Public Understanding of Science in Complex Cultural Structures

Abstract

The paper discusses and presents the comparative results of large scale surveys, on public attitude towards and understanding of science, conducted in India, in 1989, 1990, 1995, and in Nepal, in 1996. The populace was probed through open-ended questionnaires on four different areas of knowledge viz. ‘‘astronomy and cosmology’’, ‘‘geography’’, ‘‘agricultural practices’’, and ‘‘health and hygiene’’. The response behaviour of the respondents suggests that the receptivity and the retention of scientific information within peoples' structures of thinking reduces, as the distance of a scientific area, phenomena or experiential episode increases. The intrusion of modern technologies in the peoples’ lives and education have a bearing on the peoples’ structure of thinking.