Expert - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable

Reliabilism

Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief...

source of technique or skill

Skill

A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills...

whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by their peer

Peer group

A peer group is a social group consisting of humans. Peer groups are an informal primary group of people who share a similar or equal status and who are usually of roughly the same age, tended to travel around and interact within the social aggregate Members of a particular peer group often have...

s or the public

Public

In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individuals, and the public is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the Öffentlichkeit or public sphere. The concept of a public has also been defined in political science,...

in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge

Knowledge

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

or ability

Aptitude

An aptitude is an innate component of a competency to do a certain kind of work at a certain level. Aptitudes may be physical or mental...

based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study. Experts are called in for advice on their respective subject, but they do not always agree on the particulars of a field of study. An expert can be, by virtue of credential

Credential

A credential is an attestation of qualification, competence, or authority issued to an individual by a third party with a relevant or de facto authority or assumed competence to do so....

, training

Training

The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...

, education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, profession

Profession

A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....

, publication

Publication

To publish is to make content available to the public. While specific use of the term may vary among countries, it is usually applied to text, images, or other audio-visual content on any medium, including paper or electronic publishing forms such as websites, e-books, Compact Discs and MP3s...

or experience

Experience

Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....

, believed to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may official

Official

An official is someone who holds an office in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority .A government official or functionary is an official who is involved in public...

ly (and legally

Expert witness

An expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialised knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally...

) rely upon the individual's opinion

Opinion

In general, an opinion is a subjective belief, and is the result of emotion or interpretation of facts. An opinion may be supported by an argument, although people may draw opposing opinions from the same set of facts. Opinions rarely change without new arguments being presented...

. Historically, an expert was referred to as a sage

Wise old man

The wise old man is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character...

(Sophos

Sage (Sophos)

In the Symposium, Plato draws a distinction between a philosopher and a sage . The difference is explained through the concept of love, which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore the philosopher does not have the wisdom he or she seeks. The sage, on the other hand, does not love, or seek, wisdom...

). The individual was usually a profound thinker

Intellectual

An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

distinguished for wisdom

Wisdom

Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...

and sound judgment

Judgment

A judgment , in a legal context, is synonymous with the formal decision made by a court following a lawsuit. At the same time the court may also make a range of court orders, such as imposing a sentence upon a guilty defendant in a criminal matter, or providing a remedy for the plaintiff in a civil...

.

Experts have a prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. In specific fields, the definition of expert is well established by consensus and therefore it is not necessary for an individual to have a professional or academic qualification for them to be accepted as an expert. In this respect, a shepherd with 50 years of experience tending flocks would be widely recognized as having complete expertise in the use and training of sheep dogs and the care of sheep. Another example from computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

is that an expert system

Expert system

In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning about knowledge, like an expert, and not by following the procedure of a developer as is the case in...

may be taught by a human and thereafter considered an expert, often outperforming human beings at particular tasks. In law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, an expert witness

Expert witness

must be recognized by argument and authority

Authority

The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...

.

Research in this area attempts to understand the relation between expert knowledge and exceptional performance in terms of cognitive structures and processes. The fundamental research endeavor is to describe what it is that experts know and how they use their knowledge to achieve performance that most people assume requires extreme or extraordinary ability. Studies have investigated the factors that enable experts to be fast and accurate.

Expertise

Expertise consists of those characteristics, skills and knowledge of a person (that is, expert) or of a system, which distinguish experts from novices and less experienced people. In many domains there are objective measures of performance capable of distinguishing experts from novices: expert chess players will almost always win games against recreational chess players; expert medical specialists are more likely to diagnose a disease correctly; etc.

Academic views on expertise

There are broadly two academic approaches to the understanding and study of expertise. The first understands expertise as an emergent property of communities of practice. In this view expertise is socially constructed; tools for thinking and scripts for action are jointly constructed within social groups enabling that group jointly to define and acquire expertise in some domain.

In the second view expertise is a characteristic of individuals and is a consequence of the human capacity for extensive adaptation to physical and social environments. Many accounts of the development of expertise emphasize that it comes about through long periods of deliberate practice. In many domains of expertise estimates of 10 years experience deliberate practice are common. Recent research on expertise emphasizes the nurture side of the nature versus nurture

Nature versus nurture

The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities versus personal experiences The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences...

argument.

Some factors not fitting the nature-nurture dichotomy are biological but not genetic, such as starting age, handedness, and season of birth.

