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European Review http://journals.cambridge.org/ERW Additional services for European Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here What is scientific literacy? John Durant European Review / Volume 2 / Issue 01 / January 1994, pp 83 89 DOI: 10.1017/S1062798700000922, Published online: 13 July 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1062798700000922 How to cite this article: John Durant (1994). What is scientific literacy?. European Review, 2, pp 8389 doi:10.1017/S1062798700000922 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ERW, IP address: 147.188.128.74 on 01 May 2013

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Page 1: What is scientific literacy?

European Reviewhttp://journals.cambridge.org/ERW

Additional services for European Review:

Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

What is scientific literacy?

John Durant

European Review / Volume 2 / Issue 01 / January 1994, pp 83 ­ 89DOI: 10.1017/S1062798700000922, Published online: 13 July 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1062798700000922

How to cite this article:John Durant (1994). What is scientific literacy?. European Review, 2, pp 83­89 doi:10.1017/S1062798700000922

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ERW, IP address: 147.188.128.74 on 01 May 2013

Page 2: What is scientific literacy?

What is scientific literacy?

John Durant* Scientific literacy should not be taken to mean theknowledge of a lot of science, but rather the understandingof how science really works.

The Centipede was happy quite,Until the toad in fun,Said, 'Pray which leg goes after which?',And worked her mind to such a pitch,She lay distracted in the ditch,Considering how to run.

[Attrib. Mrs Edmund Craster d. 1874]

In the midst of the Gulf War, US President GeorgeBush took time out to greet the American Associ-ation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),gathered in Washington for its annual meeting.Having pointed out that the US budget includedsubstantial funding increases for mathematics andscience education, President Bush added that, 'Allsectors of society must recognize the importanceof scientific literacy and strive to achieve it'.

Scientific literacy is a fashionable phrase inAmerican and British educational circles. It standsfor what the general public ought to know aboutscience, and its widespread use reflects concernabout the performance of existing educationalsystems. In 1987, the American professor ofEnglish Literature E. D. Hirsch Jr., captured thisconcern with his best-selling book: Cultural Literacy:What Every American Needs to Know.1 Hirschargued that the unity of American culture dependedupon a common stock of generally shared knowl-edge, which he listed in the form of some 5000essential concepts, dates, names and phrasescovering more or less the entire world of formallearning. Prominent in this list were severalhundred scientific terms, ranging from 'AbsoluteZero', through 'Mutation', 'Nuclear Fission' and(amazingly) 'Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny',to 'Y Chromosome'.

Over the past few years, there has been an

* The Science Museum Library, South Kensington, LondonSW7 5NH, UK.

international wave of concern about the relation-ship between science and the wider culture. Allabout us, scientists and teachers, writers andbroadcasters, museum curators and science centreexplainers are attempting to provide the generalpublic with improved access to science. What,however, are all these people trying to achieve?What is meant by the 'the public understandingof science' in Britain, by 'la culture scientifique'in France, and by ' scientific literacy' in the UnitedStates?

Even to ask these questions is to invite thecriticism (popular in Anglo-Saxon culture, especi-ally) that we are engaging in pointless philosophizingwhen there is much practical work waiting to bedone. At best, it may be said, such questions area luxury; at worst, it may be argued that they carrysome risk of undermining the practical work itself.Who knows, but perhaps an exploration ofunderlying aims and purposes will reduce us all tothe same unhappy state as the centipede, who 'laydistracted in the ditch, considering how to run'?

I believe this is a risk we have to take. In themidst of so much practical work, it is appropriateto pause and ask whether we are applying ourefforts in the right way. In this article, therefore, Iintend to play the part of the toad. I shall attemptto answer the question: what is scientific literacy?By this, I shall mean: what is it reasonable to hopeand expect that ordinary citizens will know aboutscience in order to equip them for life in ascientifically and technologically complex culture?

© AuthorEUROPEAN REVIEW, Vol. 2, No. 1, 83-89 (1994)

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My answer to these questions will suggest thatmuch current effort at the creation of a scientificallyliterate culture is well-meant, but misdirected.

Three definitions of scientific literacy

It is worth distinguishing between three verydifferent approaches to scientific literacy. All threeapproaches share the conviction that non-scientistsliving in a scientifically and technologically complexculture ought to know something about science.However, each emphasizes the importance of anentirely different aspect of science. The first putsthe emphasis on the contents of science (i.e.scientific knowledge); the second stresses theimportance of the processes of science (i.e. themental and manual procedures that producescientific knowledge, often referred to collectivelyas 'the scientific method'); and the third concen-trates upon the social structures or institutions ofscience (i.e. what may be termed scientific culture).I shall discuss each of these three approaches in turn.

