Varieties of Popular Science and the Transformations of Public Knowledge

Some Historical Reflections

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3238099
AutoresAndreas W Daum (0000-0003-3124-7439, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, autor de correspondencia)
Año2009
Volumen100
Número2
Páginas319-332
Fecha de publicación2009-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIsis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/599550
OpenAlexW2093034519
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas28
Referencias citadas26

This essay suggests that we should understand the varieties of "popular science" as part of a larger phenomenon: the changing set of processes, practices, and actors that generate and transform public knowledge across time, space, and cultures. With such a reconceptualization we can both de‐essentialize and historicize the idea of "popularization," free it from normative notions, and move beyond existing imbalances in scholarship. The history of public knowledge might thus find a central place in many fundamental narratives of the modern world. More specifically, the essay proposes that we pay more attention to forms of knowledge outside the realm of "science," embrace the richness, traffic, and transfer of public knowledge on a transnational scale as well as in comparative perspective, and rethink conventional forms of periodization

Epistemology · Narrative · Normative · Periodization · Perspective (graphical · Phenomenon · Political science · Realm · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Biographical and Historical Analysis · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy