HowSuperstitionWon and Science Lost is amournful story of decline and fall, a tale in which what was once noble and fine became degraded, debased, and vulgarized. The book is also a cutting critique. John Burnham argues that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries science popularization had an important edifying and uplifting function: to summarize, simplify, and translate science for the literate lay public, to present it as a rational, logic-tested, and satisfying framework for understanding the natural world. The popularizers, who were scientists themselves, saw it as their duty to stamp out error and promote skepticism. By the 1960s, however, scientists had ceded the task of popularizing to journalists and educators, and the form and content of popularization changed accordingly. Now it became the servant of ignorance, presenting context-less and disconnected facts, glorifying technical feats and gee-whiz applications rather than ideas, and quoting authorities rather than providing comprehensible explanations. In its new form, popularized science could not be, and was not, clearly distinguishable from pseudoscience; one isolated fact was as good as any other. Because the public could no longer understand it, science became little better thanmagic. This trivialized version of popularization is what Burnham meant by his broad and pejorative term “superstition.” In its lament for an age gone by, and its assumption that scientific knowledge “diffuses” from the professionals to the masses, Burnham’s book struck me as irredeemably old-fashioned—and more than a touch elitist. How different it was from the histories of popular science that followed just a few years later. In 1990, the sociologist Stephen Hilgartner argued that the diffusionist model—the very model for which Burnham pined, as the original and proper form of popularization—should not be taken for granted or at face value or—even worse—celebrated. Instead of simply accepting this “dominant view of popularization,” Hilgartner urged historians to analyze its political and rhetorical uses. Since science was replete with many different kinds of “popularization”—from lab shoptalk to mass-market magazines—historians needed to examine how scientists strategically drew boundaries between what they considered “appropriate” popularizations, on the one hand, and oversimplified “distortions,” on the other. “Who deploys which labels and when?” Hilgartner asked. “How are these labels used during controversies?”

中文翻译：

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伯纳姆、科普和普及

How SuperstitionWon and Science Lost 是一个关于衰落和衰落的悲惨故事，一个曾经高贵美好的东西被贬低、贬低和庸俗化的故事。这本书也是一个尖锐的批评。约翰·伯纳姆 (John Burnham) 认为，在 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初，科普具有重要的启迪作用：为有文化的普通大众总结、简化和翻译科学，将其呈现为一个理性的、经过逻辑检验的、令人满意的框架以了解自然世界。普及者，他们自己就是科学家，他们认为消除错误和促进怀疑是他们的责任。然而，到了 60 年代，科学家们已经把普及的任务让给了记者和教育工作者，普及的形式和内容也相应发生了变化。现在它变成了无知的仆人，呈现与上下文无关且不连贯的事实，美化技术壮举和令人惊叹的应用而不是想法，并引用权威而不是提供可理解的解释。在其新形式中，大众科学不能也不会与伪科学有明显的区别。一个孤立的事实与其他任何事实一样好。因为公众无法再理解它，科学变得比魔法好不了多少。这种平凡的大众化版本就是伯纳姆所说的“迷信”这个宽泛而贬义的术语。伯纳姆 (Burnham) 的书哀叹逝去的时代，并假设科学知识已从专业人士“传播”到大众，这让我觉得它是无可救药的老式——而且不仅仅是一种触摸精英主义者的感觉。 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 它与几年后的科普史有多么不同。1990 年，社会学家斯蒂芬·希尔加特纳 (Stephen Hilgartner) 认为，传播主义模式——伯纳姆所渴望的模式，作为原始和适当的大众化形式——不应该被视为理所当然或表面价值，或者——更糟糕的是——庆祝。希尔加特纳并没有简单地接受这种“流行的主流观点”，而是敦促历史学家分析其政治和修辞用途。由于科学充满了许多不同类型的“大众化”——从实验室商店谈话到大众市场杂志——历史学家需要研究科学家如何战略性地在他们认为“适当”的大众化和过于简单化的“歪曲、 “ 在另一。“谁在何时部署哪些标签？” 希尔加特纳问道。