Scientific literacy as knowing a lot of science

Let us begin with what is probably the mostfamiliar and certainly the most straightforward ofthe three approaches to scientific literacy. On thisview, to be scientifically literate involves beingwell-acquainted with the contents of science; thatis, it means knowing a lot of science. This, ofcourse, is the approach to understanding sciencethat dominates the world of formal education.Curricula are full to overflowing with the fruits ofscientific inquiry—with theories and laws, withmodels and mechanisms, and—of course—with avast array of facts that these interpretive schemataare intended to explain. Most students in mostformal science courses that I have experiencedhave little time for anything beyond the masteringof the required amount of scientific knowledge.

The idea that the contents of science are the keyto understanding science extends far beyond theconfines of formal science education. For example,I have already mentioned Hirsch's popular bookon Cultural Literacy.1 In this book, Hirsch set outwhat he termed 'the basic information needed tothrive in the modern world'. This informationspans a wide range of subjects, from sports to

science. It is, if you like, a lexicon of largelytaken-for-granted facts which Hirsch claims con-stitutes the stock-in-trade of (American) literateculture. Hirsch's promise to his readers is that,armed with this lexicon, they will be able to under-stand the contents of the daily newspaper, converseintelligently about current affairs, and participatemeaningfully in public life.

Hirsch's standards for the culturally literate arequite exacting. Opening his lexicon more or lessat random, I find the following entries: Hearst,William Randolph; heat capacity; heat of fusion;heat of vaporization; heavy water; Hector; hedon-ism; Heep, Uriah; Hegel, Georg; Heisenberguncertainty principle; Helen of Troy; helium; andhell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Openingit again a little further on, I find: Water, watereverywhere, nor any drop to drink; Watson, Dr;Watson, James, and Francis Crick; watt; Watt,James (steam engine); Watts riots; wavelength;wave-particle duality; Way down upon the SwaneeRiver; and Wayne, John. Any American citizenwho possessed reasonably good recall of nearly5000 items like this could certainly make a livingplaying the board game Trivial Pursuit for money.

Cultural Literacy contains a mere list of all thethings that literate Americans are supposed toknow; but a year later, Hirsch and his colleaguesbrought out a much larger Dictionary of CulturalLiteracy containing concise definitions of each andevery item on the list.2 Finally, the physicist JamesTrefil went one better even than this, by teamingup with the earth scientist Robert Hazen to writeScience Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy.3 Thisbook is a synoptic account of the main principlesunderlying all of the natural sciences—physics,chemistry, earth science and biology. Between oneset of covers, Trefil and Hazen offer what they term'the constellations of basic facts and concepts thatyou need to understand the scientific issues of theday'.

This is a big promise, and it is one that in myview the authors fail to keep. I have no majorquarrels with their synopsis of scientific knowledge.Certainly, to my biologist's eye it seems over-dominated by the physical sciences (in particular,I find the total absence of medical science in a bookon scientific literacy rather strange—after all, thisis the one branch of science that has maximuminterest and relevance for the general public); butin general, I admire the authors' skill in being able

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to chart a course through such a huge body ofmaterial with such apparent ease. No, the questionis not: is their synopsis of scientific knowledge welldone; rather, the question is: is a synopsis ofscientific knowledge really what the public needsin order to 'understand the scientific issues of theday'? Indeed, more generally: is factual knowledgethe key to scientific literacy?

I think the answer is clearly no. Knowing a lotof scientific facts is not necessarily the same ashaving a high level of scientific understanding. Ofcourse, it is a good thing in itself if people candefine heat capacity, heat of fusion and all therest—I do not wish to argue in favour of ignorance;but in and of itself, such 'textbook' knowledge isnot terribly illuminating. For one thing, being ableto trot out a dictionary definition is not the sameas actually knowing what the definition reallymeans; and for another, even if a dictionarydefinition is understood it does not follow thateither its place within science or its wider signi-ficance have been properly grasped.

