Beach Haven

​Bibliography
Eliot, C. W., & Neilson, W. A. (Eds.). (1917). The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction: French Fiction (Vol. 13). New York: PF Collier & Son Company.

Review by Michael Beach

This is one volume of a 20-volume set. The larger set is dubbed a ‘shelf of fiction’. I reported on some of the longer stories in this volume earlier individually. The authors include Honoré de Balzac, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant. The book doesn't give translation attribute from French to English. The stories are all in English. I can read Spanish but not French. I have read several other works by a few of these authors in the past, also in English. For example, years ago I read a series of writings by Guy de Maupassant. That was also a multi-volume set but all those works were by that one single author.

As you might guess, with such a variety of authors and having only a sampling from each, the range of stories is just as varied. No particular story stands out above another to me. I guess, among the short stories I would say Daudet was my favorite author. His works were about war, but each focused on absurd events. For example, The Last Class, the Story of the Little Alsatian speaks from the perspective of a boy going to his school. He learns that his teacher is being forced out by the Austrian occupation forces. Older members of the community are at his school as they all have one last lesson in French knowing the next day they will have to begin receiving classes in German. Walter Schnaffs’ Adventure by Guy de Maupassant is more comical. An Austrian solider is tired of fighting and just wants to get food. He reasons that if he could get captured the French would feed him. He enters a village expecting to get taken, but the people seem to have fled. He sees a large chateau in the town. He enters and the few who are there think the whole army is attacking so they run. Walter sets down to feast, his only real intention. Finally, the French storm the chateau. They find him there eating. They believe they have run off the opposing army and they take Walter captive. He gets what he wants, and they get to claim what they want.

I appreciate these kinds of multi-volume published works. Along with the stories, there are small sections by experts titled ‘criticisms and interpretations’ that shed light on the stories and authors. As this is the 13th in the larger set, I have already read and reported on the first 12 volumes in the past. I have other multi-volume sets with different kinds of stories. What I like about this approach to publication is I get introduced to authors and genres I otherwise would not consider. They can also be inexpensive. Typically, I find them at yard sales or thrift stores. If I were thinking about it as financial investment I could do well. I doubt I paid more than $15 or $20 for the set. I look online and see complete versions of this specific 1917 set for north of $400. Etsy calls a full-volume collection a ‘rare find’ at $499. To me the value is in the benefit of the reading itself. I will continue to work my way through the rest of the volumes.

Bibliography
​Collins, Harry, and Robert Evans. 2007. Rethinking Expertise. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Harry Collins and Robert Evans describe a framework for understanding  expertise. They divide these forms of authoritative knowledge into ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘specialist’ expertise, then offer several forms of tables to depict related topical continua for each. For the authors, ubiquitous expertise is that sort that most people possess so no particular authority is ascribed to it other than one might note if it seems missing in a person. As the expertise requires ever more effort to attain, the continuum approaches the realm of specialist expertise.

Science and technology are considered as a “provider of truth” as they attempt to analyze “the meaning of the expertise upon which the practice of science and technology rests” (Collins and Evans 2007, 2). The note that this provider-of-truth view has been questioned more over time. They share perceptions that some have come to place more confidence in ‘folk wisdom’ or ‘common sense’ over positions taken by scientists. They note a ‘tension’ between legitimacy or trust and the approach of increased involvement of ‘the public’. This increase in public involvement they call ‘extension’.  The opposite of extension is referred to as scientism. This is often found in scientists themselves. Essentially, scientism is a belief that science is the best and maybe only answer to understanding the nature of things. Scientism discourages involvement by those not specially trained in a narrow field that proponents consider acceptable.
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After describing the framework through a series of continua, the authors conclude with three summation questions. They ask about appropriate ratios of influence between science and politics. They wonder which of the sciences should be included in a given discussion in order to understand what is science and what is pseudoscience. Finally Collins and Evans ask if the public can recognize what they need to in order to make “appropriate decisions” (Collins and Evans 2007, 134). Of course the reader might challenge the authors with the question of how to define ‘appropriate’. They go on to argue that “experts should obviously have a relatively greater input where their results are more reliable” (Ibid.). I suppose that ‘reliable results’ would be understood from the position of expected, or at least hoped for, outcomes. Narrow expertise makes for less wholistic understanding. At the same time, one can be an expert without all the accolades of accredited institutions. For example, who has better insight, the doctor of agrology or the farmer? What does better mean? Perhaps each helps the other to see what neither can on their own.