Current discussions about science communication and the roles of science in society tend to frame the relationship between (scientific) expert know-ledge and (political) democracy as a social issue, or even as a social conflict between scientific experts and so- called ordinary citizens as social groups. As a probably widely unrecognized and unintended consequence of that framing, scientists appear – in their capacity as scientists – to be excluded from the general public, from the citizenry and the civic responsibility that citizenship implies.
In the city states of antiquity, the classical polis, slaves and women were excluded from citizenship, but modern democracies, in principle, grant citi-zenship to all adults. They are all members of the public. Thus, the tendency in the science– society discourse to exclude scientists from the public or to regard them as extraordinary citizens – whatever that might imply – appears as a thought- provoking anomaly: Which assumptions about the general public or citizenry inform the framing that places scientists outside – or even in oppos-ition to – the general public? And, what is understood by citizenship? How, in turn, might such assumptions and understandings have evolved and how do they affect science communication routines and models of thought?
The discursive exclusion of scientists from the general public seems con-sistent with a view of the general public as a social rather than as a political entity. The concept of the citizenry connotes the public as a political entity, composed of co- responsible citizens. The concept of the masses connotes the public as a social entity or group composed of so- called common men. It also presupposes the existence of elites. It makes sense to exclude scientists from the public insofar as science is considered an elite activity and society is perceived in terms of a division between the masses of common (wo)men and – or versus – the elites. Scientists, then, appear as somehow uncommon – or extraordinary – men and women. Are they really? What capacities are ascribed to the supposed masses that make them common? Should scientists be considered to constitute a modern variety of aristocracy? If so, the
relationship between scientists and other citizens is turned into a relationship of rank and status. But that does not tally nicely with the historical identity of modern science.
Nothing much tallies when it comes to those understandings of the modern public that appear to inform widespread science communication practices and the general science– society discourse. The topic is fraught with tensions and contradictory assumptions, some of which may prove self- fulfilling. What goes around comes around. Assumptions about the public – the main topic of this chapter – tend to come with self- fulfilling qualities. Provided with a history of their own, however, such assumptions may be made visible as assumptions rather than as parts of the natural order of things.
The Ancient Idea of the Masses and the Elites
Originating in the Greek term for dough, maza, the term ‘mass’ signifies a shapeless, compact substance, composed of many seemingly similar units that cannot be distinguished from each other. A mass is an object ready to be shaped by somebody.1
When used metaphorically, as in the terminology of the masses of common men and women, the notion of the masses may be used simply as a quantitative term to signify the majority or multitude, or it may be used as a qualitative term, ascribing certain qualities to that multitude. In both cases it is invariably accom-panied by its counterpart – the notion of the elites. The relationship between the masses and the elites is taken to be one of opposition and hierarchy – just waiting to be turned upside down – between a large group of subjects and a smaller group of masters. Each group is characterized by homogenous features. The elites occupy power positions in the economic, political and intel-lectual systems; the masses do not. Although often used in political contexts, the concept of the masses is more easily understood as a social concept in the first place: it presupposes the position of an outside observer to catch sight of the masses who cannot be seen from within by political participants.
Both notions have been significant in modern, Western social thought,2 but are in fact neither particularly modern nor particularly Western. They can be seen as pre- modern exemplars of social categories or groups.
The idea that members of a society are divided into the masses and the elites has been influential also in pre- modern times3 and in non- Western cultures. Thus, the assumed dichotomy of the masses versus the elites has been influential not only in the histories of mainly Christian cultures but also in Islam4 – and in social science. It is incompatible, however, with understandings of citizenship that use the classical Aristotelian notion of the citizen as their point of departure.
Citizens, in the latter interpretation, were defined by political equality with other citizens. They were co- responsible peers, had no masters among them and no subjects. Indeed, politics was defined by being liberated from the masters versus subjects relationships that were abundant in households.
All citizens were supposed to have an equal say in public matters and to carry their share of political and administrative obligations. Together, they constituted the koinonia politike, in Greek, or the societas civilis, in Latin – a civil society.5 But citizenship was not for all.
While gradually extending citizenship to include, in principle, all adult inhabitants of a state, modern democracies have maintained an affinity for the ideal of citizens as political equals. At the same time, the extension of citizenship has been accompanied by long- standing habits of political, social and economic inequality dating back to medieval understandings of the hier-archical order of societies. In practice, ingrained social prejudices and status schemes have affected modern understandings of citizenship and the citizenry or public.
Different Western cultures have proceeded along somewhat different lines,6 but all have been influenced by the fact that, increasingly, modern societies have acquired the features of economies. Gradually, thus, the logic of the household – oikos in Greek, the root of ‘economy’ as a term – has become dominant. In classical political thought, the household was seen as the very seat of inequality and the hierarchical exercise of power. The idea(l) of citi-zens as political equals constituted a countermeasure to the logic of the households. In modern societies – or economies – assumptions about masters versus subjects relationships have become staples of political thought, and understandings of the public as the people ‘in contrast with those who govern them’ have become commonplace.7 Even in political life, social concepts, referring to status relations, have come to prevail.
