Within just a few months, new releases in the world of publishing have seen two books dealing with science and The Simpsons, one published in the US and the other in Italy: last spring, What's science ever done for us? by Paul Halpern (John Wiley & Sons, New York 2007) and, this autumn, La scienza dei Simpson by Marco Malaspina (Sironi Editore, Milano 2007).
Probably among the first to deal with it, nearly sixty years ago, Norbert Wiener, the founding father of cybernetics (The human use of human beings. Cybernetics and Society, Houghton Mifflin Company, London, 1950), prefigured its opportunities, as well as its limitations. Today, it is a quite common belief. We have entered (are entering) a new, great era in the history of human society: the age of information and knowledge.
The digitalization process of historical archives, which has been taking place over the past few years, shows that the study of history of science is undergoing major changes. Easier access to online resources (manuscripts, catalogues of scientific machinery and tools that would otherwise be virtually impossible to consult) has spurred and created the preconditions for the development of new quantitative methodologies in the study of history of science as well as the creation of international research groups.
This article will briefly present a few theses and reflections of mine on some perversions and disruptions under way in knowledge development and in science representation. Nevertheless, I will abstain from exposing thoroughly the obvious and triumphal side of the coin. Namely, I am not going to extol the amazing fortune of science and knowledge, which have become the fundamental resource for development, at economic level in first place. Indeed, having reached a certain age, I can allow myself although to a certain degree of oversimplification less enthusiasm and a few old-fashioned ideas.
Sometimes scientists live real dramas or undergo social and psychological conflicts which have a positive or negative influence on the development and recognition of their research, discoveries and inventions in society, including the way they are recorded in history. This being so, the question is: to what extent can science be communicated to the public at large by the use of scientists' biographies as a motivational strategy? The controversy arises from the fact that usual (classical) science has traditionally argued for the separation (or de-linking) of the research (the object) from the
We have analyzed the popularization activities undertaken by ten thousand CNRS researchers by means of their annual reports for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. This is the first time that such an extensive statistical study on science popularization practices is carried out. Our main findings are : - the majority of researchers is not involved in popularization (51% has not done any popularization over the three-year period, two thirds have been involved in no more than one popularization action). - popularization practices are extremely diverse, both at the individual level (we have identified
Scientific publishing, here to be considered in a broader sense, as publishing of both specialised scientific journals and science popularisation works addressed to a wider audience, has been sailing for some years on troubled waters. To gather some possible food for thought is the purpose of this brief article.
Why should we care about science books? After all, we live in a "new media" world where students, researchers, and the public use the World Wide Web for all their information needs. Cutting edge research appears on "preprint archives" or "open access" online journals, text"books" appear as online sites with interactive presentations and links to presentation, for creating public discussion and dialogue, and even for archiving current research. In that kind of world, what’s the purpose of looking at "old fashioned" books?
The obvious thing to say about popular science publishing in the last twenty years is that there has been a lot of it! That is important in itself. But it also means it is hazardous to offer general comment. The British journalist and commentator Bryan Appleyard recently wrote in the Sunday Times that the “hard stuff” in science was no longer attracting so many readers. Books answering many small questions about the world, or evoking a sense of wonder, do better - he reckons - than those which offer large certainties based on a scientific, or scientistic view of the world. That type, Appleyard
In their contributions to this special issue, the British science writer Jon Turney and the American scholar Bruce Lewenstein discuss the validity of the book as a means for science communication in the era of the Internet, whereas the article by Vittorio Bo deals with scientific publishing in a broader sense.
We inhabit an age in which economic progress in the European Union is equalized to more European research and better communication of that European research to the public. In highly developed Western democracies this implies an important role for the public as well as the mass media, both actors in a transforming public sphere. Beyond a call for more communication and more scientific literacy, the discourse has shifted to a call for more engagement and more participation on behalf of the citizen. There is a widespread sentiment however that the discipline of science communication is at a
This paper summarizes key findings from a web-based questionnaire survey among Danish scientists in the natural sciences and engineering science. In line with the Act on Universities of 2003 enforcing science communication as a university obligation next to research and teaching, the respondents take a keen interest in communicating science, especially through the news media. However, they also do have mixed feeling about the quality of science communication in the news. Moreover, a majority of the respondents would like to give higher priority to science communication. More than half reply
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristian Hvidtfelt NielsenCarsten KjaerJorgen Dahlgaard