RenaSciQuestion network · The Renaissance of Science E3Science’s Audience

E3Public & scienceFurther topic

Science’s Audience

Public Participation, Past and Future

?What is there to watch in other people’s research? Why should the public come back to science?

Topic page
~1,035 words · 7 screens
Deep read
~7,405 words · 92 sources
Questions
17 out · 19 in
Start with the first question ↓Go straight to the deep read ↗
  1. 01What is there to watch in other people’s research?
  2. 02Who was watching science four hundred years ago?
  3. 03Can amateurs make important discoveries?
  4. 04How was the public ushered out of the stands?
  5. 05Is knowledge what the public lacks?
  6. 06Has the audience come back?
  7. 07If everyone can take part, who keeps the gate?

◇The network re-centres on “Science’s Audience”. Every screen leaves a few follow-up questions; open one to walk into another topic.

01/07Curtain up

What is there to watch in other people’s research?

Science always had an audience

More than a decade ago, people asked the same question about game streaming: would anyone really skip playing and spend whole days watching other people play? Then Amazon paid about $970 million for Twitch. In 2016 more than 200 million people watched AlphaGo take on Lee Sedol. Machines have played better than people ever since, yet the people never walked out: commentary and post-game reviews became more popular than ever, and professional players began to make moves that were more original – and better.

Science once drew crowds like this too. An engraving from 1856 shows Michael Faraday giving a demonstration at one of the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures, with Prince Albert and two of his sons in the front row.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWhat is there to watch in other people’s research?↘
Asked from elsewhereMHands-onE1LecternE4JoyE4Response

Faraday lecturing at the Royal Institution, with Prince Albert and two of the princes in the audience. Wood engraving, Illustrated London News, 1856. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

02/07Theatre

Who was watching science four hundred years ago?

Dissections, air pumps and electric shocks

In 1594 (some say 1596), Leiden University built an anatomy theatre. In winter the bodies of hanged criminals were dissected there, while students, surgeons and townspeople who had bought tickets sat round on the tiered benches. In the late 1650s Robert Boyle experimented with an air pump in Oxford, demonstrated it before like-minded colleagues and then wrote up the details in lengthy reports, so that readers who had not been there could “virtually witness” the experiments too.

Around 1746 the Abbé Nollet discharged a Leyden jar through 180 guards holding hands in front of Louis XV; he also had the monks of a Paris monastery link up with iron wire in a long line, and when the jar discharged they all jumped at once. Science first won its credibility by proving things in public.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperWho was watching science four hundred years ago?↘
Asked from elsewhereE1JournalsE4UselessE5LabE6Witness

The anatomy theatre of Leiden University in its early days. Engraving from Les délices de Leide, 1712. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

03/07Amateurs

Can amateurs make important discoveries?

Science driven by enthusiasts

The word “amateur” comes from the Latin for “lover”. In 1781 William Herschel, a musician in Bath, discovered Uranus with a telescope whose mirror he had ground himself. Charles Darwin never held a university post, yet through more than 15,000 letters he enlisted pigeon fanciers, gardeners and women amateur botanists. Mary Anning dug up ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs but could not join the Geological Society of London, which admitted no women until 1919.

Nor have the enthusiasts gone away. In May 2023 the Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki discovered a supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy; by then he had found 172 of them.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperCan amateurs move science forward?↘
Asked from elsewhereMEveryoneE5ThresholdE7Hired

Herschel’s forty-foot telescope. Coloured etching. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

04/07Narrow gate

How was the public ushered out of the stands?

The triumph and the price of specialization

Research universities, laboratories and the disciplinary system brought unprecedented success – and turned science into a narrow gate. Max Weber conceded that only rigorous specialization yields lasting work; José Ortega y Gasset mocked the specialist as a “learned ignoramus”. Abstracts grew ever harder to read, the public stood outside the gate, and the disciplines eyed one another over their walls.

In 1959 C. P. Snow lamented that science and the humanities had become “two cultures”. Seen from today, that was merely the literati sniping at one another inside the elite. The real rift runs between elite culture and mass culture: the public cares about neither Shakespeare nor the second law of thermodynamics, while the intellectual elite still frets over science versus literature – like banished consorts scheming against one another in the cold palace.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperHow was the public ushered out of the stands?↘
Asked from elsewhereMAssembly lineE2CracksE7Assembly line

Liebig and his colleagues in the analytical laboratory at Giessen. Lithograph after Trautschold. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

05/07Dialogue

Is knowledge what the public lacks?

