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A Historical perspective on science and its ’others’
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
To cite this version:
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. A Historical perspective on science and its ’others’. Isis, University of
Chicago Press, 2009, 100, pp.359-368. �hal-00925427�
A historical perspective on science and its “others”
Isis, 100, 2009, 359-368.Focus on Popular Science
Bernadette Bensaude Vincent
Abstract:
Reflecting on the debate concerning the value to historians of the category “popular science”,
this paper argues that the model of legitimate science that is currently emerging, invites us to
consider how the notions of science and the public have been mutually configured and reconfigured
over time. First, it points to the tremendous impact of technosciences on the public sphere. The
recent shift from the deficit model to the participatory model has profoundly changed the values
underlying science communication. Whereas previously it was performed in the name of science, it
is now performed in the name of democracy. This political turn suggests that we should consider
symmetrically not only how science and its public face are socially constructed but also how the
notion of a lay public has been constructed by scientific practices. Finally I suggest that historical
studies should focus on the mechanisms of demarcation and discrimination between science and
rival forms of knowledge.
Over the past twenty years, the use of the category “science popularization” for historical studies
has become a matter of debate. Cooter and Pumfrey argued that the notion was no longer relevant
because it implies a demarcation between the production of science and its consumption, thus
illegitimately separating history of science from the history of science popularization.
1
In the
conclusion of his historiographical reflections (2004), Jim Secord argued that science
popularization should no longer be a separate focus of study, and suggested using the paradigm of
communication as the most relevant to deal with the history of science and its popularization.
2
More recently, Jonathan Topham also argued that studies of the two intertwined histories should be
reunited, and that science should be considered as a form of communicative action.
3
Generally, two decades of intense scholarship in the history of science popularization have led
to the recognition that science popularization is not a neutral entity.
4
The term science
1
Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, “Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science
Popularization and Science in Popular Culture”, History of Science, 32 (1994): 237–67.
2
James A. Secord, “Knowledge in Transit”, Isis, 95 (2004): 654–72.
3
Jonathan R. Topham, “Rethinking the history of science popularization/popular science”, in F. Papanelopoulou, A.
Nieto-Galàn, E. Perdiguero, eds, Popularising Science and Technology in the European Periphery, 1800-2000,
Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008.
4
Baudouin Jurdant, “Vulgarisation scientifique et idéologie”, Communications, 14 (1969):150–161. P. Roqueplo, Le
partage du savoir, science, culture et vulgarisation, Paris, Seuil, 1974. Sheets-Pyenson S. “Popular science periodicals
in Paris and London: the emergence of a low scientific culture 1820-1875”, Annals of Science, 42 (1985): 549-572.
Stephen Hilgartner, “The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses”, Social Studies of
Science, 20 (1990): 519–39, Marcel La Follette, Making Science Our Own. Public Images of Science 1910-1955,
popularization itself is a recent invention when compared to the longue durée of history of science.
The term was first coined in the nineteenth century, when science became a professional activity.
5
Because the term was invented to describe science communication in specific circumstances, it may
be seen as anachronistic to use it to describe a varied assortment of science communication.
Science popularization is just one among many configurations of the relations between science and
society at large. Moreover, the emergence of this configuration in the nineteenth century was a long
and contingent process. In many places, popularization had to compete with a variety of alternative
science practices, sometimes labelled as “popular science”. In most cases, the term “science
popularization” was used to reflect the hegemony of the professional practice of science, and by
association, to legitimate the authority of experts.
I therefore fully sympathize with Topham’s urge for reconceptualizing the issue of popular
science. Yet, is communication the most adequate framework? Scientific research is not split into
two neat phases consisting of the production of knowledge and its communication. There is a
continuum between the two, and to an extent, the material means of communication shape the
message.
6
As Topham argues, popular writings have been used in many cases to advance
professional research, as they proved an efficient tool to prompt paradigm changes.
7
Still,
recognizing that the process of producing scientific results and the process of communicating them
are indistinguishable, does not require that science is fully understood as a communicative action.
Regardless of the heuristic power of the actor/network model, it does not necessarily lead to the
identification of science as a form of communication.
8
In my view, it rather invites historians to try
to grasp what is specific to science among other forms of communication. Considering science as a
form of communication had the merit of shifting the focus of attention from the source of scientific
knowledge (scientists and laboratories) to its audiences (students, and consumers of popular books).
Another immense merit of this approach was to focus the historians’ attention on the material
Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1990. Bruce Lewenstein ed., When Science Meets the Public,
Washington DC, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1992. Anne Secord, “Science in the Pub:
Artisan botanists in early nineteenth-century Lancashire”, History of Science, 32 (1994): 269-315. Bernadette
Bensaude-Vincent, Anne Rasmussen eds., La science populaire dans la presse et l’édition XIXe et XXe siècles, Paris,
CNRS éditions, 1997. Paola Govoni, Un pubblico per la scienza. La divulgazione scientifica nell’Italia in formazione,
Rome, Carocci, 2002.
5
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “La science populaire: Ancêtre ou rivale de la vulgarisation?”, Protée: Théorie et
pratiques sémiotiques, 16 (1988): 85–91.