Historical views on expertise

In line with the socially constructed view of expertise, expertise can also be understood as a form of power

Power (sociology)

Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to...

; that is, experts have the ability to influence others as a result of their defined social status. By a similar token, a fear of experts can arise from fear of an intellectual elite's power. In earlier periods of history, simply being able to read made one part of an intellectual elite. The introduction of the printing press

Printing press

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

in Europe during the fifteenth century and the diffusion of printed matter contributed to higher literacy rates and wider access to the once-rarefied knowledge of academia. The subsequent spread of education and learning changed society, and initiated an era of widespread education whose elite would now instead be those who produced the written content itself for consumption, in education and all other spheres.

Plato's "Noble Lie

Noble lie

In politics a noble lie is a myth or untruth, often, but not invariably, of a religious nature, knowingly told by an elite to maintain social harmony. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic.-Plato's Republic:...

", concerns expertise. Plato did not believe most people were clever enough to look after their own and society's best interest, so the few "clever" people of the world needed to lead the rest of the flock. Therefore, the idea was born that only the elite should know the truth in its complete form and the rulers, Plato said, must tell the people of the city "The Noble Lie" to keep them passive and content, without the risk of upheaval and unrest.

In contemporary society, doctors and scientists, for example, are considered to be experts in that they hold a body of dominant knowledge that is, on the whole, inaccessible to the layman (Fuller: 2005: 141). However, this inaccessibility and perhaps even mystery that surrounds expertise does not cause the layman to disregard the opinion of the experts on account of the unknown. Instead, the complete opposite occurs whereby members of the public believe in and highly value the opinion of medical professionals or of scientific discoveries (Fuller: 2005: 144), despite not understanding it.

Research related to expertise

A number of computational models have been developed in cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

to explain the development from novice to expert. In particular, Herbert Simon

Herbert Simon

Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...

and Kevin Gilmartin proposed a model of learning in chess called MAPP (Memory-Aided Pattern Recognizer). Based on simulations, they estimated that about 50,000 chunks (units of memory) are necessary to become an expert, and hence the many years needed to reach this level. More recently, the CHREST model

CHREST

CHREST is a symbolic cognitive architecture based on the concepts of limited attention, limited short-term memories, and chunking. Learning, which is essential in the architecture, is modelled as the development of a network of nodes which are connected in various ways...

(Chunk Hierarchy and REtrieval STructures) has simulated in detail a number of phenomena in chess expertise (eye movements, performance in a variety of memory tasks, development from novice to expert) and in other domains.

An important feature of expert performance seems to be the way in which experts are able to rapidly retrieve complex configurations of information from long-term memory. They recognize situations because they have meaning. It is perhaps this central concern with meaning and how it attaches to situations which provides an important link between the individual and social approaches to the development of expertise. Work on "Skilled Memory and Expertise" by Anders Ericsson

Anders Ericsson

Dr. K. Anders Ericsson is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental researchers on expertise....

and James J. Staszewski confronts the paradox of expertise and claims that people not only acquire content knowledge as they practice cognitive skills, they also develop mechanisms that enable them to use a large and familiar knowledge base efficiently.

Work on expert systems (computer software designed to provide an answer to a problem, or clarify uncertainties where normally one or more human experts would need to be consulted) typically is grounded on the premise that expertise is based on acquired repertoires of rules and frameworks for decision making which can be elicited as the basis for computer supported judgment and decision-making. However, there is increasing evidence that expertise does not work in this fashion. Rather, experts recognize situations based on experience of many prior situations. They are in consequence able to make rapid decisions in complex and dynamic situations.

In a critique of the expert systems literature suggest:

If one asks an expert for the rules he or she is using, one will, in effect, force the expert to regress to the level of a beginner and state the rules learned in school. Thus, instead of using rules they no longer remember, as knowledge engineers suppose, the expert is forced to remember rules they no longer use. … No amount of rules and facts can capture the knowledge an expert has when he or she has stored experience of the actual outcomes of tens of thousands of situations.

Skilled Memory Theory

Skilled Memory and Expertise
The role of long term memory in the skilled memory effect was first articulated by Chase and Simon in their classic studies of chess expertise. They asserted that organized patterns of information stored in long term memory (chunks) mediated experts' rapid encoding and superior retention. Their study revealed that all subjects retrieved about the same number of chunks, but the size of the chunks varied with subjects' prior experience. Experts' chunks contained more individual pieces than those of novices. This research did not investigate how experts find, distinguish, and retrieve the "right" chunks from the vast number they hold without a lengthy search of long term memory.

