Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method

Challenging popular misconceptions about the nature of science and scientific activity, Bauer introduces for the intelligent lay reader the relatively new academic field of science, technology, and society studies, which describes science as first and foremost a social activity and examines the roles science and technology play in modern life. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

To put some of the adventure back in everyday science, this study is the place to start. Bauer, chemistry professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, upends current contentions about science literacy in a small, dense book that could be the nucleus of a restructuring of how science works in our culture, or, in the author's terms, how its reputation works. The call for more science literacy is a shibboleth in this STS-based (science, technology, society) exposition, which is a sort of deconstruction of the general image of science. Excising popular fallacies, Bauer argues that science is particular knowledge embedded in its time's social context and, therefore, in continuous change. His critique is radical: demystify the science we learn as fact ("textbook science"), keep "frontier science" (research) from being overwhelmed by structural forces in technocracy, avoid "scientism" as a basis of social policy. Science can be made to serve us better, stresses the author, but not as a new mythology.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.