimony about its reliability. In our real case, there is simply no way to shrug off the failure to produce the data as harmless error. To the contrary, and as we have seen, cases like this routinely fail to satisfy the substantial evidence standard. ”

“ WE have already noticed, that, after the first great achievements of the founders of sound speculation, in the different departments of human knowledge, had attracted the interest and admiration which those who became acquainted with them could not but give to them, there appeared a disposition among men to lean on the authority of some of these teachers;—to study the opinions of others as the only mode of forming their own;—to read nature through books;—to attend to what had been already thought and said, rather than to what really is and happens. ”

“ The diligence with which you endeavour to cultivate the knowledge of nature, manners, and life, will perhaps incline you to pay some regard to the observations of one who has been taught to know mankind by unwelcome information, and whose opinions are the result, not of solitary conjectures, but of practice and experience. ”

“ I would ask of my friends or foes, no matter which—I mean those who do not believe as I do—those who look upon us as a set of fanatics, I would ask a few questions of the world of mankind, of the greatest philosophers, of the greatest geniuses, and of the men of the most profound knowledge on the face of the earth, Can you tell me where you get your knowledge? ”

“ No less admirable are, on the one hand, his synthetic skill and the logic of his arguments, and, on the other, his subtle and discriminating analyses, which weigh the finest shades of thought and dissect each subject with all the accuracy of science. ”

“ How full of information, of philosophic observation, of accurate knowledge! It appears to be written by men of trained intellect and of experience,—educated men of the world, who, by reason of their position and character, have access to the highest sources of information. ”

“ Verily, if you could have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him speak, you would have cried admiringly, "Knowledge is power; and this man, if as able on a larger field of action, should play no mean part in the history of his time." ”

“ I had never met a person whose mind was stored with more useful and extensive knowledge,—who had, in fact, mastered such an infinite variety of subjects, and who yet retained all his activity for the details of ordinary business. ”

“ Knowledge which will be really useful, really worth knowing? Knowledge which I shall know accurately, and practically too, so that I can use it in daily life, for myself and my fellow-men? Knowledge, too, which shall be clear knowledge, not warped or coloured by my own fancies, passions, prejudices, but pure, and calm, and sound ”

“ It was so in my training. We seek to silence all opinions, all half-truths, all thinking, in fact, in order to Know. We postulate, of course, a center of Spontaneous Knowledge, or Genius, above the mind. ”

“ Where, then, is such a one to look for the limits and the standard of a legitimate venture—the guide and safeguard against temerity—when his boldness of speculation springs really from a profound love of truth, and a pure enthusiasm for science? ”

“ The first questions are always to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? ”

“ I cannot understand how it is possible, as the phrase goes, to blink the question of its truth or falsehood. It meets us with a profession and a proffer of the highest truths of which the human mind is capable; it embraces a range of subjects the most diversified and distant from each other. ”

“ But that which par excellence is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from the bare energy of the soul. ”

“ And, my lords, when we observe those to differ in their sentiments, whose education, experience, and opportunities of knowledge have been nearly the same, and who have all obtained a very great degree of reputation in their profession, what can be inferred, but that the question is in its own nature obscure and difficult? ”

“ This contrast is traceable not only as we pass from popular ignorance to professional knowledge, but as we pass from the smaller professional knowledge of early times to the greater professional knowledge of our own. ”

“ What the philosopher needs to know, as the starting-point for his investigation, is not the specialist’s facts as such, but the general principles which the specialist uses for their discovery and correlation. ”

“ In other words, the hour of the Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, the man of The Successful Temperament is at hand.
Everything we plan for the world, including goodness, from this day—must reckon with him—with the Man Who Sees How. ”

“ Before he could form any idea of anything, before he would express his opinion on any subject, he must know it in origin and history, in substance and quality, in magnitude and gravity. He must know his subject inside and outside, upside and downside. ”

“ You gentlemen, cannot place yourselves at this standpoint of speculative science; your profession demands that you occupy the opposite position; not that which professes acquaintance with things as they actually exist, but which presumes a thorough understanding of matters which to ordinary mortals are entirely incomprehensible. ”

“ And the range of topics is very wide; it embraces science and art, history and philosophy; above all, the knowledge of human nature that teaches how the mind he addresses is to be convinced and persuaded, and how a willing ear is to be won to his discourse. ”

“ These are questions that will be answered some day when the world is older and wiser—when the great road to science will have been trodden further on towards the goal which shall reveal all mysteries in the light of simple truths—when man can look a fellow being in the face and trace each thought written there. ”

“ We ask why the scholar is interested in his subject, why he has sought this knowledge? And in most cases we find the right reason when we have found the logical connection and have sought it logically. ”