40 Public understanding of science

 

 1    Introduction

1. Like it or not we live in a complicated and advanced society. Few would contest the fact that science is an important component of such advancement.
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3. Do Mr and Mrs John Smith have much idea as to how a fridge or toaster works?   Probably not.  What is important, however is that any children they bring into this society will grow up to understand far more about science than their parents.   
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5. You are about to read an extract from an encyclopedia  based on 200 individual encyclopedias and reference books from the world's most trusted publishers.
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7. Care has been taken to exclude artificial intelligence at this stage.  We'll come onto that in due course.

2   Technological developments remain mysterious

 

1. The public understanding and communication of science have become topics of increasing concern since the 1960s as public attitudes to science became more ambivalent than the overweening optimism that reigned immediately after World War II.
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3. As science, technology, and society become increasingly intertwined, public communication concerning science and technology is of ever more obvious importance to relations between science, technology, and ethics.

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5. Strong belief in the social importance of scientific and technological knowledge is part of the professional heritage of scientists and engineers. 
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7. But to a significant portion of the general population, regardless of educational level, many scientific and technological developments remain mysterious. 
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9. Such mysteriousness arose originally both from the unique powers of science as well as the specialization of scientific knowledge. 
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11. It easily degenerates into either excessive faith in or mistrust of scientific-technological developments, attitudes that in turn become a challenge for relations between scientific-technological knowledge and the public. 
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13. This is especially true because even in the presence of irrational and easily manipulated faith and fears, the enormous powers of science and technology call for control by democratic decisions, the ultimate intelligence of which sometimes depends on a measure of scientific and technological literacy. 

 Continued at source.  There is much more.

 

 

 

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