SIMPLICITY IN SCIENCE AND ITS PUBLICS

It seems to be a widely held belief that there is a historical change occurring in the relationship between science and its public (Gib-bons et al., 1994). According to the modernist `canonical ’ model, science was leading a life of its own, sheltered from the exigencies of public life and accountability (as expressed, for example, by Ben-David, 1971). This was thought to be a precondition for preventing reliable knowledge from being compromised by public concerns. Before the advent of modern science proper, public concerns `could in ¯ uence not only the direction of scienti ® c work but also, at times, the content of scienti ® c knowledge ’ (Shapin, 1990, p. 991). Gener-ally, the assumption is that it is only recently, with shrinking budgets and funding pressures, that scientists have tried to address an audience broader than their peers. Before that, a high level of funding for science was taken for granted. The legitimation of science derived from its supposed utility, i.e. from pure science ’ s ultimate delivery of applied science, technologies and economic bene ® ts: `In a democratic society, the state was justi ® ed in spending public money on these grounds and on no others ’ (Shapin, 1990, p. 1004).1 It seems that in the recent past, scientists have come to take pains to convince funding agencies of the utility of their work: they popularize their ® ndings in order to maintain public funding or to attract private ® nancial sources (Gus