PEOPLES ATTITUDE TO SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE - THE CONTEXT OF CULTURE

Formal education, cultural practices, profession, etc., play a decisiv e role in shaping peoples' attitude as well as understanding, and is r eflected while responding to scientific or natural phenomena. In order to measure the scientific knowledge base of the people and its likely determinants the data were collected during two surveys on peoples' u nderstanding of science: one was conducted at Allahabad at the time of Kumbh Mela in 1989, and another administered at Mangolpuri, a resettl ement colony of Delhi. The present paper, in addition to discussing de tails of the characteristics of the sampled population in respect of e ducation, gender, occupation, and peoples' cultural interest, also att empts to locate respondents' attitude to scientific knowledge within t he system of cultural practices and occupation of the population sampl ed during the surveys. The analysis reveals that factors such as the d egree of complexity, counter-intuitive or mathematically obtuse explan ation required to unfold the life cycle of phenomenon, frequency of oc currence of episodes, the intensity with which a phenomenon intervenes in the lives of the population, the degree of collective or individua l control which the respondents could exercise in this process of inte rvention, influence the perception of the people.