ABSTRACT
The long essay in Andrew Collier’s latest book, In Defence of Objectivity (2003), begins with a distinction between scientific and lay knowledge. Collier mentions two twentieth-century movements, the philosophers of science – Popper, Bachelard, Kuhn, Lakatos, Harré and Althusser among others – and the philosophers of lay knowledge (or existential phenomenologists) – Heidegger, Macmurray and Merleau-Ponty. These two traditions do not fit together well, but they should not be seen as opposed to each other. As Collier says:
That these two traditions have had little contact should perhaps not matter: they are fighting on different ground, one to liberate scientific knowledge and one to liberate lay knowledge from the empiricist straightjacket … they have in common that both have foregrounded the notion of knowledge as the outcome of work; the intended product of scientific work or the tacit concomitant of everyday work. But unfortunately they have often misunderstood and despised each other.
