Science and Public Participation: the Democratization of Science

Abstract

Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Fischer's Citizens, Experts, and the Environment (2000) said that wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government. But, nowadays, who can claim to be well informed enough about that thing which we call science to govern it except scientists themselves? In 1959, Sir Charles Snow put forward the thesis in the Rede Lecture that there was what amounted to an opposition between literary intellectualism at one end and proficiency in the physical sciences at the other. Snow dated his realization of this distinction to the 1930s. What we can say for certain is that there was a coming into common understanding that a reasonably well‐educated or cultured person could not be expected to be normally able to comprehend both the sciences and the arts. This state of affairs is not by any means all the scientific community's fault although science is guilty of creating, along with other forms of knowledge and understanding, elites.