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science versus nonscience. In the cases Gieryn examines, there exists a preexisting shared valuation of science—a basic agreement on the epistemic value of scientific knowledge—in which advocates of ideas want to be included. 15 In other words, there is epistemic consensus; the disputes in credibility contests revolve around whether particular claims can be said to conform to these agreed-upon standards. While epistemic contests involve issues of credibility, they are broader and more basic, incorporating questions as to what is the legitimate way by which people come to know reality. Preexisting epistemological agreements are absent, and science may be only one of the many epistemological systems involved. 16 To clarify this distinction, two experts debating over the interpretation of experimental evidence is not an epistemic contest; two individuals debating the legitimacy of experimentation is. The concept of epistemic contests shifts attention to debates in which more elemental issues of knowledge are at stake, not just who can speak with scientific credibility. Indeed, as epistemic contests involve situations lacking common cul tural assumptions, they are waged through diverse strategies that contain both organizational and cultural components. Therefore, in reconstructing the epistemic contest over nineteenth-century medicine, I avoid the false dichotomy between organizational and cultural practices, revealing how the strategies adopted by collective actors in epistemic contests contain elements of both, and by extension, suggest that all knowledge disputes, even those read as solely cultural, do as well.
    Every epistemological system contains a working model of what constitutes legitimate knowledge, the method(s) by which such knowledge can be attained, and the general ethos and identity that legitimate knowers should possess in relation to knowledge. They outline the assumptions that guide knowledge production and adjudicate competing claims. Epistemological claims therefore can be made along a number of dimensions. Actors can aver epistemic authority on account of the
content
of their knowledge, arguing that their possession of a body of knowledge legitimates a privileged epistemic position. Or epistemic authority can be rooted in claims to possess the
method
by which knowledge is produced. Methods-based claims can represent some sort of abstract ideal, like the scientific method, or more specific forms of technical acumen, like the technical know-how to process certain forms of information. Finally, epistemic authority can be justified along the lines of the orientation or
ethos
the group assumes toward knowledge. This ethos typically underwrites claims to epistemic authority based upon objectivity, where appeals to disinterestedness, trustworthiness, and a “view from nowhere” (Nagel 1989) become common tropes by which actors claim epistemic authority. Naturally, in practice these dimensions overlap, but it can be useful to parse them analytically, as the specific way in which claims are made shapes the strategic choices of actors.
    However epistemic authority is framed, the concept of the epistemic contest directs attention toward conflicts among competing epistemological systems. Such conflicts, though not commonplace, are particularly disruptive. Epistemological assumptions form the core of the taken-for-granted world. These ever-present criteria for assessing beliefs inform and determine the manner in which individuals make sense of reality. In most cases, they remain unarticulated. Individuals do not need to be able to articulate justificatory arguments in order to employ them in the pursuit of knowledge (BonJour 1978). Such standards are institutionalized in the social practices of knowing however internalized and unconscious they may become. They are rarely questioned, much less discarded. For this reason, knowledge disputes typically do not operate on the level of epistemology. But when