Comments, 2

by Kostas Gavroglu

The whole discussion we are having, and especially as a result of Brian Schwartz's presentation, brings forth the issues surrounding popularization. Of course, what is presented has more to do with the public use of science rather than popularization in its stricter sense as it has been historically "defined". The popular use of science, but also popularization itself, has, among other things, been rather decisive in forming the image of science. It does, furthermore, excite the imagination of young people and often they decide to pursue a career in the sciences as a result of having had all kinds of stimuli from popular accounts of science or of what they gather science is as a result of popular accounts. And this is undoubtedly a very important and positive outcome of all such pursuits. But there is, I feel, much more to popuIarization than that. I become increasingly convinced about the implicit impossibility of popularization. It is an undertaking which is self-defeating. Popularization wants to make easy what appears difficult and abstruse. Somehow, though, it is forgotten that what appears difficult and abstruse is, in fact, difficult and abstruse. Popularization aims at demystifying science and to convince us that anyone can have some access to it, even if it is at the level of understanding the description of the phenomena involved. Nevertheless, in practice, such a noble purpose has come to nothing. The end result of almost all the work which can be accommodated under the umbrella of popularization has led to the further mystification of science. Do we have any kind of a quantitative or even qualitative criterion that after such a massive presence of popularization in almost all the forms of communication and for so many decades, people have become scientifically more sophisticated or scientifically more literate? Or to put it in another manner: how does popularization itself set the criteria for its own assessment? I do not think there has been an answer to this question. Though there is the feeling that there is some way we can learn some things about whatever we want from the wonderful world of science, in effect, this has come to nothing. And, if some people feel that it is the number of books being sold or films being watched that may give a measure of the success of popularization, let us reflect on a simple question: Stephen Hawking's The History of Time has sold into millions, yet an extremely small percentage says they've read it and an even smaller percentage, I presume, "understood" it. I have the feeling that popularization has contributed more to the legitimation of science and of the specific directions in scientific and technological research, than making people scientifically more literate. Whether it was the promises of the utopia through nuclear energy, or the utopia through biotechnology and genetic engineering, those who are powerful enough to determine the directions of scientific and technological research and know that such means to utopias are not possible, can be sure that there is a genre which will make sure to millions of people that these scientists think otherwise.