Within the historiography of early modern science, trust and credibility have become synonymous with genteel identity. While we should not overlook the cultural values attached to social hierarchy and how it shaped the credibility of knowledge claims, this has limitations when thinking about how contemporaries regarded the origins of that knowledge and its location in different types of workers and skillsets. Using the example of seamen in the circles of the Royal Society, this article employs the category of experience, and by extension expertise, to illustrate how recognized forms of knowledge and skill acted as routes to credibility and authority in early modern science. It argues that, within the experimental community, the seaman’s authority derived from their direct experience of novel and remote phenomena and the cumulative effect of their wider experience. The accumulated experience they acquired from frequent practice, observation, and exposure translated into a form of “expertness” that rendered seamen trustworthy and credible observers and thinkers. The gentlemanly trust model does not accommodate nor acknowledge the ways the seaman’s direct and accumulated experience (and that of many other professional groups) were recognized and valued in inquiry and discourse. The article therefore sets out a new model for understanding trust, credibility, and authority in early modern science that can take us beyond a restrictive mono-model that locates trust in one sociocultural category to highlight the multiple, and sometimes competing, claims to epistemological authority.

中文翻译：

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“最优秀和最实用的哲学家”：海员和早期现代科学经验的权威

在早期现代科学的史学中，信任和可信度已成为上流身份的同义词。虽然我们不应忽视社会等级所附带的文化价值观以及它如何塑造知识主张的可信度，但在考虑同时代人如何看待知识的起源及其在不同类型的工人和技能组合中的位置时，这有局限性。本文以皇家学会圈子中的海员为例，使用经验类别，并通过扩展专业知识来说明公认的知识和技能形式如何在早期现代科学中成为获得信誉和权威的途径。它认为，在实验社区内，海员的权威来自他们对新奇和遥远现象的直接体验以及他们更广泛经验的累积效应。他们从频繁的实践、观察和接触中积累的经验转化为一种“专业”形式，使海员成为值得信赖和可信的观察者和思考者。绅士信任模型不适应也不承认海员直接和积累的经验（以及许多其他专业团体的经验）在询问和讨论中得到认可和重视的方式。因此，本文提出了一种理解早期现代科学中的信任、可信度和权威的新模型，它可以使我们超越将信任定位在一个社会文化类别中的限制性单一模型，以突出多重，有时甚至是相互竞争的，