In English, the notion of citizen – defined in the General English Dictionary from 1740 as a ‘freeman or inhabitant of a city’8 – gradually lost out to the notion of commoners, defined by their (lack of) financial capacities.9 During the nineteenth century, then, the notion of the middle classes gained momentum as a term for those commoners who did not belong to the working classes but were ascribed a capacity for social ascent if sufficiently ambitious. Connected to ideals of industry and education, the terminology of the middle classes formed part of a conceptual cluster that also included commitment to modern science, to progress and to manufacturing and trade.10
Social concepts such as the middle classes, share their focus on status relations with the notions of the masses and the elites and introduce a tension with the idea(l) of citizens as political equals.11 That tension, in turn, is cru-cial to reflections on the potential audiences of or participants in science
communication. Who should be addressed – the public perceived as a mass- audience or the public perceived as co- responsible citizens?
The idea of the masses, it should be kept in mind, is based on assumptions about their ignorance and lack of intellectual capacity and, thus, their sup-posedly severely restricted ability to understand complicated issues. Such assumptions, of course, hamper public exchanges on science- related political issues as well as political communication in more general terms. Used as the point of departure for appeals to the general public they may become self- fulfilling and call forth precisely those qualities they are addressing. Because of their potentially far- reaching consequences, next I look into the assumptions and their backgrounds in some detail.
Of particular topicality to science is the fact that it has never been obvious where to place science and scientists. Should science be connected to the masses or to the elites? Historically, modern science has been tied to democ-racy, to popular rule. The tendency, however, to discursively separate scientists from the public or the citizenry at large indicates that scientists are perceived as an elite group. Individual scientists and groups of scientists identify dif-ferently. As an institution, science has never really made up its mind. There is ambiguity and tension. Considering the significance – to science commu-nication and in the social sciences – of the view that society is composed of the masses and the elites confronting each other, the ambiguity gives food for thought. Why is it that science is linked, at the same time, both to the masses and the elites?
There might not be any sensible answer to the question of whether science rightly belongs with the masses or the elites. Maybe it is simply not a sens-ible question to ask. Maybe it does not make sense at all to tie science, as a body of knowledge and rational methodology and as an intellectual enter-prise, to social categories. Maybe these kinds of connections serve merely to reinforce social prejudices and to lead exchanges about science- related issues astray, diverting attention from the substance of issues. It is no law of nature that scientific and other intellectual activities, such as science communication, must be perceived as expressions of social relations. It is perfectly possible to understand them simply as intellectual activities of enquiry. As it is, how-ever, the dominant models of thought on science communication are heavily influenced by the idea that society is composed by the social categories of the masses and the elites.
The modern inversion of the ancient idea
There is, as noted, nothing particularly modern or Western about the view that society is composed of masses and elites, but an evaluative change gained
momentum in the West from the late eighteenth century onwards. Closely tied to what has aptly been termed ‘the invention of the people’12 a positive ation of the supposed masses was substituted for the hitherto negative valu-ation. A normative inversion occurred, maintaining widespread assumptions about the qualities of the masses, but normatively standing them on their heads. The terminology of the people and the common man converted the supposed masses into an object of worship rather than of contempt. The basic assumptions, however, were left unchanged.
Of specific relevance to our issue is the fact that assumptions about wide-spread ignorance and lack of intellectual capacity in the supposed masses were upheld but romanticized or sentimentalized. An intuitive wisdom – or a capacity for gut feeling, originating in inherent moral qualities – was ascribed to the masses of the people. Wit, on the other hand, had for some time been connected to academic schoolmen and other repressive elites and had experienced a decline as a term of praise.13
Critical enquiries into the notion of the masses as a qualitative term have connected it to a kind of person – that has come to be, or to be perceived to be, common – who is motivated primarily by the immediate prospects of pain, pleasure and gain; who is caught up in concerns with his or her private affairs;
and who is highly emotional, easily manipulated and disinclined to engage in any kind of abstract thinking.14 Positive valuations of such assumed qualities have been using instead a vocabulary that emphasizes warm- heartedness, the ability to be present here and now (as opposed to the past and the future and to faraway places) and a capacity for close relations and community building.
Core features of the idea of the masses – lack of power, personal distinction and intellectual inclinations – in short, remained constant, but were increas-ingly seen as positive and virtuous rather than negative, by liberal and socialist thinkers alike.
A positive valuation of the masses became manifest during and in the wake of the American War of Independence and has been connected to a wave of fascination with quantitative knowledge – an early data craze, if you like.
