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Science and culture

Maurizio iaccarino.

1 Maurizio Iaccarino is Secretary General of the UNESCO/ICSU World Conference on Science and at the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics, CNR, in Naples, Italy. [email protected]

Western science could learn a thing or two from the way science is done in other cultures

What we understand today as being 'modern science' is in fact not that modern, but was born nearly half a millennium ago at the time of the Renaissance in Europe. But even if we think of great Renaissance thinkers, such as Galileo Galilei, Leonardo da Vinci or Sir Isaac Newton, as the first 'true scientists', we should not forget that all civilizations throughout history have produced and accumulated knowledge to understand and explain the world, a process that was often accompanied or stimulated by technological development. Indeed, the explosion of knowledge during the Renaissance was sparked by a reawakened interest in the writings of Greek, Roman and Arab philosophers and scholars—the word 'Renaissance' implying a renewed interest in classical culture and knowledge. But regardless of the various cultures and civilizations that have influenced science, what is common to all scientists is that they study natural phenomena, with an appropriate set of rules, to make generalizations and predictions about nature.

science is part of culture, and how ... science is done largely depends on the culture in which it is practised

However, most modern studies of the world around us are empirical, and there is clearly much more to understand than what is being studied by scientists. The understanding of complex systems remains a major challenge for the future, and no scientist today can claim that we have at hand the appropriate methods with which to achieve this. Thus, we cannot discuss the future of science without taking into account the philosophical problems generated by the study of complexity. Modern, or Western, science may not be best suited to fulfil this task, as its view of the world is too constrained by its characteristic empirical and analytical approach that, in the past, made it so successful. We should therefore remember the contributions of other civilizations to the understanding of nature—in particular the perception of the world in areas such as Asia and Africa, or among the indigenous people of Australia and South America. Such traditional or indigenous knowledge is now increasingly being used not only with the aim of finding new drugs, but also to derive new concepts that may help us to reconcile empiricism and science. ​ science.

This globe, based on a world map from the early ninth century, was commissioned by Calif al-Ma'mûn in Baghdad. Image courtesy of Fuat Sezgin, Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany.

During the Renaissance, European scientists and philosophers started challenging long-held beliefs and developed a new natural philosophy. Science and the arts truly flourished in Europe, and this was caused and furthered by various positive developments that took place at that time. Most importantly, the new philosophy started a process that eventually led to the independence of scientific thought and theories from myths, religion and theology. Second, the interaction among different European cultures stimulated creativity through new ways of thinking and new paradigms for the observation of nature. Last, but not least, the foundation of scientific academies, notably the Accademia dei Lincei, the Royal Society and the Académie des Sciences, and the establishment of universities throughout Western Europe, contributed to scientific progress through the dissemination of new knowledge.

But the foundations of modern science were laid long before this time, and were particularly influenced by Islamic civilization. The Muslims were the leading scholars between the seventh and fifteenth centuries, and were the heirs of the scientific traditions of Greece, India and Persia. After appropriation and assimilation, they built on these discoveries, and developed a truly Islamic science that led worldwide knowledge in all scientific fields, including medicine. These activities were cosmopolitan, in that the participants were Arabs, Persians, Central Asians, Christians and Jews, and later included Indians and Turks. The transfer of the knowledge of Islamic science to the West through various channels paved the way for the Renaissance, and for the scientific revolution in Europe. The public in the West is generally unaware of this important contribution to modern science and to the culture of the Middle Ages. Islamic civilization is part of our own heritage, and the great Islamic scientists whose works were translated into Latin, such as Jabir ibn Hayan (Geber), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Razi (Rhazes), Ibn al-Haytham (Adhazin) and al-Khuwarizmi, are as important as any great European scientist. The pictures in this article illustrate some of the remarkable products of Islamic science. ​ science.

Replica of an astrolab built in 984 AD by the great Persian astronomer and mathematician al-Khujandî. The original is displayed in the National Museum of Qatar. Image courtesy of Fuat Sezgin, Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany.

The Renaissance scientists who built on this knowledge—as well as all their predecessors and colleagues in other civilizations—wanted to understand and describe the causes and effects of the events they observed in nature. Indeed, Aristotle and Plato were probably the first to state that our understanding of the natural world is based on a set of a priori beliefs, namely concerning ideal objects or universal values, that allow us to imagine and describe the world around us. Religious people believe that God dictates these universal values; agnostics and atheists believe that universal values are inherent in the 'human reason'. These transcendental values are the source of human beliefs that guide humanity towards social and ethical rules and to the observation of nature ( Iaccarino, 2001a ; Stent, 1974 ). In other words, science is deeply rooted in metaphysics, and there is no conflict between religion and science. Moreover, although the language of science is often specialized, and thus inaccessible to nonspecialists, science and culture are not different entities: science is part of culture, and how science is done largely depends on the culture in which it is practised.

Science has had an increasingly strong influence on European culture. In the nineteenth century the buzzword for science was 'order'. Scientists had discovered that the movement of the stars is predictable, and that all terrestrial and celestial phenomena follow the same scientific laws like clockwork. They believed, according to the Galileian vision, that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, with characters represented by geometric objects. The mission of science was to discover the laws of nature, and thereby explain all natural phenomena. This faith in science gave rise to the philosophical movement called positivism, which led to a widespread trust in science and technology and influenced social theory. Even after positivism faded out, the Darwinian theory of evolution still influenced social phenomena, most notoriously eugenics and racism. The faith in the possibilities offered by scientific progress still shapes the beliefs and actions of people today; in fact, expressions such as “this has been scientifically demonstrated,” are often used to cut short a discussion.

The work of scientists implies that they challenge accepted explanations of facts and propose new and original ways of interpreting them. Originality, independence of thought and dissent are characteristics of the scientific culture, and therefore a challenge to established cultural values. The safeguards for independence are free inquiry, free thought, free speech, tolerance and the willingness to arbitrate disputes on the basis of evidence. These values are not important for science itself, but have had a strong influence on the development of today's democratic and free societies. The success of science, and the use of scientific knowledge, have profoundly changed everyday life, mainly in developed countries. Life expectancy has increased strikingly and cures are available for many diseases; agricultural productivity has increased to match demographic developments; and technology has freed humankind from arduous labour. New methods of communication, information handling and computation have brought unprecedented opportunities and challenges ( Iaccarino, 2000 , 2001b ). These discoveries or inventions have radically changed our way of describing the natural world, and have influenced our everyday life. Today, even the organization of society itself owes much to scientific thinking ( UNESCO/ISCU, 1999 ).

Most of this progress took place in Europe, and later in North America, and these continents are still the primary players in science. Table 1 shows that, during the past decade, three-quarters of the world's scientific publications came from Western Europe and North America; and if we take the award of the Nobel Prizes for science as an indicator of scientific excellence, we can see from Table 2 that more than 90% of the laureates in the natural sciences are also from Western countries, despite the fact that they are home to only 10% of the world's population. The small number of Nobel laureates from the rest of the world reflects differences in culture and in the type of education offered, as well as a lower level of financial support for science.

Worldwide scientific publications

Source: Indicateurs 2000, Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris ( www.obs-ost.fr/en/ )

Nobel laureates in natural sciences (1901–1998) by geographical region

The governments of developed countries consider science and technology as essential for economic progress and military power, and therefore allocate abundant financial resources to education and research. In turn, a stimulating cultural environment, partly due to the high level of education, attracts investments in private research, thus adding to the public commitment to science. It is fair to say that in the past few centuries science has had a strong influence on cultural values all over the world, but not always a positive one. In developing countries, science education is based on Western concepts and culture, and it is taught by those for whom science is often unrelated to their culture. This leads students to deny the validity and authority of the knowledge transmitted to them by their parents and grandparents and creates tension in several societies. Even in developed countries, general education is a recent trend. In 1913, J. McKeen Cattell, the Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stated that: “There is not a single mulatto who has done creditable scientific work” ( Cattell, 1914 ). His remark reflects the cultural attitude at the turn of the twentieth century in the USA, which deprived black people of an appropriate education, and as a consequence, made them less interested in pursuing a scientific career. Similarly, many countries took equally as long to grant women the same rights as men and thereby enable them to participate in scientific enterprise.

But what do we mean by 'modern science'? The main characteristic of this approach is to understand nature by analysing each phenomenon according to a predetermined set of rules. Scientific work may be descriptive, as in the case of cosmology, palaeontology or anatomy. These descriptions then lead to theories or paradigms, according to Kuhn (1970) , that interpret the causes and effects of events, and that can be tested through experiments. When these experiments prove that the theory is wrong, new hypotheses are made and tested. To quote Bertold Brecht in his play about Galileo: “The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to put a limit to infinite error.”

