Public Understanding of Science

Historical Overview

Communication with the public about science is as old as science itself, but there was no clear focus on PUS per se before World War II, and few organized efforts were made in this area until the last quarter of the 20th century. In the United Kingdom, for example, distinguished natural philosophers and their admirers spoke and wrote for general audiences from as far back as the 17th century; and a number of specialized societies—including the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Association for the Advancement of Science—took up the cause of popularizing science in the late-18th and 19th centuries. In the 20th century, the field of professional science journalism grew rapidly, but it was not until the Royal Society of London convened a working group and then a committee on the subject, starting in the early 1980s, that PUS became the object of serious attention from the scientific community.

Developments similar to these in the United Kingdom took place in a number of other countries in Europe, Australasia, and North America. In the United States, for example, the years immediately after World War II saw commercial publishers, scientific societies, science journalists, and government agencies all working to popularize science in the interests of greater public understanding. Thus, in 1951, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) adopted a new policy statement that included among the association's objectives that of increasing “public understanding and appreciation” of the role of scientific method with respect to human progress. In the late-1980s, the AAAS convened a separate Committee on Public Understanding of Science [Page 617]and Technology, and since that time, initiatives in this area have proliferated widely.

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