From remedial lessons to dialogue

In 1985 the Royal Society told scientists to treat communicating with the public as their duty; critics later dubbed this approach “the deficit model”. The problem is not whether ordinary people lack knowledge – on specialist questions their views are indeed often riddled with errors. The problem is treating them as passive ignoramuses, and popular science as something handed down from on high.

After Chernobyl, scientists assured Cumbrian farmers that a three-week ban on selling their sheep would be enough; the restrictions lasted twenty-six years. The scientists had applied the wrong soil model, and had not listened to what the sheep farmers knew about their fells and their flocks. People care about consequences, not about the boundaries of knowledge, and they have every right to “lump science and politics together”. What gets called rumour is often the only voice ordinary people have, and “constructive” ought to be a demand on the listener: when a diner calls out “Too salty!” and the cook uses less salt, the complaint has become constructive.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperIs it knowledge that the public lacks?↘
Asked from elsewhereE5Lab

A shepherd and his dog driving a flock. Etching by Dixey, 1901. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

06/07Return

Has the audience come back?

The audience is coming back

A hundred thousand Galaxy Zoo volunteers classified nearly a million galaxies, and their results matched those of professional astronomers. Foldit players took less than three weeks to model a protease structure that had stumped scientists for years. Competitors in the Vesuvius Challenge read the first word in a carbonized ancient scroll. And in 2026 an amateur, with the help of AI, cracked an Erdős problem that had stood open for sixty years.

Putting the audience at the controls takes design, too. In 2014 more than a million people used Twitch’s chat box to play a single game of Pokémon together. The hero kept getting stuck in corners, going round in circles, and less than a week in, the channel brought in a “democracy mode”: vote first, then act. The audience’s voice should go first into the “atmosphere layer”, for researchers to adopt. Participation can be collective; responsibility must rest with particular people.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperHas the audience come back?↘
Asked from elsewhereMEveryoneE2Channels

A Chemical Lecture at the Surrey Institution. Coloured etching by Rowlandson, 1809. Wellcome Collection · Public domain

07/07Threshold

If everyone can take part, who keeps the gate?

What gets easier is the doing, not the standard

That everyone can take part does not mean everyone gets the final say. The answer is to split the roles, put different people in different positions, and lay down a few rules that everyone must keep. Whether a proof is correct cannot be put to a vote: that is the half Michael Polanyi got right. Whether the shoe pinches is for the wearer to say: that is the half John Dewey got right.

Public participation is not about lowering the threshold but about opening entrances. Nor does decentralization mean flattening: there must be city walls, and gates in them, and thresholds at the gates. Galaxy Zoo showed the way long ago: volunteers did not need to understand galaxy evolution, only to judge what the galaxy in front of them looked like.

Follow-up questions
Read deeperIf anyone can take part, who keeps the gate?↘
Asked from elsewhereMEveryoneE6Fractal

E3The discussion goes on

The discussion goes on

?What is there to watch in other people’s research? Why should the public come back to science?

In February 1856 the Illustrated London News printed a wood engraving: Michael Faraday giving a demonstration at a Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institution in London, his left hand tossing something into the air, with Prince Albert and two of his sons in the front row. Science in those days had an audience. Over the century and more that followed, specialization brought science unprecedented success, but it also turned science into a walled city that most people cannot enter: papers are written for peers, the public stands outside the gates, and the disciplines eye one another across their walls. This essay traces the rise and fall of science’s audience, from anatomy theatres, amateurs and public lectures to the turn towards the “public understanding of science” and the revival of citizen science. My judgement is this: the age of AI offers a chance to bring the audience back and to put the work into amateurs’ hands again – but what should get easier is the doing, not the standard.

Deep readScience’s Audience: Public Participation, Past and Future~7,405 words · 10 questions · 92 sources↗
  1. 1What is there to watch in other people’s research?
  2. 2Who was watching science four hundred years ago?
  3. 3Can amateurs move science forward?
  4. 4How was the public ushered out of the stands?
  5. 5Is it knowledge that the public lacks?
  6. 6Has the audience come back?
  7. 7Why are we laypeople even in the discipline next door?
  8. 8Why does the public matter?
  9. 9Will live streams, games and AI bring the audience back?
  10. 10If anyone can take part, who keeps the gate?

→Questions from here

The follow-up questions left on this page, grouped by the topic they lead to.

←Questions from elsewhere

Questions asked in other topics that lead here. Open one to return to the screen where it was asked.