The Science Communication Challenge

Gitte Meyer

Description

An exploration of the whys – as distinct from the hows – of science communication.

The Science Communication Challenge explores and discusses the whys – as distinct from the hows – of science communication. Arguing that the dominant science communication paradigm is didactic, it makes the case for a political category of science communication, aimed at furthering discussions of science-related public affairs and making room for civilized and reasonable exchanges between different points of view. As civil societies and knowledge societies, modern democratic societies are confronted with the challenge of accommodating both the scientific logic of truth-seeking and the classical political logic of pluralism. The didactic science communication paradigm, however, is unsuited to dealing with substantial disagreement. Therefore, it is also unsuited to facilitate communication about the steadily increasing number of science-related political issues. Using insights from an array of academic fields, The Science Communication Challenge explores the possible origins of the didactic paradigm, connecting it to particular understandings of knowledge, politics and the public and to the widespread assumption of a science-versus-politics dichotomy. The book offers a critique of that assumption and suggests that science and politics be seen as substantially different activities, suited to dealing with different kinds of questions – and to different varieties of science communication.

List of Snapshots; Acknowledgements; 1. Science Communication in Democratic Knowledge Societies; 2. Science as ’Universal Light’; 3. The Elusive Concept of the Modern Public; 4. The Elusive Concept of Modern Politics; 5. A Political Category of Science Communication; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Sujets

• Science
• History
• Sciences et techniques

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 26 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783087556
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Science Communication Challenge
The Science Communication Challenge
Truth and Disagreement in Democratic Knowledge Societies
Gitte Meyer
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© Gitte Meyer 2018

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-753-2 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-753-6 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

Cover image: Titian, An Allegory of Prudence .The National Gallery, London. Presented by Betty and David Koester, 1966.

Ascribed to Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, around 1488–1576), the image of an old man and a wolf, a mature man and a lion, and a young man and a dog, looking backwards, directly at the onlooker and forwards, respectively, has been interpreted in many different ways. It was given its present title in English – Allegory of Prudence – because of an inscription advising onlookers to take heed of past experiences in order to not jeopardize future events by present decisions. Thus, there is a connection to the classical notion of practical reasoning or phronesis, executed within the confines of time – not by outside observers – and drawing on experience from one case to another. Phronesis, though, had an ethical dimension, which is apparent neither in the painting nor in the notion of prudence.
CONTENTS
List of Snapshots
Acknowledgements
1. Science Communication in Democratic Knowledge Societies

Truth and Disagreement
Knowledge Societies as Civil Societies
Truth versus Falsity – and Different Points of View
Social and Political Animals
Science and Science Communication as Intellectual Activities
Overview
Notes
2. Science as ‘Universal Light’

Modern Science as a Movement
Influences from religious truth-seeking and strife
Anti-enthusiastic enthusiasm
Belief and scepticism
Influences from economic and social developments
‘Things, not words’
Anti-intellectualism?
Waves of Science Enthusiasm
The great awakening of the 1960s
Another wave of science communication enthusiasm
Varieties of Knowledge
Interpretation and realism
Varieties of science communication: Didactics and dialectics
Notes
3. The Elusive Concept of the Modern Public

The Ancient Idea of the Masses and the Elites
The modern inversion of the ancient idea
Leisure, learning and social distinction
Fear of the barbarians: Variations on a theme
The modern reinvention of the laity
Education and eugenics
Shuttling between Elitism and Populism
Ambiguity: Science, the masses and the elites
The mass public as an object of social-scientific enquiry
The deficit model of the public: Criticized and persistent
Fascination as a Science Communication Ideal
Notes
4. The Elusive Concept of Modern Politics

Suspicion
The Opposite or the Application of Science
Anti-political devotion to democracy
Sociocracy: More democratic than democracy?
Visions of revolutionary science
The reinvention of political problems as wicked problems
Dialogue in vogue
The Classical Institution of Public Discussion
Political Cultures in Nutshells: Traditions of Journalism
The reporter tradition
The publizist tradition
The reporter, the publizist and science communication
‘Post-Truth’: Prejudices about Politics Come True
Notes
5. A Political Category of Science Communication