Another characteristic of science is that it builds on the past, such that it is incremental. As each scientific discipline describes a specific field based on a set of established rules—for example, the description of biology at the anatomical, histological, cellular or biochemical level—each type of description becomes more and more complete with time. Does it come to an end, as Gunther Stent declared for molecular biology in 1968 ( Stent, 1968 )? Stent started his scientific career when many people believed, in the framework of vitalistic theories, that it was not possible to interpret the inheritance of genetic traits in chemical terms. The elucidation of the genetic code was a victory for him, but at the same time the end of a challenge. Stent's statement upset many scientists of the time who believed that molecular biology was still alive, and we have indeed subsequently witnessed an enormous number of new discoveries and new knowledge in this field. However, it is true that after 1968 work on the elucidation of the genetic code consisted only of finding out the details. I believe that specific types of scientific description do approach an end, as is the case for anatomy, which was actively studied many years ago, whereas today this knowledge is mostly obtained through textbooks. ​ textbooks.

This extremely exact 'Balance of Wisdom' was built at the Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences according to the description by Abdarrahmânal-Khâzinî from Khorasan in Northeast Persia, who perfected and described it in the first half of the twelfth century. Image courtesy of Fuat Sezgin, Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany.

Scientists have been very successful in studying specific aspects of the natural world that are amenable to observation and experimentation, because the necessary theoretical and technical tools have been available; this is true for microbiology and the discovery of the causative agents of infectious diseases at the end of the nineteenth century, and for the discovery of vitamins in the first decades of the twentieth century. Scientists work on simple systems, which are usually idealized or primitive models of a real situation. They also work at a specific level of analysis; for example, the physics of elementary particles does not contribute to the interpretation of the mechanism of muscle contraction. To use the words of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: “In my quest for the secret of life I started my research in histology. Unsatisfied by the information that cellular morphology could give me about life, I turned to physiology. Finding physiology too complex, I took up pharmacology. Still finding the situation too complicated, I turned to bacteriology. But bacteria were even too complex, so I descended to the molecular level, studying chemistry and physical chemistry. After twenty years' work, I was led to conclude that to understand life we have to descend to the electronic level and to the world of wave mechanics. But electrons are just electrons and have no life at all. Evidently on the way I lost life; it had run out between my fingers.”

Szent-Gyorgyi describes today's problems of science: the inability to integrate results and concepts that come from different approaches and levels of analysis. The reductionistic approach of most scientists is to ignore selected facts and to propose a model that is based on what they consider to be key observations, which is certainly useful when the model can be experimentally tested. Biological phenomena are studied at different levels of organization, and the theories formulated at each level can explain only a specific set of facts. When proceeding from a simple level towards a more complex one, new behaviours emerge. In other words, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, or different from the sum of the parts. For example, the properties of a protein are different from the sum of the properties of each amino acid from which it is composed. The properties of biological structures made of macromolecules held together through non-covalent interactions are different from the sum of the properties of each macromolecule. The study of such complex systems in biology or in other disciplines remains a major challenge for the future, and may require a change in approach.

In this endeavour, we might find it useful to compare Western science with traditional knowledge. Whereas Western science favours reductionist, mechanistic and quan-titative methods, traditional knowledge observes natural phenomena from a global point of view. These observations are strictly linked to local culture and to the predominant philosophy. In pre-colonial Africa, specialists knew well the characteristics of the local climate and soil, and were able to give expert advice on where and when to grow crops. They had a precise knowledge of the tropical flora, and of desert bushes, and developed a sophisticated classification system of plants into families and groups, based on their cultural and ritual properties. Mayan scientists in South America developed a highly sophisticated calendar through their observations of the Sun and the stars. American Indians and Australian aborigines have gathered an immense amount of biological knowledge based on their observations of nature. The medical theories of the Yorubas of Nigeria included the concept of invisible entities causing infectious diseases, analogous to the bacteria of Western medicine. Science and technology in Africa were once quite advanced, comparable to European levels of the time, in the fields of human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, food conservation, fermentation, metallurgy and the preparation of soap and cosmetics ( Mazrui & Ade Ajayi, 1998 ). Cultures from all regions of the world have developed a complex view of nature, rooted in their philosophy, which has led to their understanding and explanation of the natural world. The traditional knowledge of non-European cultures is the expression of specific ways of living in the world, of a specific relationship between society and culture, and of a specific approach to the acquisition and construction of knowledge. This knowledge provides much of the world's population with the principal means by which they fulfil their basic needs. But colonization by Europeans destroyed much of this indigenous knowledge and replaced it with the European educational and political system that consequently devalued what was left of it. Slowly, the importance and influence of traditional knowledge diminished because of the success of modern science and technology and the economic power that accompanies it. For these reasons, the knowledge systems of other cultures concerning the observation of nature are all but lost to the Western world. ​ world.

Apparatus for distilling rose water. Replica built by the Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences, according to a description by the physician az-Zahrâwî from the late tenth century in Muslim Spain. Image courtesy of Fuat Sezgin, Institute for the History of Arab–Islamic Sciences, University of Frankfurt, Germany.

This is a great loss for modern science. Although it has attained a dominant position, other knowledge systems do exist, and we should accept that our understanding of science is one knowledge system among many others ( Nakashima, 2000 ). Traditional knowledge does not divide observations into different disciplines to the same extent as science, and this more synthetic and holistic approach may help to develop new paradigms for the observation and study of complex phenomena. Most of our observations of the natural world are empirical, and scientists offer a scientific explanation for only a part of them. The traditional knowledge of non-Western cultures puts empirical observations into a different, larger context. Thus, in all cultures, we try to harmonize empirical observations in order to describe nature and to be able to interpret and predict it. As modern science is reaching its limits when attempting to explain the inner workings of the world around us, we should perhaps remember and re-evaluate the contributions of other cultures to the understanding of nature, as the Renaissance scientists did with the ancient knowledge of the Greek and Arab scholars.

This text is an elaboration of a speech given at the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican in November 2002.

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Science and Culture

Popular and philosophical essays.

Hermann von Helmholtz

436 pages | 71 engravings | 6 x 9 | © 1995

History of Science

Physical Sciences: History and Philosophy of Physical Sciences

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Between One Culture

Essays on Science and Art

• © 2019
• Robert Schiller 0

Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

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• Approaches science, art and literature as a single culture
• Explores the history of chemistry and physics through the lens of poems, novels, or objects of fine art
• Discusses the role of doubt and error in scientific thinking

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About this book

This book argues that science and the arts are not two different cultures, but rather different manifestations of the same culture. Divided into seven parts, it presents a collection of translated and revised essays, mostly at the intersection between realia and humaniora. In the first two parts, the author discusses how some myths, both ancient and modern, have become intertwined with scientific ideas. The chapters in the following four parts address poems, novels, plays, and pieces of fine art that have some scientific content, as well as scientific findings which seem to have also been discovered in art. The chapters in the final part examine a number of inspiring doubts and necessary errors in the history of science. This collection of essays, most of which were originally published in Hungarian, is intended for the general public and as such includes no mathematical, physical or chemical formulae. It offers a unique resource for all those curious about the interconnections between science, art and literature.

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Table of contents (42 chapters)

Front matter, is the sea wine-dark.

Robert Schiller

Nessus’ Blood

Shelley scientist, spectres were haunting europe, a puzzling tale of gold, alchemy: its end, alchemy: apologies, poems and science, ignorant doctor faust, hölderlin, blake: newton, overcoming the daze, master shoemaker and meistersinger: two great physicists, dante standing on his head, chemistry: a high romance, time and two great men, x-rays and love, authors and affiliations, about the author.

Róbert Schiller (1935), born in Budapest, Hungary, graduated from R. Eötvös University, Budapest in 1958, and completed his PhD in 1966 and DSc in 1974. He is a titular professor at R. Eötvös University and Dr. habil Privatdozent at Budapest Technical University. After completing his studies, Professor Schiller joined the Chemistry Department of the Central Research Institute for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where he is now a Research Professor Emeritus. Having worked at several laboratories abroad, he e.g. spent a full year at the Paterson Laboratories, Manchester, UK. His main research interests are in radiation chemistry, electrochemistry, and the theory of transport processes. Currently, he is investigating the effects of fast ions on metals. He has taught courses on radiation chemistry and statistical mechanics at R. Eötvös University, and has published several textbooks in these areas. Apart from his research papers, Professor Schiller has also written booksand a number of essays popularizing science. He was awarded the Wigner Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001, was voted the popular science author for the year 2012, and asteroid no.196005 was named Robertschiller in his honour.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Between One Culture

Book Subtitle : Essays on Science and Art

Authors : Robert Schiller

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20538-6

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Chemistry and Materials Science , Chemistry and Material Science (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-20537-9 Published: 19 September 2019

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-20540-9 Published: 19 September 2020

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-20538-6 Published: 04 September 2019

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XVII, 228

Number of Illustrations : 20 b/w illustrations, 42 illustrations in colour

Additional Information : Fundamentally revised from original Hungarian editions published by Typotex, Budapest, 2004 and 2017

Topics : History of Chemistry , Physical Chemistry , History of Science , History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics , Philosophy of Science

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Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays 1st Edition

• ISBN-10 0226326594
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• Publication date August 30, 1995
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (August 30, 1995)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
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13.7 Cosmos & Culture

The power of science and the danger of scientism.

No matter what face you put on it, science is a powerful tool. Here, engineer Marcus Hold works on a nearly completed RoboThespian . Marvels of modern science, these fully interactive and multilingual humanoid robots are increasingly being sold to academic research groups. Matt Cardy/Getty Images hide caption

No matter what face you put on it, science is a powerful tool. Here, engineer Marcus Hold works on a nearly completed RoboThespian . Marvels of modern science, these fully interactive and multilingual humanoid robots are increasingly being sold to academic research groups.

Can you be a strident defender of science and still be suspicious of the way it is appropriated within culture? Can you be passionate about the practice and promise of science, yet still remain troubled by the way other beliefs and assumptions are heralded in its name? If such a thing is possible, you may be pro-science but anti-scientism . And, if that is the case, then Steven Pinker may have just pissed you off. But, as we'll see, it might be hard to tell.

Scientism is getting a lot of play these days. It's a difficult word to pin down because it takes on a wide range of meanings depending on who is throwing it around. According to Merriam-Webster online , scientism is:

an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities).

Thus, scientism is the "science can explain everything," (or, at least, "science explains everything important"), kind of position some folks take in arguments about religion, philosophy, the value of the humanities, etc.

Steven Pinker has now waded into the scientism debate with a New Republic essay entitled " Science Is Not Your Enemy : An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians." For Pinker there really is no such thing as scientism, which, he claims, is "more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine."

The problem with Pinker's essay is that his main purpose is to convince friends in the humanities (history, literature, etc.) that adoption of methods from the science side of the campus poses no threat to their disciplines. On the contrary, data mining of historical records, he would claim, may shed new light on the mechanisms of history. And Pinker is clear about the importance of the humanities when he states:

No thinking person should be indifferent to our society's disinvestment from the humanities, which are indispensable to a civilized democracy.

If this were all there was to the scientism debates then I, for one, wouldn't see much need to weigh-in. Pinker says a lot that is eminently reasonable in the essay. But there is a much deeper question about science and culture and Pinker seems to step right over this bumpy ground without even noticing.

Pinker speaks about a sense of recrimination against science for its place in human life. He cites his own experience of such attitudes as a professor at Harvard:

When Harvard reformed its general education requirement in 2006 to 2007, the preliminary task force report introduced the teaching of science without any mention of its place in human knowledge: "Science and technology directly affect our students in many ways, both positive and negative: they have led to life-saving medicines, the internet, more efficient energy storage, and digital entertainment; they also have shepherded nuclear weapons, biological warfare agents, electronic eavesdropping, and damage to the environment." This strange equivocation between the utilitarian and the nefarious was not applied to other disciplines. (Just imagine motivating the study of classical music by noting that it both generates economic activity and inspired the Nazis.) And there was no acknowledgment that we might have good reasons to prefer science and know-how over ignorance and superstition.

What Pinker fails to see in this passage is that it is precisely the enormous power and the enormous success of science that put it in a unique position for misuse by those who claim to speak in its name.

Over the last four centuries the practice we call science has utterly reshaped human civilization in ways that have no precedent. Science, on its own, is simply a practice, it's a method for asking questions finding answers. It's a way to approach the world. The ability to harness that practice to create powerful change (via wealth creation or military power) has always carried its own dangers.

The efficacy of science generates a powerful attraction for advocates of (often unspoken) philosophical assumptions. These are people who seek to cloak their beliefs in the legitimacy of the scientific enterprise. This is where scientism raises its ugly head.

Pinker is right to argue, as he does, that science can't be blamed for the stupidities of social Darwinism, eugenics or the communist insistence that it had found a science of history. But his easy dismissal of scientism as a "boo-word" misses the point that science gets used within culture for more than just legitimate purposes. In fact it's the very efficacy of its tools that allows cultural misappropriations of science to go unnoticed.

Part of this misappropriation comes from thinking that, since science is so good at providing explanations, explanations are all that matter. It's an approach that levels human experience in ways that are both dangerous and sad. In discussions of human spirituality and science, for example, it leads to cartoon arguments between Richard Dawkins and fundamentalists about who started the universe. Missing are the varieties of reasons people feel "spiritual" longing that have nothing to do with asking how the moon got there.

The power and promise of science is not compromised by understanding that we live in a world saturated by its fruits and poisons. Pinker is quite right that scientism is not a coherent doctrine. But that doesn't mean the term is empty.

Scientism is an unfortunate consequence of the success science has had explaining the natural world. It would, in fact, be useful to clarify how scientism manifests itself. That would help us understand the damage it does to the real project that lies ahead of us: building space for the full spectrum of human being in a culture fully shaped by science.

You can keep up with more of what Adam Frank is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @AdamFrank4

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Science stories as culture: experience, identity, narrative and emotion in public communication of science

The last three decades have seen extensive reflection concerning how science communication should be modelled and understood. In this essay we propose the value of a cultural approach to science communication — one that frames it primarily as a process of meaning-making. We outline the conceptual basis for this view of culture, drawing on cultural theory to suggest that it is valuable to see science communication as one aspect of (popular) culture, as storytelling or narrative, as ritual, and as collective meaning-making. We then explore four possible ways that a cultural approach might proceed: by mobilising ideas about experience; by framing science communication through identity work; by focusing on fiction; and by paying attention to emotion. We therefore present a view of science communication as always entangled within, and itself shaping, cultural stories and meanings. We close by suggesting that one benefit of this approach is to move beyond debates concerning ‘deficit or dialogue’ as the key frame for public communication of science.

1 Introduction

We live in societies that are increasingly marked by their reliance on science and technology, and as such it is widely agreed that public communication around such science and technology is essential to the functioning of contemporary democracies [Felt and Wynne, 2007 ; Jasanoff, 2017 ]. There has therefore been extensive reflection, over at least the last three decades, concerning how we — scholars and practitioners of science communication — should think about and conceptualise public science communication. How should we model it [Brossard and Lewenstein, 2010 ; Longnecker, 2016 ; Trench, 2008 ]? What is the best way to teach it [Bray, France and Gilbert, 2012 ; Silva and Bultitude, 2009 ; Baram-Tsabari and Lewenstein, 2017 ]? What are the most effective means of communication [Broks, 2017 ; Bucchi, 2013 ; Illingworth and Allen, 2016 ]? These efforts are by nature challenging given that there is widespread agreement that the communication landscape is one that is rightly diverse [Bucchi, 2008 ; Davies and Horst, 2016 ]. Science communication formats range from popular science books to participatory citizens juries, social media campaigns to science cafes. Capturing what is happening in all of these, or finding a way to think about them collectively, has involved reflection on the nature of communication, of science, and of public audiences themselves [Bucchi and Trench, 2014 ; Michael, 2002 ].

In this essay we wish to contribute to these debates by highlighting one approach that we find productive: understanding science communication through the frame of culture. This view — as we will demonstrate — takes us away from considerations of information transfer or effectiveness, and instead leads us to consider science communication as something experiential and emotional — as something that is concerned with the creation of shared meanings, and that is therefore deeply connected to the nature and ideologies of contemporary societies. Such an approach is not new but is, we think, timely, relating as it does to the increasingly prevalent sense that science communication is not external to (popular) culture and wider consumption of entertainment media, but is an important part of it [Kaiser et al., 2014 ]. A cultural approach to science communication thus acknowledges that public stories about science (as we understand science communication) should not be construed as fundamentally different to other kinds of public storytelling, but as both intertwined with, and bearing marked similarities to, public culture and entertainment [Fahy and Caulfield, 2016 ; Fahy and Lewenstein, 2014 ]. It also offers a frame for thinking about the nature of science communication that is somewhat different to existing models, by representing it, in all its diverse forms, as meaning-making . Our central argument is that, by drawing on well-established aspects of cultural theory — experience, narrative, identity, and affect, for example — to unpack processes of meaning-making, we can find important tools for imagining and analysing public communication and the stories told within it.

In what follows we first briefly outline what it means to understand science communication as culture before demonstrating, in four sections, what a cultural approach can offer to those who think about, analyse, and carry out public communication of science.

2 Science communication as culture

What does it mean to view science communication as culture? Given the contested nature of theories of ‘culture’ [Hall, 1997 ], any such view requires a multi-faceted approach that acknowledges that culture can be understood in different ways. A first line of thought, for instance, frames science and science communication as aspects of (popular) culture. Here culture is used in its sense of “a state of intellectual refinement associated with the arts, philosophy and learning” [du Gay et al., 1997 , p. 11]. ‘Culture’ is therefore the way a society expresses itself, and the (multiple) ways that it articulates the human condition — whether that is expressed through the paintings of Mark Rothko, the image of the double helix, or the TV show The Wire . When Durant, Evans and Thomas [ 1989 ] claim that “science is arguably the greatest achievement of our culture, and people deserve to know about it” (p. 11), they are calling upon this idea of societal expression, contrasting it with more instrumental visions of science as useful for personal or civic goals. To take science as culture in this way is to understand it not only as relating to the scientific, technical, political, or economic aspects of a society, but to its artistic and social expressions. Science is an achievement of our societies, and its representation within public communication should be understood as being as much about contemporary popular culture as contemporary science. This view of culture therefore encourages us to look at science communication in the same way that we study other cultural forms, from TV to music, and to explore the ways in which science’s stories are told across our societies.