But by far the biggest objection to this fact-oriented approach to scientific understanding is itstotal mis-match with the stated aim of equippingpeople to deal with the 'the scientific issues ofthe day'. Overwhelmingly, the scientific issues ofthe day involve new knowledge, or even newknowledge in the process of being born. Frequentlythis new knowledge is uncertain; often, it iscontroversial. In other words, scientific expertsmay be undecided about things; and they mayactually disagree with one another about mattersof evidence or interpretation. In this situation, thepublic may be helped by a certain amount of back-ground factual knowledge; but on its own, suchknowledge is likely to be a poor guide to what isgoing on. For what is going on is the coming-into-being of new knowledge; and to understand this,people need to know something about the gestationor the embryology of science.

Scientific literacy as knowing howscience works

The limitations of a purely knowledge-basedapproach to scientific literacy have been verywidely recognized. For many years, science edu-cators in Britain, the USA and elsewhere havesought to add some consideration of the nature

of science to knowledge-based curricula. Trefil andHazen's Science Matters devotes a mere page to thescientific method, but many science educatorswould now agree that this is inadequate. Insteadof learning science by absorbing received wisdom,so-called 'process science' requires students tolearn science by doing it; even the new BritishNational Curriculum for Science, which is domi-nated by a concern to convey at least a minimumlevel of knowledge to all school-children, findsspace for at least some consideration of the natureof the scientific enterprise.

In fact, Hazen and TrefiPs purely knowledge-based view of scientific literacy is actually ratherunusual. More typical is the approach taken by theAAAS in its Project 2061. This project is devotedto establishing 'what understandings and habits ofmind are essential for all citizens in a scientificallyliterate society'. In the project's first programmaticstatement, a book entitled Science for all Americans,we find that the outline curriculum starts with asection on 'The Nature of Science' and finisheswith another on 'Habits of Mind'.4

Even those who seek to measure objectivelylevels of public understanding of science have beenpersuaded of the need to include some estimate ofhow well people understand the processes ofscientific inquiry. In the USA, Jon Miller is theleading survey researcher of public understandingof science. Miller has offered a three-fold definitionof scientific literacy.5 In his view, a person who isscientifically literate possesses: (a) a basic vocabularyof scientific and technical terms and concepts; (b)an understanding of the processes or methods ofscience for testing our models of reality; and (c) anunderstanding of the impact of science and tech-nology on society. The first component in this listis roughly what Hirsch and Trefil mean by scientificliteracy; but the second component is a require-ment for people to understand what Miller terms'the scientific approach'. The critical questionhere, according to Miller, is whether a citizenknows enough about the process of scientificinvestigation to be able to distinguish betweenscience and pseudo-science.

This focus on the processes of science is to bewelcomed. It is obviously desirable that the publicshould understand not only the key scientificprinciples but also the key scientific procedures bywhich these principles have been established.However, whereas scientific principles can be

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stated by any reasonably competent scientist,scientific procedures are far trickier to define.Most scientists are not taught anything veryexplicit about scientific processes of inquiry;rather, they tend to learn about these processes inmuch the same way that joiners or metal-workerslearn about their respective trades—by beingapprenticed to master craftsmen. This puts scienceeducators who wish to say something about thenature of science in a rather difficult position.

In the absence of well-codified rules of scientificinvestigation, what tends to happen is that edu-cationalists fall back upon certain informal butfairly standard images of science. Very commonly,science curricula, which makes efforts in thedirection of teaching the processes of scientific

inquiry, incorporate some or all of the followingelements: (i) there is a scientific approach toproblem-solving; (ii) the scientific approach toproblem-solving involves the adoption of thescientific attitude and the scientific method; (iii)the scientific attitude comprises a combinationof disinterested curiosity, open-mindedness, ob-jectivity, the habit of basing judgement upon fact,etc.; (iv) the scientific method involves the formu-lation of hypotheses and their subjection to criticaltest by means of suitably controlled experi-ments.

This list is certainly far from being an adequaterepresentation of all the science curricula that seekto teach the nature of science. Nevertheless, I thinkit is a reasonable summary of some of the key ideasthat are commonly to be found in them. Thequestion is, therefore: do these ideas constituteeither a true or a useful representation of theprocesses of scientific inquiry? On both counts, Ifear that the answer is clearly: no.

