Useless science

Author: Liu Huajie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-09-01
Features: In the "Wooden Plow Series," a new sub-series has been added: "Complementing the Sky Anthology." Judging from the name alone, the implied meaning seems not difficult to understand. The legend of Nuwa repairing the sky has long been a fundamental piece of common knowledge in our cultural tradition. Interestingly, within traditional Chinese culture, the concept of "heaven" is inherently multi-faceted—it can refer to both the natural sky and the sky of moral principles. Here, from a certain contemporary perspective, we might consider them "unified," referring to our understanding and knowledge of nature, that is, our science. When it comes to science, from a more modern standpoint, we do not merely believe that only established, concrete scientific knowledge constitutes its entirety. The scientific spirit, scientific culture, scientific methods, and scientific attitudes that coexist with scientific knowledge can also be considered important components of the broader scientific whole. In the process of popularizing and disseminating science, attention must be given equally to both the "hard content" of scientific knowledge and these accompanying "soft content"—neither should be neglected. For scholars outside the scientific community, including those in other fields and the broader public, this latter part may even be more important. Only by understanding these aspects can one gain a deeper insight into what science truly is and what it truly means. However, in China's past efforts at science popularization and dissemination, traditional science education, which focuses solely on the dissemination of specific scientific knowledge, has always dominated. With the development of science, culture, and society, as well as the adoption of more advanced science education concepts through international integration, an increasing number of scholars in China are now recognizing the significance of new approaches to science communication, such as "public understanding of science." In such work, the foremost priority is the study and dissemination of scientific spirit, scientific culture, scientific methods, and scientific attitudes. From another perspective, this effort is also an important part of the broader international and domestic initiative to bridge two cultures. However, changing one's perspective is merely the first step—what matters more is turning that perspective into action. Of course, we see many dedicated individuals in society and academia working on this. They are the admirable "heaven-repairers" in the field of science communication. But it cannot be denied that compared to countries that excel in the research and development of science itself, as well as in science communication and science culture studies, our level of achievement still has a significant gap. This also means that it will be challenging to immediately produce a large volume of works aligned with these new ideas to meet the urgent needs of both the academic community and the public. Therefore, in this anthology, we have chosen to compile short articles that have already been published, as well as some that have yet to be published, related to scientific spirit, scientific culture, scientific methods, and scientific attitudes, along with some insightful interviews. This approach of gathering the achievements of multiple contributors, which is both concentrated and timely, may be the most viable and effective method at this stage in the field of science culture and science communication. In our research on science culture and science communication, we hope to see more "heaven-repairers" join the effort. After all, we are under "the same blue sky."