“The communication of modern science to the ordinary citizen, necessary, important, desirable as it is, cannot be considered an easy task. The prime obstacle is lack of education. … There is also the difficulty of making scientific discoveries interesting and exciting without completely degrading them intellectually. … It is a weakness of modern science that the scientist shrinks from this sort of publicity, and thus gives an impression of arrogant mystagoguery.”

—  John Ziman

[John M. Ziman, The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society, Cambridge University Press, 1976, 0-521-09917-X, 119]

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The communication of modern science to the ordinary citizen, necessary, important, desirable as it is, cannot be consid…" by John Ziman?
John Ziman photo
John Ziman 5
New Zealand physicist 1925–2005

Related quotes

Aldo Leopold photo

“The ordinary citizen today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 205.

Leon R. Kass photo

“The truths modern science finds—even about human beings—are value-neutral, in no way restraining, and indeed perfectly adapted for, technical application. In short, as Hans Jonas has put it, modern science contains manipulability at its theoretical core—and this remains true even for those great scientists who are themselves motivated by the desire for truth and who have no interest in that mastery over nature to which their discoveries nonetheless contribute and for which science is largely esteemed by the rest of us and mightily supported by the modern state.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 8

“Religion can probably out live any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can accommodate itself to them. The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain basic assumptions upon which modern science, from the seventeenth century onwards, has proceeded.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p.5.

Isaac Asimov photo

“I consider one of the most important duties of any scientist the teaching of science to students and to the general public.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Academe and I" (May 1972), in The Tragedy of the Moon (1973), p. 224
General sources

“Our thesis now is that the Portuguese seafarers and scientists of the 15th and 16th centuries made an important contribution to the rise of modern science by unintentionally undermining the belief in scientific authorities and by strengthening the confidence in an empirical, natural, historical method.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

"The Portuguese Discoveries and the Rise of Modern Science," 1983

Ken Ham photo

“Creation is the only viable model of historical science confirmed by observational science in today's modern scientific era.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

Ian Hacking photo

“Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's a long and complicated story of the rise of a desire for scientific relativism. Part of it may well be simply sort of rage against reason, the fear of the sciences and a kind of total dislike of the arrogance of a great many scientists who say we're finding out the truth about everything—and here [with Kuhn] there was a way to undermine that arrogance.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking, in Gary Stix, "A Q&A with Ian Hacking on Thomas Kuhn's Legacy as "The Paradigm Shift" Turns 50" (April 27, 2012)

Joseph Silk photo

“The beauty of science and the nature of scientific revelations constitute part of the modern theologian's perspective and toolbox.”

Joseph Silk (1942) British-American astronomer

Page 2.30
The Dark Side of the Universe, 2007

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“There is no "scientific worldview" just as there is no uniform enterprise "science"- except in the minds of metaphysicians, school masters, and scientists blinded by the achievements of their own particular niche… There is no objective principle that could direct us away from the supermarket "religion" or the supermarket "art" toward the more modern, and much more expensive supermarket "science." Besides, the search for such guidance would be in conflict with the idea of individual responsibility which allegedly is an important ingredient of a "rational" or scientific age.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

Pg 159.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

John Desmond Bernal photo

“The problem of the re-organization of science will not be solved by administrative or financial changes. It will also be necessary to reorganise in a most comprehensive way the whole apparatus of scientific communication.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 292

Related topics