Sapere aude is an enlightenment motto of rich ambiguity, reminding us of the multiple and to some extent conflicting ideas of enlightenment that made the Enlightenment era so fertile. Because of the ambiguity, the motto is not easily translated from the Latin. Should it be translated into ‘dare to know’? Or should it rather be translated into ‘dare to make use of your own reason’ or just ‘dare to think’?

None of those very different translations – all in use – is false and none is universally correct. They are equally valid. Together, they mark an interpretational space. Daring us to know and to think, the space is useful to reflections and exchanges about how to communicate about science. When should predominantly didactic approaches, in the sense of ‘dare to know’, be used? When would dialectical approaches, in the sense of ‘dare to think’, be more suitable? There is tension between those understandings and approaches, but they are not opposed in a straightforward way. Rather, they are complementary. But we do have to think hard, from one case to another, to strike a proper balance.

Frequently, there is good reason to proceed along predominantly didactic lines, emphasizing the dissemination aspect of science communication, the sheer transportation of scientific knowledge from a group of knowers to others who lack and might benefit from that knowledge. But more and more often, knowledge claims concern huge and inexact societal questions, fraught with the kinds of uncertainty and complexity – including conflicts of interest – that are the hallmark of political issues proper and with ample room for different, reasonable assessments. Science- related public affairs tend to come with such features. Why not, then, proceed along predominantly dialectical lines in those cases?

The introduction of a political category of science communication, stressing the discussion aspect of science communication, would constitute a deviation from mainstream understandings of the mores and means of science communication. Some might even consider it a dangerous deviation and a threat to the authority of science.

Just about a century ago, the concept of technocracy was introduced into the English language as a positive term signifying an orderly society, governed like a well- oiled machine by an elite of technicians. In current European usage, the concept is mostly used as a term of abuse, but the inventor of the term – British- born American engineer William Henry Smyth (1885– 1940) – was blessed with ignorance of that future fact. He introduced the concept into American usage in the wake of the Great War (1914– 18). Calling for ‘a Supreme National Council of Scientists – supreme over all other National Institutions – to advise and instruct us how best to Live, and how most efficiently to realize our Individual and our National Purpose and Ideals’, he described the members of this supreme council as the ‘Managing Directors’ of society.

In the United States, according to Smyth, the war had facilitated the development of a completely new form of government. He called this new form technocracy, defining the meaning of the term as ‘the organizing, co- ordinating and directing through industrial management on a nation- wide scale of the scientific knowledge and practical skill of all the people who could contribute to the accomplishment of a great national purpose’.

Smyth was a visionary. His vision and mission concerned the replacement of politics by scientific management. At the same time, however, he saw himself as a proponent of democracy: ‘Carry this new form of government into the days of peace,’ he argued, ‘and we will have industrial democracy – a new commonwealth.’ Indeed, to his mind, technocracy was similar to ‘rationalized Industrial Democracy’. It would also, as he saw it, be a significant improvement if compared to democracy ‘in the rough’ – that was, in the shape of ‘the rule of the mob, the rule of the masses, the rule of the majority – the rule of un- intelligence’. Humankind, according to Smyth, was driven by ‘the four great human instincts – to live, to make, to take, to control’ and therefore needed a superior technical- scientific intelligence to rule it.

Science communication idea(l)s are also science idea(l)s. They cannot help but be so. Understandings of science communication and the consequent science communication practices are based on assumptions about science and the roles of science and scientists in society. The currently dominant understandings have a built- in aversion to think about and enquire into their underlying assumptions, but it is urgent, this book argues, that we do actually think about and enquire into such basic ideas and that we open them up for inspection, exchange and possible revisions. It is urgent because the mainstream approaches to science communication may serve to inadvertently erode the societal context that facilitated the development of modern science as an intellectual endeavour and without which it may prove increasingly difficult to maintain science in that sense.

Modern science spent significant moments of its infancy in the coffee house atmosphere of the Enlightenment era, in an intellectual climate of commitment to free speech and free enquiry, marked by a vivid engagement with societal issues. A modern public of reasoning citizens, the backbone of any civil society, was beginning to materialize. With their eagerness to exchange opinions and their omnivorous interest in just about everything, they were preparing the ground for the modern democratic institution of public discussion on public affairs. Early modern scientists contributed to, and the development of modern science was nursed and protected by, this liberal and pluralistic intellectual climate. It is a significant component of the luggage of modern science, which could hardly have reached maturity without it. But it is fragile freight, vulnerable in particular to those other elements of historical luggage that originate in religious strife, civil war and a commitment to monistic truth- seeking.

There appear to be no traces of a pluralistic heritage in the dominant science communication paradigm, pursued as a matter of routine by the majority of participants in exchanges on science- related issues. The paradigm focuses on the dissemination of scientific truth- claims but does not know how to deal with disagreement as anything other than disorder, and is impotent when it comes to, or ought to come to, exchanges among different points of view.

Current discussions about science communication and the roles of science in society tend to frame the relationship between (scientific) expert knowledge 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 citizenship 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 opposition 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 consistent 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?

After more than five centuries, Albrecht Dürer's painting Christ among the Doctors is still likely to have an unsettling effect on most intellectuals. Completed in 1506, it is a symbolic representation of a confrontation between good, in the shape of Christ, and evil, in the shape of learned doctors with demonic features. The painting can be seen as a birth declaration of the modern strategy of demonization. It is also a stark reminder of the ambivalence towards learning and knowledge that forms part of the early, intertwined histories of modern Western science and modern Western thought in general. Both features are still with us – a tendency to demonize opponents and an ambivalence towards learning and knowledge. Both hamper the ability of contemporary societies to sustain habits of civilized exchanges about scienceand technology- related issues.

The secularization brought about by the Reformation included a novel leaning towards the demonization of humans. The Devil, who in earlier centuries had been depicted as fantastic and frightening animal hybrids, acquired human forms and faces. Fear and contempt of, for instance, scholastic doctors could now be expressed by demonic representations of them.

The mental climate that accompanied and brought forth the Reformation was marked by a loathing of the Catholic priesthood and scholastic learning. In the 1660s, scholastic learning – taken, it seems, to encompass most of the arts and letters – appears to have been still considered a prime danger and enemy by the founders of the Royal Society, the parent, if ever there was one, of modern science. They challenged the authority of scholastic learning and – carried along by a movement of science enthusiasm – aspired to take its place. That enterprise has been hugely successful.

Today's widespread and forceful institutions of modern science, however, originating in rebellion against former authorities of learning and knowledge, appear to be very much at a loss when it comes to dealing critically with their own current status as knowledge authorities. The identity of modern science is surrounded by ambivalence and tension. There is ambivalence regarding how to deal with critique and critics. Demonization has remained an option.