A second, perhaps more profound, view of culture frames it as collective meaning-making. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz rather beautifully writes that:

Believing, with Max Weber, that man [sic] is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. [Geertz, 1973 , (1993), p. 5]

If culture comprises the ‘web’ through which each of us makes sense of the world, seeing science communication as culture encourages us to understand it as a space of collective meaning-making. It is not simply an aspect of the ‘intellectual refinement’ of societies (to re-quote du Gay et al. from above), but the mundane “production and the exchange of meanings — the ‘giving and taking of meaning’ — between the members of a society or group” [Hall, 1997 , p. 2]. This is significant in part because it flies against commonsense assumptions that science communication is primarily concerned with the transmission or negotiation of information [Davies and Horst, 2016 ; Michael, 2002 ]. In this view, rather than public communication being about the transfer of certain facts — the nature of DNA, the scientific method, whether vaccines cause autism — it is instead about how particular societies or groups explain the world. Understanding science communication as meaning-making therefore draws our attention to its functions at the level of shared identities and imaginations, alongside its undoubted role in disseminating particular scientific notions.

This shift in analytical emphasis from transmission to culture echoes similar discussions in communication research. In his essays on communication as culture, James Carey [ 1989 ] offers a ritual view of communication as an alternative to a transmission model. The ritual view, he says, “is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs” (p. 5). He uses the (perhaps outdated) example of reading a newspaper to explore this ritual view. People may have learned something while reading newspapers, but they did not read to comprehend information. Rather, the newspaper was part of a shared experience; a ritual that, like a Catholic mass, allowed people to perform and confirm a particular worldview.

As the comparison with religious ritual suggests, meaning-making is often, in practice, storytelling: from the earliest myths to contemporary story-based podcasts [Kaiser et al., 2014 ; Linett, 2013 ], human animals have used narrative to explain the world around them. There there have been various efforts to explore a culture-based understanding of science and science communication in terms that reference story and narrative. For Jasanoff and Kim [ 2015 ], for instance, public presentations of science convey ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’: “collectively held, institutionally stablilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures” (p. 4) that imply sets of assumptions about social and political orders. Similarly, Felt and Wynne [ 2007 ] have described the ‘master narratives’ that govern European science policy and public debate. Conceptual tools such as these point us to ways in which understanding science communication in cultural terms can aid us as both analysts and practitioners. In particular, they bring us to the idea that studying and carrying out public communication might be most productive in focusing on the meanings that are created through particular public stories about science . Such an approach encourages us to ask not whether facts are being successfully transmitted, but what is being made or reinforced through particular instances of public storytelling about science: this might be, for instance, ideas about the nature of science, assumptions about wider society, or new collectives or identities [Davies and Horst, 2016 ; Halpern, 2012 ; Horst and Michael, 2011 ].

In making this our central claim it is important to acknowledge that thinking about culture, and science communication as culture, goes far beyond the lines of enquiry we have outlined. Most recently, for instance, Gwendolyn Blue [ 2018 ] has further developed arguments concerning the ritualistic aspects of science communication as being central to a culture-based approach. For others, science communication is increasingly framed as just one kind of ‘cultural event’ amongst many [Sardo and Grand, 2016 ]. But for our purposes this brief outline serves as an introduction to our claim that understanding science communication as culture can offer new insights into its practice and analysis. The rest of this essay seeks to demonstrate this by picking up on four ways that such an approach might frame and study science communication. Culture, as we have said, is contested and multivalent; to use it as a basis for understanding science communication therefore offers multiple ways in to it. In what follows we focus on four of these access points: experience; identities; fiction; and emotion. These frames are not exhaustive, but demonstrate four starting points for analysis that readers may wish to mobilise or further develop. In discussing each of these we outline what it means to think science communication through them, while pointing to the ways in which they are intertwined with culture, meaning-making, and storytelling.

2.1 Science communication as experience

One way in to culture is through notions of experience. Dewey’s theories of experience [ 1934 ; 1938 ] offer a lens through which to view not only one-off experiences associated with science communication interventions, but also the wider lived experiences within which these moments occur. If we continue Geertz’ metaphor of webs of significance, experiences might be the moments of meaning around which we spin our webs. Experience, according to Dewey, involves an interaction with an expressive object and with the continuum of experience that comprises our lives. Any intervention in science communication is thus interpreted through the lifelong cumulation of ubiquitous representations of science, both mundane and meaningful. Life-saving medical treatments, science fiction films, commercials for cleaning products, and medication labels all play a role in shaping people’s lives and their relationships to science. A cultural approach to science communication is therefore concerned with how meanings are constructed both within individual experiences and wider experience continuums.

Practically, this framing of communication as experience asks researchers and practitioners to shift their focus from knowledge, behaviour, and attitudes to interpretation, meaning, and significance, without placing undue importance or weight on any particular intervention. For Dewey, experiences were interactions with the objects or events in the world, but these interactions do not happen without context. Rather, they are part of a continuum of experience. “The two principles of continuity and interaction are not separate from each other. They intercept and unite. They are, so to speak, the longitudinal and lateral aspects of experience” [ 1938 , p.44]. Interactions themselves are also composed of what Dewey calls the objective conditions of the experience (the event, text, artwork, or other object of the experience) and the interpretations an individual brings to it. Experiences do not happen within either the object or the mind. Instead, they lie at the meeting point between the two.

Aesthetic experiences have a narrative form and are therefore contained: they have a beginning, middle, and end. Dewey suggests that a meal, an argument, or a moment in nature might spark an aesthetic experience. In terms of science, one might have such an experience at a doctor’s visit, a museum exhibition, or a popular movie. An experience has meaning and significance, but it need not be meaningful or deeply significant. Experiences culminate and conclude. Their valence can be positive or negative, or anything in between, and they can evoke a desire for further experiences — or the opposite. Experiences are personal and unique to each of us; however, the objects we have experiences with are often shared, and, often, similar lived experiences will provoke similar experiences. For example, many girls and young women have had experiences with science which led them to see science as something that was outside the scope of their abilities or interests. In the US or Europe, for instance, the majority of cumulative experiences with scientists might well be with them being represented by, or being, white males. The accumulation of such experiences inevitably suggests something about what it means to be a scientist. Experiences which feature women in science may, then, hold particular significance, whether they are fleeting stories about women who have won awards, or wider cultural phenomena such as the book and film Hidden Figures. This story, in its different forms, not only provided new meanings for what it meant to be a scientist (black, young, a woman), but also, perhaps, a new set of meanings around the history of science, the space race, and the cold war.

Just as experiences inform and shape lived experience, however, the countless moments we do not attend to also add up. Though there are many messages with which we do not engage, or abandon out of distraction or lack of interest, these messages accumulate along with our experiences and contribute to shaping our lived experience. Such mundane moments add up, and they contribute to the ways we make meaning from experiences. Most people don’t formally study science past secondary education, so for most of their lives, interactions with science come from informal encounters at home, in the media, or in public spaces [National Research Council, 2009 ]. Though some seek out these encounters at museums and other informal venues, all of us encounter science in our daily lives in small, mundane ways. So even though we rarely attend to, for example, advertisements for cold medicine or household cleaners, our cumulative interactions with germ theory may well come from repeated exposure to commercials and print advertisements that make claims about germs as part of their sales pitch.

Medical knowledge is a good example of this. In the United States, pharmaceutical companies can market prescription medications directly to members of the public, through the same media and in the same format as advertisements for cleaning products, food, and entertainment. This shapes relationships people have with medications: they are products we can choose to suit our needs and desires. Commercials for erectile dysfunction medications appear alongside commercials for fast food restaurants, cleaning products, and electronic devices. Though we may not attend to these commercials — especially if these kinds of medication don’t pertain to us — we do understand them as consumer products, from which we can pick and choose. The significance of this relationship becomes salient when we are asked by medical professionals to use products from these same companies in the form of vaccinations. Again, we address the suggestion as a consumer choice, not as a medical or scientific prescription.

Viewing science as experience thus provides new directions for both researchers and practitioners wishing to communicate. By examining the meanings made through specific experiences and continuums of experience, researchers uncover new questions and methods for exploring the situatedness of public perceptions of science. For science communicators, the lens of experience shifts the focus of their work from explanation to expression, and from the transmission of scientific knowledge to the making of meanings around scientific concepts. While the former might draw on narrative, affect, or emotion as tactics for transmission, the latter takes these as central aspects of any interaction.

