FOLK SCIENCE AND SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS: SOME COMMENTS*

Social psychology is a science of culture, and particularly of our culture: it is, or should be, "the anthropology of the modern world. " Thus Moscovici emphasizes the perspective of a social psychology of knowledge which in particular refers to the genesis of folk knowledge in the field of medicine, psychology and sociology. These types of knowledge coexist with scientific knowledge: all cultures possess a folk science or philosophy, a common sense knowledge made of descriptions, explanations and normative elements which derive from tradition and which coexist with scientific information or with popularized elements of science in the construction of every day knowledge. As we know, it is in this transformation of scientific theories into common sense that Moscovici locates the epistemological genesis of Social Representations i tended as " common sense theories about key aspects of the world". He formulated the notion to eluci-date the particular problem of how scientific ideas become represented in "popular consciousness". The relationship between scientific ideas, common sense and social repre