Why is science not "general culture"? (electric, electricity, physics)
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I mean, if you don't know who wrote, err, Romeo and Juliet or who the first President of the USA was, you're likely to be labelled as someone with lack of culture.
However, if you don't know how many chromosomes a human has it won't be a big deal
Because embracing science means giving up old superstitions (aka "religious beliefs"). Then again, they don't have a consistent point of view. They don't refuse medicine.
Because embracing science means giving up old superstitions (aka "religious beliefs"). Then again, they don't have a consistent point of view. They don't refuse medicine.
Excellent point.
Also, science is complicated. General culture is not. Science is on the cutting edge of knowledge. General culture is formed by traditions handed down from generation to generation.
To make science a part of general culture, the general population would all have to be educated to the level of scientists in a highly structured dynamic social order with sustainability. Most people aren't interested. This just isn't a Borg culture.
Also, science is complicated. General culture is not. Science is on the cutting edge of knowledge. General culture is formed by traditions handed down from generation to generation.
To make science a part of general culture, the general population would all have to be educated to the level of scientists in a highly structured dynamic social order with sustainability. Most people aren't interested. This just isn't a Borg culture.
Well, to be honest, I would say anything analytical is kept outside of "general culture". This includes the social sciences. You see this mostly in America. The only exception is politics and government (in some cases economics). Fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc, aren't part of general culture either.
I think part of the reason is that the arts have to attract an audience to be successful, so artists place a large portion of their effort on disseminating their work to the the general public. Scientists, on the other hand, can be completely successful in only transferring their accomplishments to other scientists or taking their discoveries and creating a product with it. You can do a life's worth of research and never see the general public, but it's pretty difficult to spend your life making plays and never have an audience.
The science that does get popularized tends to be the science that answers big questions--high energy physics, astrophysics, evolutionary biology. I'm sure if you asked someone about evolution--even if they disagree with the premise on fundamental principles--they would be able to tell you what they think it's about.
That being said, most original scientific discoveries do not necessarily become part of the general culture, but some of the products of those discoveries do. Most everything in our society has been influenced by technology which itself was influenced by science. Computers, electricity, cell phones, cars, planes...well, pretty much everything. Science is the fabric of modern life, even if people don't really know about it.
I mean, if you don't know who wrote, err, Romeo and Juliet or who the first President of the USA was, you're likely to be labelled as someone with lack of culture.
However, if you don't know how many chromosomes a human has it won't be a big deal
However, to be part of the GENERAL culture, knowing about Romeo and Juliet is less important than knowing baseball and football stats and the names and songs of the current crop of musical "talent."
Knowledge of at least a smidgen of history is important as a defense against some fool trying to repeat it, but the examples you give are so basic as to be of little use.
The whole chromosome issue is important, but with more and more evidence that RNA plays a much larger role than previously thought, the number may end up being background, just like the date of the Battle of Hastings.
But I can dream, can't I? It's ironic how wide-spread the USE of technology is but understanding the fundamentals of it seems to be be beyond the scope of the layman's interests.
People, in this day and age don't care how something works as long as it works, and even then it has to work on THEIR terms or it's a failure. It reminds me of that bit by Louis CK about people complaining that it takes five seconds to bring up something on their cellphone and not caring that the data has to go all the way to a satellite in space and back down again.
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