The challenge from expert experience. On the role of qualitative methods in phenomenology of science

Abstract Phenomenology of science is supposed to return to the things themselves by getting as close as possible to the level of scientific practice. In doing so, it engages with a broader landscape of scholarship on science—from sociology and STS to analytic philosophy—that likewise seeks to clarify the epistemic structures of scientific practice. What sets phenomenology apart, however, is its aim of faithfully describing the essential structures of expert experience—the very experience scientists undergo as they engage in their research—by means of a first-person perspective. This paper identifies a central methodological difficulty in this regard: the challenge of expert experience , namely the difficulty of accessing and describing experiences that require domain-specific expertise. While introducing qualitative methods into the phenomenological toolbox seems a promising route for addressing this difficulty, it brings with it its own set of challenges. Although, as I will argue, there is no straightforward solution to the challenge, a potential way forward lies in focusing more on the collaborative interactions between phenomenologists and scientists during interview-based inquiry, with the aim of fostering interactional expertise in Harry Collins’s sense of the term.