2.2 Science communication as identity work

Understanding science communication as story-telling about science also points to its importance for identity work of both individuals and collectives. In organisation studies, story-telling has been seen as a crucial part of creating internal coherence and alignment around a shared sense of who ‘we’ are and what the shared purpose of the organization is and should be [Czarniawska, 1997 ] — building, in other words, a strong organisational culture [Kunda, 2006 ]. Karl Weick goes so far as to argue that the organisation only knows who its ‘we’ is, when members look at its actions and retrospectively try to make sense of them [Weick, 2000 ]. It is by telling stories about our own actions and giving them meaning that we construct our own identities. Such work is therefore also a constant emergence — an identity is never a finalised entity, but is always under construction [Taylor and van Every, 2008 ]. A similar argument can be found in narrative psychology about the identity of individuals [Sarbin, 1986 ]. A cultural approach to science communication is therefore concerned with how identities — whether of individuals or institutions — are negotiated in public storytelling about science.

Organisational communication scholars distinguish between identity, image and reputation of the organisation [Hatch and Schultz, 1997 ]. While ‘identity’ is the internal construction closest related to the organisational culture, ‘image’ designates the way the organisation represents itself to the outside world and ‘reputation’ covers the identity as perceived by external actors. These aspects are of course related, and are not only influenced by deliberate communication actions. When scientists communicate in public they are constructing imaginations of their own identity as well as that of their scientific organization and the institution of science [Horst, 2013 ]. Seeing science communication as public story-telling about science therefore influences both the internal identity construction and external images of science.

Modern scientific organisations conduct large amounts of public relations in order to achieve a good reputation, which can be exchanged into the generation of resources and legitimacy [Bauer and Gregory, 2007 ; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983 ]. One aspect is the recruitment of young talents to choose careers in STEM subjects. For that purpose organisations frequently produce stories and commercials that are designed to portray a scientific career as glamorous, exciting and important. These success stories, however, rarely leave space for less glamorous aspects of scientific work, such as repetitiveness, negative results, and lack of funding. The effect of this is that actual scientists working in these organisations can find it very difficult to connect the external glamorous story-telling with their own daily work experiences — and hence find it difficult to negotiate a stable and coherent identity for themselves [Felt and Fochler, 2012 ].

Another aspect of such organisational story-telling about science is the increasing celebrification of scientists [Fahy, 2015 ]. Most such heroic geniuses are white males and their creation often follows a classic narrative curve in which hard work in a competitive environment finally pays off for the main character of the story [Ganetz, 2016 ]. In addition, the focus on the unique individual supports a myth of excellent science as being de-coupled from any organisational ties, and as a result of pure genius — thereby also supporting an image of science as untouched by social relations, power hierarchies, or fights over resources.

The celebrification of scientists suggests a possible rise of a fan culture. So far that has not materialised to any large degree, although there has been newspaper speculation about a so-called ‘Brian Cox effect’, where more students apply to study physics and math due to Cox’s media ubiquity [Vasagar, 2011 ]. Rather, when it comes to the general public it is arguably still the case that many citizens see it as a citizenly duty to take an interest in science and technology [Pew Research Center Science & Society, 2015 ]. While there has been scholarly discussion of the idea of scientific citizenship [Elam and Bertilsson, 2003 ], here it suffices to say that engagement with science communication is not something publics do separately from the other things that matter to them in their lives. Rather, interest and engagement with science (or lack thereof) are shaped by the many identities individuals have, whether those stem from family roles, professional identities, political ideologies, or membership of social groups. However, public story-telling about science also offers resources for individual and collective sense-making about identities in a knowledge society. Emily Dawson [ 2014 ] and Mike Michael [ 1996 ] have both described how science communication activities can be designed in ways that make publics construct their own identity as separate and outside the domain of scientific citizenship. Viewing science communication as identity work therefore opens up a number of directions for research (and practice), helping us to enquire what public stories about science are doing to organisational identities, to public images of scientists, and to citizens’ identities themselves.

2.3 Science communication as fiction

Culture, we have suggested, is inextricably linked to storytelling. In this section we therefore highlight the prominence of fiction and narrative in a cultural approach to science communication. As evidence emerges that facts presented on their own do not have the persuasive power that was once assumed, science communicators have looked for more effective approaches to science communication that do not rely on science literacy [Bubela et al., 2009 ; Gregory and Lock, 2008 ; Nisbet and Scheufele, 2009 ]. The failure of persuasive approaches based on facts alone has led some science communication scholars to promote the use of fictional narratives and storytelling [Dahlstrom, 2014 ; Kaplan and Dahlstrom, 2017 ; Martinez-Conde and Macknik, 2017 ; Negrete and Lartigue, 2010 ]. Many high profile scientific organisations — most prominently the US National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange and USC’s Hollywood Health and Society — have developed programs that utilise fictional narratives for persuasive purposes [Kirby, 2017 ]. These organisations have gravitated to fictional narratives for science communication because stories can provide the public with a useful tool for making choices regarding scientific issues by setting out the context, establishing the stakes involved, providing useful information, and offering potential solutions. A cultural approach to science communication demands both awareness of these developments and reflexive engagement with the ways that science story-telling is becoming part of popular culture, and thus meaning-making at the societal scale.

Fictional narratives in science communication represent a dramatic shift away from approaches based on the unambiguous dissemination of facts. Fiction’s ability to create its own version of the truth is what makes it attractive to scientists looking for alternative ways to persuade otherwise resistant audiences about issues related to science. Research on narrative persuasion demonstrates how fictional stories are effective in altering attitudes and behaviours [Moyer-Gusé and Dale, 2017 ]. Narratives have a powerful persuasive capacity because they reduce various forms of resistance to persuasion. Fiction fosters ‘transportation’ into a narrative world, which involves an integrative melding of attention, imagery, and feelings that become focused on story events [Green, Brock and Kaufman, 2004 ]. Transportation can have powerful persuasive consequences because it promotes emotional engagement with the characters in ways that can never be accomplished with the mere presentation of facts. Fiction’s ability to generate emotional engagement is a major reason for the development of the genre of ‘cli-fi’ (climate fiction) in literature, film, and theatre over last decade [Johns-Putra, 2016 ; Svoboda, 2016 ]. Cli-fi is an effective form of climate communication because it can “translat[e] graphs and scientific jargon into experience and emotion” [Tuhus-Dubrow, 2013 ].

Fictional stories also convey aspects of science that have nothing to do with scientific facts or science literacy. Communicating science in fiction forces us to move beyond simplistic notions of science as merely a collection of facts in a textbook and to consider science as a larger cultural institution. To take one example, the 2016 film Arrival is about scientists working to communicate with aliens that have landed on earth. There are certainly scientific facts about linguistics and physics mentioned in the film. But the narrative communicated much more about science as a cultural institution, including the nature of scientific inquiry, the interactions between different scientific fields, scientific rivalries, international scientific collaborations, and scientists as people. The fictional story also depicted the different ways in which scientists interact with other cultural institutions including universities, the government, and the military.

This means that fictional narratives can communicate all the significant elements in the fact-producing process called science, including the political, economic, and social uses of science [Kirby, 2011 ]. Several studies show that it is the ‘cultural meanings’ of science, and not scientific knowledge, that may be the most significant element contributing to public attitudes toward science [Kirby, 2017 ; Nisbet and Scheufele, 2009 ]. Fictional stories can significantly influence public attitudes toward science by shaping, cultivating, or reinforcing these cultural meanings of science. Ultimately, the use of fiction for science communication is valuable because it contextualises science’s implications for society, its value as a human activity, the consequences of its use or misuse, and its ideological status. Thinking about science communication in terms of fiction further gives insight into the central stories that (modern) societies tell about science, and therefore into how they make sense of science’s nature, role, and potential.

2.4 Science communication as emotional

If culture is understood as meaning-making, it is closely intertwined not just with reason but with affect [Hemmings, 2005 ]. The way in which individuals and groups make sense of the world, in other words, is through emotional experiences as much as arguments and facts. Understanding meaning-making involves understanding the emotions that work to shape those meanings; in the context of science communication, there is therefore a need to be attentive to emotion as an integral part of what it is to produce or consume that communication. A cultural approach to science communication should involve analytical attention to the emotions that science triggers or that public communication seeks to promote, as well as the thoughtful use of emotion within science communication practice.

This is, in some ways, an obvious point. Recent years in particular have seen attention to the emotions connected to public presentations of science, and especially to public responses that may appear too emotional [Cook, 2004 ; Penders, 2017 ], while there is a long history of the promotion of the ‘correct’ emotions for engagement with science — curiosity, wonder, and awe, for instance [Daston and Park, 2001 ; Harrison, 2001 ]. At the same time scholarship of science communication has tended to focus either on learning or on public attitudes, only recently turning to the role of embodiment, aesthetics, and affect in shaping experiences of public communication [Davies, 2014 ; Harvey, 2009 ; Michael, Wilkie and Ovalle, 2018 ]. There is therefore a continuing need to acknowledge, and explore, emotion within science communication.

