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An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, or skill whose judgment is accorded authority and status by the public or their peers. Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary is a Wikimedia Foundation project intended to be a free wiki dictionary (hence: Wiktionary) (including thesaurus and lexicon) in every language. ... Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced both as a theory of knowledge and of justified belief (as well as other varieties of so-called positive epistemic status). ... Knowledge is information of which a person, organization or other entity is aware. ... A technique is a way of efficiently accomplishing a task in a manner that is not immediately obvious or straightforward. ... A skill is an ability, usually learned, to perform actions. ...

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 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. A layperson is someone who is not a clergyman/clergywoman or (other meaning) who is not a professional person. ... A technician is generally someone in a technological field who has a relatively practical understanding of the general theoretical principles of that field, e. ... Expertise is the property of a person (that is, expert) or of a system which delivers a desired result such as pertinent information or skill. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Knowledge. ...

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 is that an expert system may be taught by a human and thereafter considered an expert, often outperforming human beings at particular tasks. In law, an expert witness must be recognized by argument and authority.   Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... An expert system is a class of computer programs developed by researchers in artificial intelligence during the 1970s and applied commercially throughout the 1980s. ... See also Portal:Law The stela of King Hammurabi depicts the god Shamash revealing a code of laws to the king. ... An expert witness is a witness, who by virtue of education, or profession, or experience, is believed to have special knowledge of his subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon his opinion. ... In logic, an argument is an attempt to demonstrate the truth of an assertion called a conclusion, based on the truth of a set of assertions called premises. ... In politics, authority (Latin auctoritas, used in Roman law as opposed to potestas and imperium) is often used interchangeably with the term power. However, their meanings differ. ...

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 criteria for their expertise is available. The term crank is likewise used to disparage opinions. Academic elitism arises when experts become convinced that only their opinion is useful, sometimes on matters beyond their personal expertise. Template:Wiktionarypar objective Objective may be: Objective lens, an optical element in a camera or microscope. ... This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

By a similar token, a fear of experts can arise from the fear of the power of an intellectual elite. In earlier periods of history, simply being able to read made one part of an intellectual elite with remarkable power and influence. The reformation could be attributed to higher literacy rates and the availability of printing, both of which made the knowledge of the religious elite less arcane, and more open to interpretation and debate. The Protestant Reformation was a movement which began in the 16th century as a series of attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but ended in division and the establishment of new institutions, most importantly Lutheranism, Reformed churches, and Anabaptists. ...

See also

• Anti-intellectualism