First, consider the question of truth. I cannotthink of anybody who has taken a serious interestin the nature of science who would be willing tosubscribe unreservedly to the four propositionslisted above. Putting this another way, I doubtwhether there is a single natural scientist, socialscientist, historian, or philosopher who has writtenabout the processes of scientific inquiry whowould agree that these processes rest upon the twinpillars of 'the scientific attitude' and 'the scientificmethod'. Of course, I may be wrong; perhaps thereis an odd individual who holds this particular view.If so, however, then this person holds his/her viewin the teeth of near-unanimous opposition.

Time and space do not permit me to documentthis claim in detail. Instead, I merely quote twoanecdotal examples in support. First, here is thephysicist and sociologist of science John Ziman onthe subject of 'the scientific attitude':

Research scientists are supposed to acquire (orbe born with) peculiar virtues of saintliness andwisdom called 'the scientific attitude', whichespecially befits them for leadership in the affairsof this wicked world. This nauseating doctrine. . . was quite fashionable in the 1930s—until, asRobert Oppenheimer put it, the physicists had'known sin' by making an atom bomb. It wasnever publicly repudiated by the scientificcommunity, but it has been sufficiently dis-credited by external events.6

Ziman's point here is that the course of scienceitself, and particularly its increasing involvementin real-world industrial and military applications,has undermined the notion that scientists approachtheir work in a distinctive frame of mind that maybe termed the scientific attitude. Of course, thescientific profession may embody the high idealsof disinterested curiosity, open-mindedness, ob-jectivity and so on; but individual scientists, likethe members of any other profession, approachtheir daily work with all manner of differentpersonal attitudes. Here, what matters is thedistinction between ideals or professional norms,on the one hand, and realities or professionalconduct, on the other.

Turning next to the subject of 'the scientificmethod', it is worth noting the view of the late SirPeter Medawar, an extremely successful scientistwho also wrote interestingly and thoughtfullyabout the nature of science:

There is indeed no such thing as 'the scientificmethod'. A scientist uses a great variety ofexploratory stratagems, and although a scientisthas a certain address to his problems—a certainway of doing about things that is more likely tobring success than the gropings of an amateur—he uses no procedure of discovery that can belogically scripted.7

Medawar does not suggest that scientists use nodistinctive methods in their work. On the contrary,he points out that they use a great variety ofmethods, or what he terms 'exploratory strata-gems'. However, he insists that these methods

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cannot be boiled down to a formal procedureworthy of being dubbed 'the scientific method'.Thus, many scientists conduct experiments with aview to testing specific hypotheses; but equally,many do not. Significantly, the norms of sciencerequire that methods of investigation be strictlydefined, and that they be clearly and explicitlystated in scientific publications (of this, morelater); but science cannot be defined by the use ofany single or simple method.

So much for the truth of the standard way oftalking about the processes of scientific inquiry inscience education. What, then, of its usefulness?At first sight, it seems obvious that an untruedescription of science is unlikely to be particularlyuseful. Still, it is possible that a highly simplifiedor even grossly distorted account of the natureof science might just be of some assistance tobeleaguered non-scientists. In this case, however,I doubt whether this is true.

Consider again the original purpose of intro-ducing discussion of the nature of science intobasic science education. The aim, according toMiller, is to assist non-scientists to distinguishbetween science and pseudo-science. Unfortunately,however, most pseudo-scientists appear only toofamiliar with the standard account of the nature ofscience; and the first thing they do is to make quitesure that they and their work conform to it. Whichexamples shall we take—so-called 'creation science',with its 'young earth model' of historical geology?'Complementary medicine', with its reflexologicaldiagnoses and homeopathic remedies? 'New agescience', with its (allegedly testable) theory ofmorphic resonance? 'Parapsychology', with itsstatistical analyses of clairvoyance and its con-trolled observations of spoon-bending?

The world of pseudo-science is full of peoplewho insist that they admire 'the scientific attitude'and that their work is carried out according to thestrictest canons of 'the scientific method'. If theseare the only criteria we have to go on, we are likelyto have the greatest difficulty in drawing theboundary between science and pseudo-science.

Scientific literacy as knowing how sciencereally works

Finally, therefore, we come to the third approachto scientific literacy. This goes beyond science as

knowledge, and science as idealized process toconsider science as social practice. The fact is, ofcourse, that science is an activity performed bypeople who belong to a professional communityof scientists. This fact is so obvious that scientistsand educationalists alike often pass over it as if itwere of no consequence. But in reality it is of thegreatest consequence. The process of generatingscientific knowledge is not something that isconfined to the brains and hands of isolatedindividuals. Rather, it is something that necessarilyextends across a network of colleagues, competitorsand critics. This network is essential to thecreation of new scientific knowledge; without it,all we have are bright (or stupid) ideas andintriguing (or dull) findings.