It is important to note that there is a long tradition of research that has looked at the role of emotions in science [see Barbalet, 2002 , for one review]. As a starting point this emphasises — and it is now widely accepted — that scientific practice is intrinsically emotional, and that distinctions between emotion and reason are overly simplistic [White, 2009 ]. Scientists are, generally speaking, happy to describe their work in terms of emotions of passion, creativity, or curiosity [Barbalet, 2002 ; Koppman, Cain and Leahey, 2015 ] — at least in private spaces, if not always in public [Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984 ]. These emotions also frequently occur in discussions of what science communication should do to its audiences. Producers of science communication, whether they are scientists or science communicators, may describe participation in communication as personally pleasurable, as well talking about wanting to trigger emotions such as interest, curiosity, enthusiasm or appreciation in their audiences [Poliakoff and Webb, 2007 ; Martín-Sempere, Garzón-García and Rey-Rocha, 2008 ]. ‘Fun’, as Erik Stengler [ 2017 ] has commented, is particularly ubiquitous (and has led to discussions of whether this should necessarily be the case).

We also have some knowledge of what those who use science communication get out of it in terms of emotions, whether those are positive or negative. Successful science communication — if we understand this as an experience that triggers positive emotions — may be experienced as entertaining, informative, interesting, new or surprising, or as inducing curiosity [Bultitude and Sardo, 2012 ; Fogg-Rogers et al., 2015 ; Jensen and Buckley, 2014 ]. Learning, and the pleasures of (self) education, seem particularly key. Less positively, users may report confusion, boredom, or frustration [Davies, 2019 ]. Indeed, some individuals may experience emotions of exclusion or isolation: recent work has shown that science communication continues to be implicitly designed with specific audience groups (generally those who are already well-served) in mind, leaving others with the sense that it is something that is ‘not for us’ [Burns and Medvecky, 2016 ; Dawson, 2014 ].

It is important to note that exploration of the emotions that are intended or sought within science communication, on the one hand, and actually experienced, on the other, is at an early stage, and that there are many questions remaining. In particular it seems important to look at what we might call the emotional landscape of an instance of science communication as a whole, and especially the ways in which there may be a mismatch between desired, and actually experienced, emotions. Such analysis can help us to ask: what is any piece of communication asking of its audiences, and what do its audiences actually want from it? Beyond this, however, such explorations can lead us to the meanings that science communication has within particular groups or societies. A desire to trigger enthusiasm suggests a specific relation that publics should have to science; a fear of boredom points both to the way in which this emotion is understood today — as something to be avoided at all costs — and to the idea that science communication should be seductively entertaining. Studying emotions therefore allows us to drill down into the commonsense assumptions, values, and knowledge of cultures, and to explore the kinds of stories that are told about science within them.

3 Conclusion

In closing we want to briefly reflect on what these four different but interconnected approaches to ‘culture’ can offer to the study and practice of science communication. Perhaps most importantly, they show us how we might move past endless debates about ‘deficit vs. dialogue’ or recurring attempts to define ‘models’ of science communication [see discussion in Davies and Horst, 2016 ]. Recent attempts to catalogue encounters with science, for example, have struggled with the distinctions between ‘science communication’, ‘public engagement in science’, and ‘informal science education’ [National Research Council, 2009 ; Crowley, 2018 ; McCallie et al., 2009 ; Storksdieck et al., 2018 ]. Focusing on meaning-making also moves us from a sole focus on producers’ intentions to highlight the experiences of all of the individuals or groups who are involved in science communication. We begin to see the cultural matrix in which science necessarily functions, without missing the other elements of culture that are equally part of the matrix.

At a practical level, focusing on culture and meaning-making opens up new ways of analysing empirical material. These foci move away from the existing categories of dissemination and dialogue, which focus on directionality of information, and instead move towards the quality and meaning of communication. For example, as efforts to link science and art grow worldwide, attempts to imbue art with information-transfer goals have struggled with the insistence of art and artists that art exists for its own sake, and that its function in society is to foster emotion and experience. This insistence does not map onto the well-trodden territory in which the form of communication must be categorised as deficit or dissemination. Science communication as culture or meaning-making forces us to look at the qualities of communication, allowing us to consider it within the varied contexts in which it is experienced. Reconsidering science communication as meaning-making thus opens up new ways of understanding and valuing the unique attributes of cases like art-science collaboration, or the use of science in fiction, or long-term experiences of advertising that draws on scientific tropes.

Ultimately, thinking of public science stories as culture and meaning can, we argue, offer a fresh perspective that values public communication in its many and diverse forms, from public lectures to public consultations. Debates about science literacy or information transfer have occupied the field for at least two generations, and often feel repetitive or ineffectual. Instead, adopting the cultural approach we have argued for as a frame not just for a particular study, but as a platform for viewing the entire field, offers the potential for seeing further across the landscape of intellectual inquiry and cultural production. Considering experience, identity, fiction, and emotion can link public communication of science and technology to concerns across the human experience — concerns of care, equality, respect, and trust. Looking outward leads us to richer understanding of our own domain.

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Sarah R. Davies is the co-author of ‘Science Communication: Culture, Identity and Citizenship’ (Palgrave, 2016) and is based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. E-mail: [email protected] .

Megan Halpern works at the intersection of art and science, and is at Michigan State University. E-mail: [email protected] .

Maja Horst is Professor and Head of Department at the University of Copenhagen. E-mail: [email protected] .

David A. Kirby is Professor of Science Communication Studies at the University of Manchester. E-mail: [email protected] .

Bruce Lewenstein is Professor of Science Communication at Cornell. E-mail: [email protected] .

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Science and Culture, and other Essays

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THIS collection of Prof. Huxley's more recent lectures and essays appears as a companion volume to the previous well-known collections of the same kind. The first thing, therefore, that naturally occurs to us is to compare this series with its predecessors, for when an author has been so long and so prominently before the public as Prof. Huxley, and when the authorship has been of a kind so varied and original, we cannot but entertain fears, even for the strongest man, that signs of exhaustion may become apparent in the works of his middle life. But if any one should entertain such charitable apprehensions on behalf of Prof. Huxley they may immediately be quieted by the book before us; the eye is as clear for seeing and the arm as strong for hitting as they have always been, and on every page we meet with new instances of that same versatility of learning, force of thought, and brilliancy of style which, while producing so wide an influence on the science and philosophy of our time, have justly placed this distinguished leader of both in a class sui generis as an expositor.

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All Answers (151)

• Science and Cultu re.pdf 584 kB

• Generally experienced scientists are educated, but not necessarily.
• There are also people who are educated but skeptical in science matters.

• 4-embor7 81.pdf 584 kB

• https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Science-Biologically-Oriented-Biological/dp/B000GPC6D8/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522511690&sr=8-7&keywords=Psychology+A+Study+Of+A+Science+koch+sigmund

• For instance, it can be made plausible by historical analysis (itself not solving any world's problems!) that certain early parts of mathematics were developed as quite useful tools for agricultural or even religious politics. To infer from it that mathematics itself is politics, or only relevant in the context of whichever politics, is an evidently false conclusion (cf. Aristotle's syllogisms).
• Distinguishing one from the other discipline or department is not always that simple in a "culture" within which scientific education and professions are to a large extend paid by the state and measured by their social-economic-technological applicability - which, ironically, admits that there is something to science which has nothing to do with solving urgent worldly problems, but rather with man's innate curiosity and need to understand and explain the world, including himself!.

• Not empirically, because that would require that we would be able to set up at least one new scientific discipline which is completely independent from any traditional cultural influences and see if it blossoms or starves away. But .. which nations and politicians would allow such an experiment???
• Not theoretically, because that would just be a worthless exercise in utopia-building, perhaps fascinating literature, but not science in itself.

• Nobody knows, how often they support each other instead of being in conflict. But everbody knows, or should know, the tragic cases of Galileo and other famous scientists who had to pay with their lives just because they proved culture to be false, and science to be true, or at least less false than culture.
• Culture being less true than science wouldn't be a problem if culture would be generally tolerant and open-minded, but as we know too well this isn't the case.
• No matter what kind of things we are speaking off: bad habits, bad customs, bad concepts, bad opinions, bad convictions, bad religions, bad leadership, bad laws, bad etc.

• https://www.amazon.com/Kulturpessimismus-Ein-Plädoyer-Klampen-Essays/dp/3866745826
• https://www.amazon.de/product-reviews/3866745826/ref=acr_dpx_hist_5?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=five_star&showViewpoints=0

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Culture and tradition are vital aspects of our lives. They define our identity, guide our behavior, and connect us to our history.

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Culture is the shared values, beliefs, and customs of a group. It shapes our thinking and decisions, making us unique.

Significance of Traditions

Traditions are practices passed down generations. They foster unity and continuity, strengthening our bond with our ancestors.

In essence, culture and tradition are the backbone of our society. They provide a sense of belonging and help preserve our heritage.

