A Brief History of Science Popularization

Abstract

This chapter looks at the origins of science popularization and how it has changed as the scientific and social contexts have changed. Understood in terms of the rhetorical situation, the history of science popularization is a history of a changing set of rhetors, exigences, and audiences. Understood in terms of kinds of knowledge, it is a history of shifting relationships between episteme (scientific or specialist knowledge) and doxa (public knowledge). In general, the trend over the last four-and-a-half centuries has been a movement from episteme and doxa being inseparable, to their being balanced, to a relatively recent elevation of episteme to special status.