6
Terry Shinn, Richard Whitley, Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularization, Dordrecht-Boston-
Lancaster, D. Reidel, 1985. Steve Shapin “Science and the public”, in R.C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History
of Modern Science, London, Routledge, 1990, pp. 990-1007. Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and
Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982.
7
Jonathan R. Topham, “Rethinking the history of science popularization/popular science”, op. cit. supra, An additional
example of this strategy in the history of physical sciences is Jean Perrin’s popular publication Les atomes (1913), a
demonstration of molecular reality meant to convince reluctant physicists and chemists of the existence of atoms.
8
See in particular Bruno Latour, Science in Action, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1987, p. 62.
vehicles of science communication such as journals, books, conferences, and museums.
9
Still,
whilst the histories of the press, books, movies or teaching undoubtedly shed new lights on the
history of science, they should not make us forget that science is more than the production and
communication of factual data. Science is a normative activity, which generates universal
standards, and strong values that in turn shape society at large. We are thus faced with a tension
between the need to provide a larger conceptual framework to pursue historical studies of science,
and the ambition to focus on what is unique in science communication and what is specific to each
historical period, and each science (the concepts used for popular astronomy do not necessarily
work to communicate biotechnology).
In this essay I advocate an approach to the history of science and popular science based on two
methodological principles: reflexivity and symmetry. Why do we feel uncomfortable with the
category of popular science? This is the first question to raise if we are to adopt a reflective
attitude. The first section therefore examines the model of legitimate science which is emerging
today, because it determines the way science is spread within society at large. The second section
emphasizes the recent shift from the traditional practice of science communication in the name of
science to new practices of interactions in the name of democracy. This political turn suggests that
we should consider symmetrically not only how science and its public face are socially constructed
but also how the notion of a lay public has been constructed by scientific practices. Finally I
suggest that historical studies should focus on how the notions of science and the public were
mutually configured and reconfigured through the longue durée.
From the deficit model to the participatory model
Reflexivity is a major methodological imperative for all historians, and we have to be aware that
history is always written according to the present time. As Lucien Febvre, the founder of the École
des Annales, put it in his vivid personal style: “Man does not remember the past; rather he always
reconstructs it. Isolated man [is] an abstraction. Man in [a] group [is] a reality. He does not keep the
past in his memory, as the Northern ices keep millenary mammoths frozen. He starts from the
present and it is through the present that he knows the past.”
10
Lack of awareness that present
9
See for instance James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret
Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Chicago London, The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Jonathan R. Topham, “Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain: A
historiographical survey and guide to sources”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 31(2000):559-612.
10
Lucien Febvre, Combats pour l’histoire [1952], Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1992, p. 14. “L’homme ne se
souvient pas du passé; il le reconstruit toujours. L’homme isolé, cette abstraction; L’homme en groupe, cette réalité. Il
norms and values were being projected onto descriptions of the past even led, Febvre declared, to a
“deification of the present through the past”.
11
This said, historians can use the present as a filter to
shed new lights on the past, thus generating more complex, and richer perspectives on our history.
Cooter and Pumfrey rightly noted that science popularization was a reflection of the model of
authorized science that dominated in the twentieth century. The new model of legitimate science
that tends to prevail in our societies – often named “technoscience” – leads to the de facto
reconceptualization of the issue of popularization.
The contrast between the former model and the currently emerging model is striking. Based on
the numerous sociological and historical studies of practices in science popularization, here is a
brief summary of the former model through its three basic assumptions. i) There is an increasing
gap between scientists and the public, due to the unavoidable specialization of scientific
investigation, and the formalization of scientific discourses.
12
Contemporary actors and witnesses
have often related the perceived radical gap between the scientists’ worldview and common sense,
to the emergence of a new physics - relativity theory and quantum mechanics. ii) The alleged gulf
between the scientific elite and the lay public calls for mediators, or popularizers, whose task is to
bridge the everexpanding gap in order to gain public support for scientific research. In their attempt
to “translate” the language of experts for lay people, mediators have tended to consider the public
as a passive audience, made up of consumers of science and technology (diffusionist model). iii)
Popularization was a one-way process, speaking “in the name of science” without paying attention
to public concerns.
13
The public was seen as a mere recipient of scientific advances, characterized
by its lack of knowledge (deficit model). It was also assumed that increasing the public
understanding of science would automatically generate more favorable attitudes towards science. In
reality, popularization has contributed to isolating scientists from the rest of the world, and to
turning science into a sacred all-powerful deity thus increasing, rather than decreasing, the alleged
gap.
Over the past two decades, technosciences such as information technology, biotechnology, and
nanotechnology have developed in parallel with the urge to refocus science on social concerns.
“Dialogue” and “public engagement in science” have become fashionable watchwords. Meanwhile,
a spectrum of procedures designed to involve the public, from opinion polls to public hearings,
ne conserve pas le passé dans sa mémoire, comme les glaces du Nord conservent frigorifiés les mammouths
millénaires. Il part du présent et c’est à travers lui, toujours qu’il connaît.”
11
Ibid. p. 8.
12
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “A genealogy of the increasing gap between science and the public”, Public
Understanding of Science, 10 (2001):99–113.
13
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent ”In the name of science” in John Krige, D. Pestre eds, Science in the Twentieth
Century, Amsterdam, Harwood Publishers, 1997, pp. 319-338.