250 Words Essay on Importance of Culture and Tradition

Understanding culture and tradition.

Culture is the lens through which we perceive and evaluate what is around us. It influences our perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors, serving as a roadmap for both individual and community behaviors. It fosters a sense of belonging and security, reinforcing societal norms and expectations.

Significance of Tradition

Traditions, on the other hand, are specific practices or customs that are perpetuated across generations. They provide a sense of continuity and connection to our past. Traditions can foster unity, create positive memories, and build strong relationships within communities.

Culture, Tradition, and Identity

Both culture and tradition are integral to identity formation. They define our roots and give us a sense of belonging. They shape our worldview and influence our values, thus impacting our decisions and actions.

Preserving Culture and Tradition

In an increasingly globalized world, there’s a risk of cultural erosion. It is essential to preserve culture and tradition, not as unchangeable relics of the past, but as dynamic entities that evolve while retaining their core essence. This preservation promotes diversity and enriches global understanding.

In conclusion, culture and tradition are not just about the past. They are living, dynamic aspects of social life that play a critical role in shaping our present and future. Their importance lies in their capacity to promote social cohesion, personal identity, and mutual understanding.

500 Words Essay on Importance of Culture and Tradition

The essence of identity and belonging.

Culture and tradition are the bedrock of our identity. They offer a unique lens through which we view and interpret the world. Our cultural heritage, expressed through language, art, rituals, and social norms, shapes our worldview and forms our unique identity. This identity, in turn, fosters a sense of belonging, a vital aspect of our psychological well-being.

Preservation of Historical Continuity

Traditions serve as a bridge between the past, present, and future, ensuring historical continuity. They preserve and pass on the wisdom, knowledge, and experiences of previous generations. This continuity provides a sense of stability and predictability, which is essential in a rapidly changing world.

Contribution to Social Cohesion

Role in moral and ethical development.

Culture and tradition also play a significant role in moral and ethical development. They instill values, norms, and moral codes that guide individual behavior and social interactions. These ethical frameworks help maintain social order and harmony, promoting cooperative and responsible behavior.

Challenges and Evolution

Despite their importance, culture and tradition are not static; they evolve over time. Societies must balance the preservation of cultural heritage with the need for adaptation and progress. Unquestioned adherence to outdated traditions can hinder societal growth and development. Conversely, the complete abandonment of cultural practices can lead to a loss of identity and historical continuity.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Flood of 'junk': How AI is changing scientific publishing

A few of the most egregious examples of artificial intelligence have recently made their way into scientific journals, shining a light on the wave of AI-generated text and images washing over the academic publishing industry.

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n infographic of a rat with a preposterously large penis. Another showing human legs with way too many bones. An introduction that starts: "Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic".

These are a few of the most egregious examples of artificial intelligence that have recently made their way into scientific journals, shining a light on the wave of AI-generated text and images washing over the academic publishing industry.

Several experts who track down problems in studies told AFP that the rise of AI has turbocharged the existing problems in the multi-billion-dollar sector.

All the experts emphasized that AI programs such as ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for writing or translating papers, if thoroughly checked and disclosed.

But that was not the case for several recent cases that somehow snuck past peer review.

Earlier this year, a clearly AI-generated graphic of a rat with impossibly huge genitals was shared widely on social media.

It was published in a journal of academic giant Frontiers, which later retracted the study.

Another study was retracted last month for an AI graphic showing legs with odd multi-jointed bones that resembled hands. 

While these examples were images, it is thought to be ChatGPT, a chatbot launched in November 2022, that has most changed how the world's researchers present their findings.

A study published by Elsevier went viral in March for its introduction, which was clearly a ChatGPT prompt that read: "Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic".

Such embarrassing examples are rare and would be unlikely to make it through the peer review process at the most prestigious journals, several experts told AFP.

Tilting at paper mills

It is not always so easy to spot the use of AI. But one clue is that ChatGPT tends to favor certain words.

Andrew Gray, a librarian at University College London, trawled through millions of papers searching for the overuse of words such as meticulous, intricate or commendable. 

He determined that at least 60,000 papers involved the use of AI in 2023, over one percent of the annual total.

"For 2024 we are going to see very significantly increased numbers," Gray told AFP.

Meanwhile, more than 13,000 papers were retracted last year, by far the most in history, according to the US-based group Retraction Watch.

AI has allowed the bad actors in scientific publishing and academia to "industrialize the overflow" of "junk" papers, Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky told AFP. 

Such bad actors include what are known as paper mills.

These "scammers" sell authorship to researchers, pumping out vast amounts of very poor quality, plagiarized or fake papers, said Elisabeth Bik, a Dutch researcher who detects scientific image manipulation.

Two percent of all studies are thought to be published by paper mills, but the rate is "exploding" as AI opens the floodgates, Bik told AFP.

This problem was highlighted when academic publishing giant Wiley purchased troubled publisher Hindawi in 2021.

Since then, the US firm has retracted more than 11,300 papers related to special issues of Hindawi, a Wiley spokesperson told AFP.

Wiley has now introduced a "paper mill detection service" to detect AI misuse, which itself is powered by AI.

'Vicious cycle'

Oransky emphasized that the problem was not just paper mills, but a broader academic culture which pushes researchers to "publish or perish".

"Publishers have created 30 to 40 percent profit margins and billions of dollars in profit by creating these systems that demand volume," he said.

The insatiable demand for ever-more papers piles pressure on academics who are ranked by their output, creating a "vicious cycle," he said.

Many have turned to ChatGPT to save time, which is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Because nearly all papers are published in English, Bik said that AI translation tools can be invaluable to researchers, including herself, for whom English is not their first language.

But there are also fears that the errors, inventions and unwitting plagiarism by AI could increasingly erode society's trust in science.

Another example of AI misuse came last week, when a researcher discovered what appeared to be a ChatGPT re-written version of one his own studies had been published in an academic journal.

Samuel Payne, a bioinformatics professor at Brigham Young University in the United States, told AFP that he had been asked to peer review the study in March.

After realizing it was "100 percent plagiarism" of his own study, but with the text seemingly rephrased by an AI program, he rejected the paper.

Payne said he was "shocked" to find the plagiarized work had simply been published elsewhere, in a new Wiley journal called Proteomics.

It has not been retracted.

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Indica vs. sativa: Science suggests there’s not actually a difference

Have you heard that sativa is an upper and indica is a downer? It's not quite that simple. Here's what cannabis research shows is really affecting your high.

Cannabis is one of humanity’s oldest crops. Ancient civilizations the world over cultivated the plant for food, fiber, medicine, and its mind-altering properties.

Today, some 12,000 years after the first harvest, the global cannabis industry is worth an estimated $65 billion . Modern-day consumers living in places where cannabis is legal are spoiled for choice—there are now more than 700 cannabis strains to choose from, including colorfully-named cultivars such as Cat Piss, Purple Monkey Balls, and Unicorn Poop .

But for all this remarkable diversity, cannabis goods primarily fall into just one of two categories: indica or sativa—each with purportedly distinct psychoactive effects.

"People think that if you smoke an indica, it's like taking a Xanax and you're going to be falling asleep, whereas a sativa is almost like doing a line of cocaine and you're going to be jacked up and hyper," says Alex Pasternack, co-founder and president of the international cannabis brand Binske.

This dichotomous labeling system is deeply entrenched among consumers, be they in a California dispensary, Dutch ‘coffee shop,’ or Bangkok smoking lounge.

However, mounting scientific evidence suggests that these labels are largely meaningless, with no significant chemical or genetic differences between the two—implying that consumers may not be getting the specific effects they seek.

“The idea of indica-sativa is heavily misconstrued,” says Pasternack.  

What’s in a name?        

It’s believed that the terms ‘indica’ and ‘sativa’ originated in the late 18th century, when French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed classifying cannabis plants by their physical appearance. Indicas, he noted, were shorter with woody stems and thick stubby leaves. By contrast, sativas were taller with fibrous stems and feathery thin leaves.

But we can’t simply use the way a plant looks to predict how it will affect the body and mind, says neuroscientist Nick Jikomes, previously the director of science and innovation at the cannabis e-marketplace Leafly. “Rather, the way a drug makes you feel is due to its chemistry.”

Moreover, cannabis growers, thanks in large part to the long illicit nature of their industry, aren’t bound by any rules when it comes to naming their cultivars—unlike vintners, cheesemakers, or apple growers who must abide by strict naming conventions. “I could go grab random cannabis seeds from someone and call it Blue Dream or Girl Scout Cookies. I could even give it my own new name that I make up, and call it an indica, sativa, hybrid, or whatever I want,” says Jikomes.

This explains why, when he analyzed the chemical makeup of more than 90,000 commercial cannabis flower samples collected from six U.S. states for a 2022 study , he wasn’t surprised to discover that a product’s label poorly reflected its chemistry.

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Sativas, for instance, are generally thought to make users feel energetic and euphoric. But Jikomes and his co-authors from the University of Colorado, Boulder found that, compared with indicas, sativa strains don’t necessarily contain higher amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the main compound that produces the cannabis high.  

Their findings echo a study published a year earlier, which analyzed nearly 300 cannabis strains. “There’s certainly no scientific evidence that there’s any consistent difference between samples with those two labels,” says the study’s lead author Sean Myles, an associate professor of agriculture at Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University. “It’s all kind of nebulous.”

Part of the problem can be traced to the extensive cross-breeding that has occurred over time. So while the original indica plant, indigenous to the Middle East, might have differed genetically and chemically-speaking to its sativa cousin from central Asia, “things are now too mixed up” for there to be a clear distinction, says Myles.

New and different labels

For better accuracy, researchers suggest that cannabis be classified according to its chemical, rather than physical, attributes. Every plant contains some 540 chemical substances , including more than 144 different cannabinoids —compounds such as THC and cannabidiol (CBD) that produce specific medicinal and psychoactive effects.

This alternative system would see labels listing the key compounds present in a particular cultivar, alongside their respective amounts—similar to the ‘Nutrition Facts’ panel found on food packages. ‘Ingredients’ would include cannabinoids and terpenes, another type of biologically active molecule produced by the plants.  

Terpenes heavily influence a strain’s flavor and aroma, and some experts believe they also interact with cannabinoids to tweak its effects, in what’s called the ‘ entourage effect ’. The musky-smelling myrcene, for example, is “thought to have more psychoactive effects for THC” while the citrusy limonene has “more elevated mood and stress release,” says Pasternack.

Classifying cannabis using terpenes also makes sense from a genetics standpoint: in their respective studies, Myles and Jikomes determined that strains can be sorted into a handful of groups—such as limonene, myrcene, caryophyllene, and pinene—based on their dominant terpene profiles , which in turn can be linked specific gene expression patterns.

Simplicity, not sophistication                        

A revamped labeling system that’s based on a strain’s chemical profile is “actually what the classification should be in sophisticated and mature cannabis markets,” says Pasternack.

But today’s reality is such that most consumers aren’t looking for more information on labels, much less scientifically accurate ones. “People just try to buy whatever the most bang they can get for their buck,” he says. “The industry is driven by price point, and the cheapest stuff is usually what moves in the highest volumes.”

Optimizing that metric has “been true for the entire lifetime of the industry and doesn’t show any evidence of changing,” adds Jikomes.

Plus, there’s another crucial reason why the indica/sativa labeling sticks: it’s easy to use. “The whole system is just whether you want an upper or a downer,” he says. “It enables retailers and brands to have a universal, foolproof way to market an arbitrary set of products to any consumer, and it’s simple enough that anyone can understand it.”

“Ultimately, you can put as many terpenes on the sticker as you want,” says Jikomes. “But my prediction is that indica/sativa system is here to stay.”

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Are Underwater UFOs an Imminent Threat? The U.S. Government Sure Thinks So—And Here’s the Proof

Legislators went so far as to formally change the way they refer to UFO sightings over and under bodies of water.

Claims of such Unidentified Submerged Objects , or USOs, have intrigued UFO enthusiasts for decades. Based on eyewitness reports, some of the objects have even seemed to traverse the boundary between air and water, traveling at shocking speeds of hundreds of miles per hour.

A small group of UFO devotees, including government security and military officials, have believed for years that the U.S. should be seriously looking into potentially threatening anomalies in bodies of water, as well on land and in the air. In a bipartisan effort, that group ultimately helped convince the U.S. government to legislate a name change for the term it uses to refer to UFOs today—from “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” to “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” reflecting lobbyists’ concerns about underwater threats.

The slight name change may appear to be a simple case of semantics, but it proves the Pentagon sees underwater UFOs as a legitimate concern.

The Department of Defense has made it clear that it doesn’t assume UAPs necessarily indicate extraterrestrial activity. In fact, these phenomena have so far proven to have mundane explanations. These include human-made technology like drones and weather balloons, Starlink satellites , or atmospheric events such as lenticular cloud formations.

The Government’s Name Game

A shift in how the government handled UFO reports first came to a head in the 2010s. Pressure from legislators, as well as public interest in the government’s disclosure of classified UFO reports , started changing defense culture. For instance, after decades of shielding information on sightings from the public, the military now encourages service members to report unexplained phenomena. Today, Navy pilots report odd incidents in the interest of national defense, such as the 2019 sighting by a Navy warship that seemed to link UFOs and USOs.

In 2021, the Department of Defense created the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, a program within the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence meant to “standardize collection and reporting” of UFO sightings. Aiming to integrate knowledge and efforts across the Pentagon and other government agencies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) soon afterward. By law, every federal agency must “review, identify, and organize each Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) record in its custody for disclosure to the public and transmission to the National Archives.”

Prior to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act—which authorizes funding levels for the U.S. military and other defense priorities—UAP originally stood for only aerial objects. Now, it includes underwater and trans-medium phenomena. It’s why AARO was so named, to investigate “All-domain” anomalies. But, before the legal name change, AARO was already considering objects over and in the water—so it was a little confusing to keep calling them all “aerial.”

In 2022, the terminology to describe unexplained incidents officially switched from “aerial” to “anomalous.” Congress enacted the name change that December. At the time, Ronald Moultrie, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security told a roundtable of AARO:

“You may have caught that I just said unidentified anomalous phenomena, whereas in the past the department has used the term unidentified aerial phenomena. This new terminology expands the scope of UAP to include submerged and trans-medium objects. Unidentified phenomena in all domains, whether in the air, ground, sea or space, pose potential threats to personnel security and operations security, and they require our urgent attention.”

This legal change traces back to pressures from UFO enthusiasts who believed submerged and trans-medium objects, which seem to fly between air and sea, should be included in the government’s potential threat evaluation. These proponents include U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., who published a report on the potential maritime threat of USOs, and Luis Alizondo , who once ran the government’s secret Pentagon unit, the 2007–12 Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. A dearth of data about USOs and UAPs is “unsettling,” because they “jeopardize US maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean,” Rear Admiral Gallaudet wrote in his report. In addition, this is an opportunity to expand maritime science and meet the security and scientific challenges of the future, he added.

The Hunt For Solid Evidence

Yet, evidence of submerged objects is murky at best, says UAP investigator Mick West. There is “vastly less evidence than for flying objects,” he explains in an email. “You can’t see very far underwater, so there’s no video or photos. There are only stories about anomalous sonar returns and occasional sightings that might as well be of sea monsters.”

The Puerto Rico “Aguadilla” incident of 2013 also influenced USO and trans-medium enthusiasts, West says. However, they base their claim largely on one video of the incident, which when analyzed turns out to have “a perfectly reasonable explanation of two wedding lanterns and parallax illusions,” West says.

Based on the angle of the camera, positioned on a moving airplane, and consequently its changing line of sight on the flying objects, the viewer sees the objects streaking rapidly over the ocean, apparently diving in, and then emerging again. West’s analysis confirms a theory first proposed by Rubén Lianza, the head of the Argentinian Air Force’s UAP investigation committee.

The objects were wedding lanterns that originated at a nearby hotel and floated on the wind. Lianza confirmed the hotel typically released lanterns that were consistent with the video. The thermal camera (which reads heat) made it appear that the objects merged with the ocean because when the lantern’s flames were hidden, they were about the same temperature as the water they floated over. At the same time, the lanterns seemed to emerge from the water when the flame was visible again.

New trans-medium and submerged UAP reports could crop up in the future. The government will only be able to take reports of strange underwater lights or objects flying out of the water seriously, says West, if the sightings come with enough solid evidence to follow up with a solid analysis.

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs

Stressing science education, China is outpacing other countries in research fields like battery chemistry, crucial to its lead in electric vehicles.

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By Keith Bradsher

Reporting from Changsha, Beijing and Fuzhou, China

China’s domination of electric cars, which is threatening to start a trade war, was born decades ago in university laboratories in Texas, when researchers discovered how to make batteries with minerals that were abundant and cheap.

Companies from China have recently built on those early discoveries, figuring out how to make the batteries hold a powerful charge and endure more than a decade of daily recharges. They are inexpensively and reliably manufacturing vast numbers of these batteries, producing most of the world’s electric cars and many other clean energy systems.

Batteries are just one example of how China is catching up with — or passing — advanced industrial democracies in its technological and manufacturing sophistication. It is achieving many breakthroughs in a long list of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to drones to high-efficiency solar panels.

Beijing’s challenge to the technological leadership that the United States has held since World War II is evidenced in China’s classrooms and corporate budgets, as well as in directives from the highest levels of the Communist Party.

A considerably larger share of Chinese students major in science, math and engineering than students in other big countries do. That share is rising further, even as overall higher education enrollment has increased more than tenfold since 2000.

Spending on research and development has surged, tripling in the past decade and moving China into second place after the United States. Researchers in China lead the world in publishing widely cited papers in 52 of 64 critical technologies, recent calculations by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveal.

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