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Return to E-mail Discussion page I've been reading a book called "The Myth of Scientific Literacy," by Morris Shamos, which I think has some valuable background information related to our science literacy discussion. It's useful to see the historical context of various science literacy movements that our society has gone through, the techniques they emphasized, and the driving forces behind them. This is not a new issue by any means, and we'd like to avoid repeating previous mistakes. I recommend the book to anyone who wants to think in more detail about the why and how of science literacy.I also want to follow up on something I said at the end of my last posting, about why we have "science" at all. We've so far focused on the question of why it's valuable for most people to know something about science. I think it would shed some light on the different perspectives we have on this, to step back and ask, why is it valuable to society that we have science at all? Why is it valuable to have some people doing science (regardless of whether most people know or understand what the scientists are doing)? In other words, what are the different categories of benefits for society that we think emerge as a result of devoting some resources to scientific research? I think in answering this question, some natural categories for answers to the original science literacy question will emerge. Some of the benefits we see from science may not require public understanding at all, while for others, the benefit may be impossible unless most people understand it. Todd P.S. An archive of previous postings to this list is now available at: http://www.scienceintegration.org/list.htm |
