Science democratised = expertise decommissioned

Science and expertise have been antithetical forms of knowledge in both the ancient and the modern world, but they appear identical in today’s postmodern world, especially in Science & Technology Studies (STS) literature. The ancient Athenians associated science (epistemé) with the contemplative life afforded to those who lived from inherited wealth. Expertise (techné) was for those lacking property, and hence citizenship. Such people were regularly forced to justify their usefulness to Athenian society. Some foreign merchants, collectively demonised in Plato’s Dialogues as ‘sophists’, appeared so insulting to citizen Socrates, because they dared to alienate aspects of this leisured existence (e.g. the capacity for articulate reasoning) and repackage them as techniques that might be purchased on demand from an expert – that is, a sophist. In effect, the sophists cleverly tried to universalise their own alien status, taking full advantage of the strong analogy that Athenians saw between the governance of the self and the polis. Unfortunately, Plato, the original spin doctor, immortalised Socrates’ laboured and hyperbolic rearguard response to these sly and partially successful attempts at dislodging hereditary privilege..

Heartbeat Stars, Tidally Excited Oscillations, and Resonance Locking

Heartbeat stars are eccentric binary stars in short period orbits whose light curves are shaped by tidal distortion, reflection, and Doppler beaming. Some heartbeat stars exhibit tidally excited oscillations and present new opportunities for understanding the physics of tidal dissipation within stars. We present detailed methods to compute the forced amplitudes, frequencies, and phases of tidally excited oscillations in eccentric binary systems. Our methods i) factor out the equilibrium tide for easier comparison with observations, ii) account for rotation using the traditional approximation, iii) incorporate non-adiabatic effects to reliably compute surface luminosity perturbations, iv) allow for spin-orbit misalignment, and v) correctly sum over contributions from many oscillation modes. We also discuss why tidally excited oscillations are more visible in hot stars with surface temperatures $T \! \gtrsim \! 6500 \, {\rm K}$, and we derive some basic probability theory that can be used to compare models with data in a statistical manner. Application of this theory to heartbeat systems can be used to determine whether observed tidally excited oscillations can be explained by chance resonances with stellar oscillation modes, or whether a resonance locking process is operating.Comment: Published in MNRA

Saturn Ring Seismology: Evidence for Stable Stratification in the Deep Interior of Saturn

Seismology allows for direct observational constraints on the interior structures of stars and planets. Recent observations of Saturn's ring system have revealed the presence of density waves within the rings excited by oscillation modes within Saturn, allowing for precise measurements of a limited set of the planet's mode frequencies. We construct interior structure models of Saturn, compute the corresponding mode frequencies, and compare them with the observed mode frequencies. The fundamental mode frequencies of our models match the observed frequencies (of the largest amplitude waves) to an accuracy of $\sim 1 \%$, confirming that these waves are indeed excited by Saturn's f-modes. The presence of the lower amplitude waves (finely split in frequency from the f-modes) can only be reproduced in models containing gravity modes that propagate in a stably stratified region of the planet. The stable stratification must exist deep within the planet near the large density gradients between the core and envelope. Our models cannot easily reproduce the observed fine splitting of the $m=-3$ modes, suggesting that additional effects (e.g., significant latitudinal differential rotation) may be important.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Icaru

The new medical model: a renewed challenge for biomedicine

Over the past 25 years, several new “medicines” have come screeching onto health care’s various platforms, including narrative medicine, personalized medicine, precision medicine and person-centred medicine. Philosopher Miriam Solomon calls the first three of these movements different “ways of knowing” or “methods,” and argues that they are each a response to shortcomings of methods that came before them. They should also be understood as reactions to the current dominant model of medicine. In this article, I will describe our dominant model, which I call “the new medical model.” I will argue that several towering problems in modern medicine can be traced to its philosophical foundations, which calls for philosophical analysis