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Scientific temper and Science Literacy

© Prof. Hemant Joshi

In one of the last articles, we discussed the concept of science literacy. I had thought of writing something more about it. Somehow, I got involved in other issues and forgot about it. Recently, I was reading a journal of Department of Science and Technology. I could not resist my temptation to write a few lines about the intro of the editorial, which said, "Very often popularisation of science is confused with the propagation of scientific temper." I was wondering for whom these lines are written.

In fact, there are many terms that we use when we talk about science. All of them have a specific meaning and can never be or should never be confused for any other meaning, which they may stand for. The people involved with science communication would be very careful about the terms that we are using. Last time we discussed at length the diference between scientific literacy and science literacy. We then have terms like science communication, science journalism that are having wider meaning and terms like popularisation of science and scientific temper that have very restricted meanings.

Any act of communication dealing with science would be part of science communication. From research papers to Doctoral thesis, from any article on medicine, technology or scientific theory to any audio or audio-visual material talking about science would be a subject matter of science communication. It could be targeted towards scientist, students of science or common man. However, science journalism is a communication that can not be done without deciding about its target audience. It is true that there will be different kind of journalism practices. For example, a mainstream newspaper can publish stories relating to science, technology and medicine, etc. along with other news stories. These stories are written for heterogeneous audiences. Similarly, a science journal could also publish the same story but would present it differently because the audience of science journal is a bit more special. The same story if written for children of a particular age group would again be different. Science journalism could also use audio and audiovisual material as is done in radio, television and films.

Science popularisation is a programme that takes science to people with an objective of making them aware of the efforts, achievements and advances of science and technology. Such programmes could include exhibitions, workshops, seminars, public meetings, and use of print, audio and video material. They can also use journalism of various types for achieving their goals.

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