Science Communication Challenges
Hype and concealment
Uncertainty about uncertainty
Public opinion and scientific consensus
Awe, banalization, imitation, quackery and superstition
Barriers to critical self-examination
A Possible Exit from the Elitism–Populism Axis
Science communication as practical reasoning and scientists as citizens
Western disagreements and their possible global uses
Enlightening tensions and the benefits of contradiction
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SNAPSHOTS I Contagiousness and Obsession II Science as Saviour III Genetics and Eschatology IV Stressing Metaphors V Cutting the Earthly Chains VI Standardization for the Masses VII Hype, Secrecy, Xenotransplantations VIII Golden Rice and Harsh Reality IX Well-Being Units X Open-Mindedness or Raving Madness? XI Model Politicians XII Vaccination and Polarization XIII The Mental Climate of the Climate Debate XIV Growth, Normality and Moneymaking XV The Politics of Happiness Science XVI Big Data, Algorithms and the Stereotyping of Citizens
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work behind this volume has been partly funded by the Danish foundation TrygFonden. Thanks also to all those organizers of conferences, seminars, workshops and other cooperative projects during the most recent decades who, in a spirit of pluralism, have made room for me to develop my thoughts on the science–society relationships in general and on science communication in particular.
Chapter 1
SCIENCE COMMUNICATION IN DEMOCRATIC KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES
Science communication idea(l)s are also science idea(l)s. They cannot help but be so. Understandings of science communication and the consequent science communication practices are based on assumptions about science and the roles of science and scientists in society. The currently dominant understandings have a built-in aversion to think about and enquire into their underlying assumptions, but it is urgent, this book argues, that we do actually think about and enquire into such basic ideas and that we open them up for inspection, exchange and possible revisions. It is urgent because the mainstream approaches to science communication may serve to inadvertently erode the societal context that facilitated the development of modern science as an intellectual endeavour and without which it may prove increasingly difficult to maintain science in that sense.
Modern science spent significant moments of its infancy in the coffee house atmosphere of the Enlightenment era , in an intellectual climate of commitment to free speech and free enquiry, marked by a vivid engagement with societal issues. A modern public of reasoning citizens, the backbone of any civil society, was beginning to materialize. With their eagerness to exchange opinions and their omnivorous interest in just about everything, they were preparing the ground for the modern democratic institution of public discussion on public affairs. Early modern scientists contributed to, and the development of modern science was nursed and protected by, this liberal and pluralistic intellectual climate. It is a significant component of the luggage of modern science, which could hardly have reached maturity without it. But it is fragile freight, vulnerable in particular to those other elements of historical luggage that originate in religious strife, civil war and a commitment to monistic truth-seeking.
There appear to be no traces of a pluralistic heritage in the dominant science communication paradigm, pursued as a matter of routine by the majority of participants in exchanges on science-related issues. The paradigm focuses on the dissemination of scientific truth-claims but does not know how to deal with disagreement as anything other than disorder, and is impotent when it comes to, or ought to come to, exchanges among different points of view. Suited for the conventional classroom – or, sometimes, the pulpit or the market stall – it is a didactic paradigm in the sense that it is concerned with the communication of scientific findings from knowers to non-knowers, rather than with communication about scientific enterprises. 1 The circumvention of the latter activity may, however, prove perilous to societies pervaded by science-related public affairs – res publica – and political issues. Scientific truth-claims may end up devouring the political activity of public exchanges among different points of view.
To make room for both of these distinctly different, but also increasingly interrelated activities – scientific enquiry and political activity – we need awareness of the rather messy and to some extent contradictory origins of modern science. Without such appreciation, both kinds of activity might be endangered to the detriment of future generations.
Founded on the crude assumption that science and politics constitute a straightforward dichotomy or dualism, representing Truth (good) versus Power (bad), the kinds of knowledge societies that are currently growing upon us seem unaware of the above interconnections. There is a corresponding unawareness of how short the distance might be between the assumed dualism of Truth versus Power and an idea(l) of Truth as Power – which, in turn, might even more easily lead to Power as