Skilled memory enables experts to rapidly encode, store, and retrieve information within the domain of their expertise and thereby circumvent the capacity limitations that typically constrain novice performance. For example, it explains experts' ability to recall large amounts of material displayed for only brief study intervals, provided that the material comes from their domain of expertise. When unfamiliar material (not from their domain of expertise) is presented to experts, their recall is no better than that of novices.

The first principle of skilled memory, the meaningful encoding principle, states that experts exploit prior knowledge to durably encode information needed to perform a familiar task successfully. Experts form more elaborate and accessible memory representations than novices. The elaborate semantic memory network creates meaningful memory codes that create multiple potential cues and avenues for retrieval.

The second principle, the retrieval structure principle states that experts develop memory mechanisms called retrieval structures to facilitate the retrieval of information stored in long term memory. These mechanisms operate in a fashion consistent with the meaningful encoding principle to provide cues that can later be regenerated to retrieve the stored information efficiently without a lengthy search.

The third principle, the speed up principle states that long term memory encoding and retrieval operations speed up with practice, so that their speed and accuracy approach the speed and accuracy of short term memory storage and retrieval.

Examples of skilled memory research described within the Ericcson and Stasewski study include:

a waiter who can accurately remember up to 20 complete dinner orders in an actual restaurant setting by using mnemonic strategy, patterns, and spatial relations (position of the person ordering). At the time of recall all items of a category (e.g., all salad dressings, then all meat temperatures, then all steak types, then all starch type) would be recalled in a clockwise fashion for all customers.
a running enthusiast who grouped together short random sequences of digits and encoded the groups in terms of their meaning as running times, dates, and ages. He was thus able to recall over 84% of all digit groups presented in a session totaling 200-300 digits. His expertise was limited to digits; when a switch from digits to letters of the alphabet was made he exhibited no transfer—his memory span dropped back to about six consonants.
math enthusiasts who can in less than 25 seconds mentally solve 2 x 5 digit multiplication problems (e.g., 23 x 48,856) that have been presented orally by the researcher.

Expertise in problem solving

Much of the research regarding expertise involves the studies of how experts and novices differ in solving problems (Chi, M. T. H., Glasser R., & Rees, E.,1982). Mathematics (Sweller, J., Mawer, R. F., & Ward, M. R., 1983) and physics (Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981) are common domains for these studies.

One of the most cited works in this area, Chi et al. (1981), examines how experts (PhD students in physics) and novices (undergraduate students that completed one semester of mechanics) categorize and represent physics problems. They found that novices sort problems into categories based upon surface features (e.g., keywords in the problem statement or visual configurations of the objects depicted). Experts, however, categorize problems based upon their deep structures (i.e., the main physics principle used to solve the problem).

Their findings also suggest that while the schemas of both novices and experts are activated by the same features of a problem statement, the experts’ schemas contain more procedural knowledge which aid in determining which principle to apply, and novices’ schemas contain mostly declarative knowledge which do not aid in determining methods for solution.

Germain's Expertise Scale

Relative to a specific field, an expert has:

Specific education, training, and knowledge
Required qualifications
Ability to assess importance in work-related situations
Capability to improve themselves
Intuition
Self-assurance and confidence in their knowledge

Marie-Line Germain (Germain, 2006) developed a psychometric measure of perception of employee expertise called the Generalized Expertise Measure (GEM). She defined a behavioral dimension in "experts", in addition to the dimensions suggested by Swanson and Holton (2001). Her 16-item scale contains objective expertise items and subjective expertise items. Objective items were named Evidence-Based items. Subjective items (the remaining 11 items from the measure below) were named Self-Enhancement items because of their behavioral component.

This person has knowledge specific to a field of work. This person shows they have the education necessary to be an expert in the field. This person has the qualifications required to be an expert in the field. This person has been trained in their area of expertise. This person is ambitious about their work in the company. This person can assess whether a work-related situation is important or not. This person is capable of improving themselves. This person is charismatic. This person can deduce things from work-related situations easily. This person is intuitive in the job. This person is able to judge what things are important in their job. This person has the drive to become what they are capable of becoming in their field. This person is self-assured. This person has self-confidence. This person is outgoing. (Condensed from Germain, 2006).