At an absolute minimum, the social process ofscientific knowledge production involves: a corpusof existing knowledge; a professionally trainedscientist, who has identified a 'problem' or othersuitable opportunity to contribute to the corpus;the successful conduct of a piece of new work; thewriting up of the work according to strict conven-tions; the refereeing (and possible rejection ormodification) of the work; the publication of thework; the critical scrutiny of the work by anindefinite number of other professional colleagues;and (with luck) the eventual passage of the workinto the corpus of existing knowledge. Science isthe most impressive and successful body ofaccumulating knowledge that has ever been pro-duced; it is surely no coincidence that the scientificcommunity is also the most highly organized andefficient social system of knowledge productionthat has ever been invented.8

The most serious weakness in the standard viewof the processes of scientific inquiry is its tendencyto project the qualities of scientific knowledgeupon the individual scientists who produce it.Scientist knowledge is (generally speaking) objec-tive, so it is presumed that individual scientistsapproach their work in a spirit of objectivity;scientific knowledge is continually being revisedand improved, so it is thought that individualscientists approach their work in a spirit ofopen-mindedness and humility, scientific knowl-edge is extraordinarily reliable, so it is concludedthat individual scientists make use of a fool-proofmethod of investigation; and so on. The projectionof the characteristics of science upon its prac-titioners is partly responsible for the public image

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of scientists as super men and women; but thisprojection obscures the true nature of science andmakes it all the more difficult to understand thecourse of science in public.

Consider the way that science is commonlyrepresented in public. Typically, new develop-ments are described in personal terms. The dramaof personal discovery attracts writers and producersbecause they know that personal stories are moreinteresting to readers and viewers. The result isoften that the complex social system of knowledgeproduction is intentionally or unintentionallydistorted. Single results may be seized upon andgiven a significance far beyond what they reallywarrant; and audiences imbued with the idea thatthe secret to the success of science lies in the extra-

Ordinary qualities of individual scientists maybe singularly ill-equipped to correct for suchproduction bias. Here is a scientist, and he or shehas discovered that such-and-such is the case; whatcould be simpler, or more beguiling, than that? Buthow often the scientist turns out to be wrong!

Consider, by way of example, the public debatein 1989 about 'cold fusion'. This debate beganwhen an extraordinary scientific claim was pro-jected internationally through a televised pressconference in which two scientists describedresults that had not even got to the stage of aninitial publication in the technical literature. Theresult was a brouhaha in which research groupsrushed around trying to find out exactly what theyshould be doing to replicate the results, whilelawyers filed patents, politicians organized funds,and the general public looked on in a state ofbewildered perplexity.9

Cold fusion is a large and dramatic example ofsomething that happens continually on a smallerscale in the reporting of science in public. Thus,for example, the results of a routine epidemio-logical study by a medical research team in Cardiff,South Wales, were leaked to the press becausethey appeared to show that the drinking of wholemilk is associated with lower rates of heart disease.According to one newspaper headline, 'Butter canslice heart attack risk'. Yet at the time of this studythere was a scientific consensus that the con-sumption of animal fat is associated with increased(rather than decreased) rates of heart disease; thissingle new study was uncorroborated, and in anyevent it made no causal claims about the relation-ship between animal fat consumption and the risk

of heart disease; and, last but not least, a PublicRelations company working for the dairy industryappears to have had a hand in orchestrating thepublicity.

In cases such as this, publicity pre-empts thenormal processes of 'quality control' that standbetween an individual piece of scientific researchand its adoption into the corpus of acceptedscientific knowledge. In most cases, of course,science's quality control systems eventually catchup with events; sooner or later, it becomes clearwhether a particular research result will stand; butin the meantime, there is cope for an indefinitelylarge amount of scientific, public and politicalconfusion.

In order to make sense of high profile science,the public needs more than mere factual knowledge—of atomic structure in the case of cold fusion,or of the composition of animal fats in the case ofmilk consumption and heart disease; and it needsmore, too, than idealistic images of 'the scientificattitude' and 'the scientific method'. What itneeds, surely, is a feel for the way that the socialsystem of science actually works to deliver what isusually reliable knowledge about the naturalworld. The public needs to understand that some-times science works not because of, but in spiteof, the individuals who are involved in the processof knowledge production and dissemination.

