Attitudes to science are coloured by a range of factors, of which the
moral crusade against industry in the latter part of the nineteenth ce
ntury has been the most significant. This sets the cultural parameters
within which hostility to industry and technology, and by inference s
cience, is sustained. Within this context changing public perceptions
of science cannot easily be handled. The Public Understanding of Scien
ce movement has concentrated on the content of science and the belief
that good citizenship demands a basic understanding of it. Since scien
ce is a human activity and a central part of our culture, it is the cu
ltural context of science that should provide our starting point. The
Public Understanding of Science should therefore be primarily about he
lping people to decode the culture of science and thus decode the cult
ure within which they live.