Popular Science

We started the session asking what is popular science, looking at some titles and considering whether we thought they were popular science or not. We then moved on to the broader question of what does popular science mean? What does the content popular science, indeed it's very existence, say about the cultural role of science?

Baudouin Jurdant suggests popular science can be considered as the "autobiography of science". Written mainly by scientists it articulates a public face of both scientific content and practise. This issue was largely discussed in the context of boundary work, we the class close analysis of an extract from this book; looking at where the writers construct and/or apply boundaries between science and an other.

We had a good student point raised about half way through. It was suggested that it was ironic I was talking so much about boundaries, when popular science was about acting as a bridge/ point of translation between science and the public. I agree, but... popular science can both aim to bring such groups together and act to separate them at the same time (we shouldn't imagine social actions are consistent). Last term Sarah probably mentioned a paper by Stephen Hiltgarter (see reading list). This argues that all popularised science, be it in book form or something like the Dana center, emphasises the difference between the public and science. The very existence of popularised science suggests the need for some special translation between science and society and so acts to emphasis the gaps between them. It might also be worth reading this paper by Massimiano Bucchi.

I also mentioned the problematic status of popular science books in terms of their claims to reality; a topic we'll pick up on next week. Baudouin Jurdant argues that much of the status of science is constructed by not being literature; science is special because it has a stronger (empirical) link to reality than simply text. Jurdant suggests that popular science is a rather problematic genre; textually communicating something that is by definition extra-literary. I suggested popular science books have to find ways in text to be as persuasive as visual or physical demonstrations, and we investigated this in some popular science books I'd taken out of the library

Anyone looking at popular science books as an essay topic should read the papers in the journal Public Understanding of Science by Jon Turney and Baudouin Jurdant. You can access them electronically from college. This is in addition to this week's reading, also by Turney, which is on webCT.