Let Us Take Science into Our Culture

Abstract

Attitudes to science are coloured by a range of factors, of which the moral crusade against industry in the latter part of the nineteenth century has been the most significant. This sets the cultural parameters within which hostility to industry and technology, and by inference science, is sustained. Within this context changing public perceptions of science cannot easily be handled. The Public Understanding of Science movement has concentrated on the content of science and the belief that good citizenship demands a basic understanding of it. Since science is a human activity and a central part of our culture, it is the cultural context of science that should provide our starting point. The Public Understanding of Science should therefore be primarily about helping people to decode the culture of science and thus decode the culture within which they live.