According to historian Gordon S. Wood, it became fashionable to establish collections of facts, and
[p] eople now [in the early nineteenth century] described society more and more as a ‘mass’ and for the first time began using this term in reference to ‘almost innumerable wills’ in a positive, nonpejorative sense. The individual was weak and blind, said George Bancroft15 in a common reckoning, but the mass of people was strong and wise. From all this followed, too, a new appreciation of statistics: in 1803 the word
‘statisticks’ first appeared in American dictionaries.16
Snapshot V Cutting the Earthly Chains
Combining drama and meta- religious connotations, visions of cutting the earthly chains, of liberation from limitations and uncertainties relating to space and time, body and mortality are typical themes of literary science fiction, of missionary science communication and some-times of PR exercises by scientific institutions. One of the reasons, for instance, for NASA’s financial support of the 2015 science fiction film The Martian was, it has been noted, that the film would make ‘NASA look awesome, and a mission to Mars real’. The themes include space travel and human colonization of outer space as well as the production of humanoid robots and new human or post- human master races with strongly increased capabilities.
Such visions, some of them older than modern science, have been one of its companions from its early days. And at least one of them has suffered from its realization by way of scientific and technological devel-opment. For ages, Ars volare, the art of flying, was envisioned in narratives, and there appears to have been no end to the awe caused by the ascent of the first manned balloon in Paris in November 1783. A contemporary report described it as ‘the most astounding achievement the science of physics has yet given to the world’ and observed that the crowd gathered to follow the experiment was composed of ‘[t] wo hundred thousand men, lifting their hands in wonder, admiring, glad, astonished; some in tears for fear the intrepid physicists should come to harm, some on their knees overcome with emotion, but all following the aeronauts in spirit’.
When aeroplanes were actually developed and put into extensive use, and human beings did not seem to change fundamentally, Ars volare disappeared from the repertoire of visions connected to the ultimate liberation of humankind by science. Roughly since the 1950s, space travel – recently supplemented by virtual reality – has taken the place formerly occupied by the art of flying.
The textual snapshot about cutting the earthly chains is a modified excerpt from Gitte Meyer, ‘Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: The Shared Features of Awe and Fascination and Their Significance to Ideas of Science Fictions as Vehicles for Critical Debate about Scientific Enterprises and Their Ethical Implications’. It refers to Ryan Bradley, ‘Why NASA Helped Ridley Scott Create “The Martian” Film’ for the statement about NASA’s support for a science fiction movie and to Martin Schwonke, Vom Staatsroman zur Science Fiction: Eine Untersuchung über Geschichte und Funktion der naturwissenschaftlich- technischen Utopie for the notion of ars volare. The descriptions of the first manned balloon flight in Paris were quoted by Robert Tavernor, Smoot’s Ear: The Measure of Humanity, 177, 116.
On the assumption that quantitative knowledge – like the marketplace – was accessible to all, such knowledge was increasingly linked to democracy and the positive idea of the common man.17 Gradually, the popular and the commer-cial became almost synonymous terms, while the intellectual – as connected to learning and leisure – came to be seen as the elitist opposite of the popular.18
The view that society is divided into the masses and the elites has remained a premise of social thought and continues to give rise to conflicting interpret-ations and valuinterpret-ations. The notion of the masses – and, thereby, the assumed dichotomy that it forms part of – is a contested concept19 and even those who adopt it as a model for thought disagree on its possible connections to, for instance, the notions of mobs and crowds and the concept of civilization.
Leisure, learning and social distinction
An acute awareness of their own frailty is characteristic of modern civilizations.
The fear of barbarism is never far away. At the same time, there is disagree-ment on the very definition of civilization and barbarism, respectively, and how they may be linked to the masses or to the idea of the masses. To some, civilization is an outcome of a mass society. To others, barbarism is an out-come of a mass society. Both understandings tend to be rather intimately tied to understandings of science, viewed, in the most extreme versions, as the highest form of civilization or as an expression of modern barbarism.
French sociologist Gustave le Bon (1841– 1931) carried out an early attempt to explore mass societies in a scholarly fashion. He published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind in 1896. Since then, many have followed in his wake, but the overall understandings of and approaches to mass communication that he espoused have remained remarkably stable and now seem to constitute a tradition of modernity.20
Le Bon, like many others, was fascinated by the phenomenon of crowds and, apparently, took them to be an expression of strong natural forces. Also like many others, he evidently found it difficult to distinguish between masses, crowds and, for that matter, mobs. He appears to have been using the notions intermittently and did not even distinguish between a crowd gathering spon-taneously in the street and deliberative assemblies such as parliaments or juries.
To all such groups he attributed an ‘extreme mental inferiority’, connected, as he saw it, to the unconscious – ‘the genius of crowds’– as opposed to the faculty of reasoning.21
In the introduction, he connected ‘the era of crowds’ to ‘the creation of entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern sci-entific and industrial discoveries’. He also disclosed his position concerning the relationships between crowds, civilization and barbarism. Although operating
with the possibility that crowds might be ‘virtuous and heroic’ it was his
with the possibility that crowds might be ‘virtuous and heroic’ it was his