References related to Germain's Expertise Scale

Germain, M. L. (2009). The impact of perceived administrators' expertise on subordinates' job satisfaction and turnover intention. Academy of Human Resource Development. Arlington, VA. February 18–22, 2009.
Germain, M. L. (2006). Development and preliminary validation of a psychometric measure of expertise: The Generalized Expertise Measure (GEM). Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Barry University, Florida.
Germain, M. L. (2006). Perception of Instructors’ Expertise by College Students: An Exploratory Qualitative Research Study. American Educational Research Association annual conference, San Francisco, CA. April 7–11.
Germain, M. L. (2006, February). What experts are not: Factors identified by managers as disqualifiers for selecting subordinates for expert team membership. Academy of Human Resource Development Conference. Columbus, OH. February 22–26.
Germain, M. L. (2005). Apperception and self-identification of managerial and subordinate expertise. Academy of Human Resource Development. Estes Park, CO. February 24–27.
Swanson, R. A., & Holton III, E. F. (2001). Foundations of Human Resource Development. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Associated terms

An expert differs from the specialist in that a specialist has to be able to solve a problem

Problem

A problem is an obstacle, impediment, difficulty or challenge, or any situation that invites resolution; the resolution of which is recognized as a solution or contribution toward a known purpose or goal...

and an expert has to know its solution. The opposite of an expert is generally known as a layperson, while someone who occupies a middle grade of understanding is generally known as a technician

Technician

A technician is a worker in a field of technology who is proficient in the relevant skills and techniques, with a relatively practical understanding of the theoretical principles. Experienced technicians in a specific tool domain typically have intermediate understanding of theory and expert...

and often employed to assist experts. A person may well be an expert in one field and a layperson in many other fields. The concepts of experts and expertise are debated within the field of epistemology under the general heading of expert knowledge. In contrast, the opposite of a specialist would be a generalist

Generalist

Generalist may refer to:* a person with a wide array of knowledge, the opposite of which is a specialist.* a physician who is focused on primary care and is not a specialist in a certain medical field...

, somebody with expertise in many fields.

The term is widely used informally, with people being described as 'experts' in order to bolster the relative value of their opinion, when no objective

Objectivity (science)

Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are created. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc...

criteria for their expertise is available. The term crank

Crank (person)

"Crank" is a pejorative term used for a person who unshakably holds a belief that most of his or her contemporaries consider to be false. A "cranky" belief is so wildly at variance with commonly accepted belief as to be ludicrous...

is likewise used to disparage opinions. Academic elitism

Academic elitism

Academic elitism is a charge sometimes levied at academic institutions and academics more broadly, arguing that academia or academics are prone to undeserved and/or pernicious elitism; the term "ivory tower" often carries with it an implicit critique of academic elitism...

arises when experts become convinced that only their opinion is useful, sometimes on matters beyond their personal expertise.

In contrast to an expert, a novice

Novice

A novice is a person or creature who is new to a field or activity. The term is most commonly applied in religion and sports.-Buddhism:In many Buddhist orders, a man or woman who intends to take ordination must first become a novice, adopting part of the monastic code indicated in the vinaya and...

(known colloquially as a newbie

Newbie

Newbie or noob is a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in any profession or activity. Contemporary use can particularly refer to a beginner or new user of computers, often concerning Internet activity, such as online gaming or Linux use...

or 'greenhorn') is any person that is new to any science or field of study or activity or social cause and who is undergoing training in order to meet normal requirements of being regarded a mature and equal participant.

"Expert" is also being mistakenly interchanged with the term "authority

Authority

in new media. An expert can be an authority if through relationships to people and technology, that expert is allowed to control access to his expertise. However, a person who merely wields authority is not by right an expert. In new media, users are being misled by the term "authority. Many sites and search engines such as Google and Technorati use the term "authority" to denote the link value and traffic to a particular topic. However, this "authority only measures populist information. It in no way assures that the author of that site or blog is an expert.

See also the "expertise" section below.

Developmental characteristics

Some characteristics of the development of an expert have been found to include

A characterization of this practice as "deliberate practice", which forces the practitioner to come up with new ways to encourage and enable themselves to reach new levels of performance
An early phase of learning which is characterized by enjoyment, excitement, and participation without outcome-related goals
The ability to rearrange or construct a higher dimension of creativity. Due to such familiarity or advanced knowledge experts can develop more abstract perspectives of their concepts and/or performances.

Use in literature

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

defined an expert as "an ordinary fellow from another town". Jesus is even quoted as saying "A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown." Mark 6:4. Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....

described an expert as "A man fifty miles from home with a briefcase." Danish scientist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr

Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...

defined an expert as "A person that has made every possible mistake within his or her field."