Conclusions

When it comes to scientific literacy, the needs ofscientists and the general public are rather different.Scientists possess very detailed knowledge in therelatively restricted areas of their specialist research;beyond this, they tend to have increasingly generalknowledge only. Significantly, scientists tend tobe extremely critical of a lot that goes on withintheir restricted areas of specialist expertise. Somework is seen as excellent, but commonly a greatdeal is dismissed as second-rate or even worthless.Typically, scientists are quick to evaluate newclaims in their own fields—judging some to be veryimportant, others to be potentially interesting, andyet others as complete nonsense. Scientists can dothis partly because they know others by repute(reputation is the crucial currency in scientificdebate), and partly because they can make theirown on-the-spot quality assessments.

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Precisely because they have first-hand experiencein their own restricted areas of specialist expertise,scientists are quite likely to be reasonably dis-criminating in their approach to new findings inother fields as well. Faced with some new, appar-ently important claim outside their field, scientistsmay reflect on how well the claim fits with other,well-established findings in which they have con-fidence; they may ask colleagues who know moreabout the subject for a view; they may look to aparticular well-respected journal for an opinion; orthey may simply 'wait and see'. Of course, thereis no guarantee that scientists will always make theright judgements in cases like these; but at leasttheir personal research experience gives them somefeel for the complex issues that are involved in theassessment of any new claim in science.

By contrast, most members of the general publichave no direct experience of scientific research atall. The most they are likely to have is a limitedarray of pre-digested, 'textbook' knowledge derivedfrom formal science education. Such knowledge isall of the 'beyond dispute' variety; that is, it iseither so elementary or else so tried and tested thatthere is now no significant debate about it amongexpert scientists (or anybody else). Such knowledgeis a very poor preparation for science as it isgenerally encountered in daily life. For publicscience is mostly new, and as often as not it is inthe process of active debate among experts whoare trying to judge its quality and significance. Inshort, public science is generally caught up in whatI have termed the quality control systems ofscience. In order to make sense of such science,the public needs to have a feel for the ways inwhich these quality control systems serve toseparate the wheat from the chaff.

Formal science education has made some re-sponse to this problem by incorporating intocurricula material on the nature of science. Atthe same time, informal science education hasattempted to convey something of the spirit ofscientific inquiry through, for example, hands-onexhibits that foster curiosity and the sense ofdiscovery among children. All too often, however,these responses are limited by their dependenceupon a highly idealized version of the processes ofscientific inquiry; a version in which, as I have

suggested, many of the characteristics of maturescientific knowledge are projected onto the person-alities and practices of individual scientists. Thisis a positive hindrance, in that it makes moredifficult the business of coming to terms with con-tingency, controversy and uncertainty in science.We need to consider how a truer picture of sciencecan be conveyed to a general public which has nodirect experience of scientific research at all.

REFERENCES

1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr (1987) Scientific Literacy: What EveryAmerican Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

2. E. D. Hirsch, Jr, J. Kett and J. Trefil (1988) TheDictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every AmericanNeeds to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

3. J. Trefil and R. Hazen (1990) Science Matters: AchievingScientific Literacy. New York, London: Doubleday.

4. American Association for the Advancement ofScience (1989) Project 2061: science for all Americans:a Project 2061 report on literacy goals in science,Mathematics and Technology. Washington DC: AAAS.

5. J. D. Miller (1983) Scientific literacy: a conceptualand empirical review. Adedalus, 112(2), 29-48.

6. J. Ziman (1980) Teaching and Learning about Scienceand Society. London, New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 48-49.

7. P. Medawar (1984) The Limits of Science. OxfordUniversity Press, 51.

8. See J. Ziman (1968) Public Knowledge: An EssayConcerning the Social Dimensions of Science. London:Cambridge University Press; and B. Barnes (1985) AboutScience. Oxford: Blackwell.

9. H. Collins and T. Pinch (1993) The Qolem: WhatEveryone should Know about Science and Technology.Cambridge University Press.

Author's biography:John Durant is Assistant Director of the ScienceMuseum, London and Visiting Professor of theHistory and Public Understanding of Science,Imperial College, London. He has edited Darwinismand Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief(1985), Human Origins (1989) and Museums and thePublic Understanding of Science (1992) and is alsoeditor of the quarterly international journal, PublicUnderstanding of Science.