Popular Science as CulturalDispositif: On the German Way of Science Communication in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

ArgumentGerman twentieth-century history is characterized by stark changes in the political system and the momentous consequences of World Wars I and II. However, instead of uncovering specific kinds or periods of “Kaiserreich science,” “Weimar science,” or “Nazi science” together with their public manifestations and in such a way observing a narrow link between popular science and political orders, this paper tries to exhibit some remarkable stability and continuity in popular science on a longer scale. Thanks to the rich German history of scientific leadership in many fields, broad initiatives for science popularization, and a population and economy open to scientific progress, the media offered particularly rich popular science content, which was diversified for various audiences and interests. Closer consideration of the format, genre, quality, and quantity of popular science, and of the uses and value audiences attributed to it, along with their respective evolution, reveals infrastructures underpinning science communication. Rather than dealing with specific discourses, the conditions of science communication are at the center of this article. Therefore I focus on the institutions, rules, laws, and economies related to popular science, as well as on the philosophical, moral, and national propositions related to it, and also on the interactions among this ensemble of rather heterogeneous elements. This approach allows a machinery of popular scientific knowledge to be identified, in Foucauldian terms a dispositif, one which is of a particularly cultural nature.

Beyond propaganda: science coverage in Soviet Estonian media

“…While Rahva Hääl now had more news reporting about latest advances, Horisont had shifted away from the scientific frontiers. While these results partly confirm the changes in media coverage of science as noted by Bauer et al [2006] and Schirrmacher [2013] and can be explained by general stagnation of the society, the difference between 1960s and 1980 in this study is not huge.…”

“…They, as well as Kohring [1997] and Gruhn [1979] highlight the ideological function -legitimizing the leadership, constructing the 'socialist' man, proving the superiority of socialist systems over capitalism and building a harmonious view of the world -as the central factor determining the nature of science coverage. Schirrmacher [2013] concludes that while the pre-war German traditions of popular science survived for some time after the separation of the country into two, the influence of the political order led to the result of the Soviet-style popular science in the GDR becoming stale and implausible, losing its escapist qualities which had allowed readers a break from propaganda. Bauer et al [2006] performed a longitudinal comparative study of the British and Bulgarian science coverage between 1946 and 1995, concluding that the intensity of coverage in both countries experienced identical waves: rising from an after-war low to a peak in the first half of the 1960s, then declining for much of the 1970s and starting a new rise in the 1980s.…”