TITLE Public Understanding of Science as Seen by the Scientific Community: Do We Need To Re-Conceptualize the Challenge and To Re-Examine Our Own

This paper addresses the question of how the scientific community views the public understanding of science and whether there needs to be a re-conceptualization of the challenge to foster the public understanding of science, as well as whether there is a need to re-examine assumptions. It is argued that the science community's historic perspective on the public is grounded in the legitimate interests of science, but that the promotion of the public understanding of science needs to be grounded in its legitimate interests in science. Topics covered include: (1) A Celebration of Science, which discusses angst in the scientific community and heroic stories of scientific investigations; (2) Anti-Science Sentiment, a phenomenon of the last 20 years; (3) Scientific Positivism, which roughly represents a classical view of realism, philosophical materialism, strict objectivity, and hypothetico-deductive method