Artigos de Divulgação
	CULTURE AND PLEASURE: THE PLACE OF SCIENCE

(Published at Ciência e Cultura, v. 51, # 1, January/February 1999)

Cultural activities — science, art, sports and religion — are social discourses having a non-utilitarian character, based on the principle of pleasure. By emphasising that science is also a cultural practice, the role played by it in the scope of culture, as a hedonic activity, opposing the utilitarian, pragmatic conception of science, in force nowadays, is discussed. Finally, the paths through which science can follow its public vocation and more directly attend the society that has instituted it and which it should ultimately serve are analysed.

What distinguishes man from other animals is his ability to transform nature according to his intelligence and will. In other words, man, unlike the other species living on the planet, is basically a cultural being. However, when it comes to talk about culture, a fundamental distinction between two different, although semantically related, acceptions of this word, culture soon comes into the scene: in a broader sense, whatever man has added to nature, through his transformative labour, belongs to the universe of culture, that is, all that, in man, is not an exclusive product of biological instinct and genetical inheritance. In this sense, all the human activities (hunting, farming, handicraft, industry, trade, communications, transportation, politics, war, etc.) are cultural activities. One can then assess the degree of civilisation of a society at a given moment of its history through its cultural manifestations, represented by all these activities. Now in a stricter sense, the term culture is used to designate some activities of the human being which presuppose a specific learning and which, consequently, produce a fund of knowledge that can be transmitted from generation to generation.

If we take the set of all human activities of non-instinctive character, we will have what is called culture in a wide sense (culture lato sensu). These activities can be divided, in a first approach, into five main categories: science, art, sports, religion, and technique. Examples of scientific activities include physics, chemistry, biology, history, philosophy, sociology, etc. As examples of artistic activities we have literature, music, fine arts, theatre, cinema, etc. Sporting activities include football, basketball, car-racing, gymnastics, athletics, swimming, mountain-climbing, etc. Amongst religions we have the Christianity, the Islam, the Judaism, the Buddhism, etc. Under the category technique we have included the rest of the human activities: applied sciences and technologies (engineering, medicine, law, journalism, management, etc.), applied arts (architecture, cookery, couture, hairdressing, jewellery, handicraft, etc.), applied sports (all physical activities not aiming at competition, but physical trimming or the improvement of health conditions, as in the case of fitness, water-gymnastics, etc.), applied religion, that is, divinatory practices (astrology, fortune-telling, etc.) and magical practices (spiritual healing, quackery, sorcery, etc.), teaching in general (science-teaching, art-teaching, sports-teaching, religious teaching, technical and professionalising teaching, etc.), military and paramilitary professions (army, navy, air force, police, etc.), politics, medium-level specialised professions (clerk, secretary, translator, etc.), basic level specialised professions (cabinet maker, car mechanic, driver, etc.), non-specialised and hand professions, and many other activities.

All the aforementioned activities can, on the other hand, be classified into two basic groups: activities aiming at the satisfaction of material needs of the human being, which will be called utilitarian activities, and activities aiming at obtaining pleasure, which will be called hedonic activities. Note that the utilitarian activities are means-activities, existing to assure the survival and life quality of the human being, as well as to provide the necessary infrastructure for the performance of hedonic activities. These latter, in their turn, are activities having an end in themselves, whence comes the conclusion, in the wake of Epicurus, that the ultimate aim of human activity and, even, existence is the search for pleasure. The hedonic activities correspond to what can be called culture stricto sensu.

In this paper, we seek to analyse more closely the cultural activities stricto sensu, regarded as social practices of eminently semiotic character, that is, begetting cultural goods characterised as social, verbal or non-verbal, discourses. Fundamentally being discourses, the objects produced by these practices have an abstract and non-utilitarian character, that is, not aiming at the supply of material needs. Because they are social discourses, such objects are conceived to be public, i.e., addressed to the community. I will try in a first moment to analyse the way of being and common features of these activities, in order to focus, at a second moment, more particularly science, discussing how, more than public, it can be a “popular” activity.

Utilitarian versus cultural activities

All the human activities, regarded as social practices, are destined to the usufruct of the community and have therefore a “clientele” formed by the very members of the society. Thus, the clients of industry are the consumers of its products; the clients of trade are its customers; the clients of a doctor are his patients, and so on. However, some activities aim at serving a very peculiar kind of clientele, which can be called public. Public is conceived as a clientele consuming a special sort of good, namely discourses. On the other hand, social goods can have two aims: the satisfaction of material needs of the human being, such as physical survival, the solution of practical problems of everyday life, search for protection, health, locomotion, comfort, etc., or the satisfaction of needs that could be called “spiritual”, as amusement, leisure, peace of mind, etc. It can then be said that the technical activities, which aim at supplying practical, material needs, are utilitarian activities, whereas cultural activities are those satisfying the needs of spirit.

Every activity producing and manipulating social discourses is a public one, but in order to be a cultural activity, in the strict sense of the word, it is necessary that such discourses not be destined to practical aims, as for example in the case of journalism and education, but to feeding spirit. In this sense, art, religion and sports are, no doubt, cultural activities. What about science? Isn’t it a legitimately cultural activity as well, much more than a utilitarian activity? This is what will be discussed further on.

Art, science, religion and sports: readings of the world

All four social practices focused on here are public ones, in the sense referred to above, since they consist of producing discourses destined to the mass, even though the social range of each of them may be sensitively different. In a more in-depth analysis, one can say that science, art, sports and even religion constitute systems of interpretation and understanding of the world by the human being. They are all languages, in the broadest sense of the term, created to take account of human experience. Opposite to the utilitarian activities, which aim at the performance of practical tasks, cultural activities have an eminently “contemplative” purpose: they are attempts to explain the phenomena of the physical and human universe through different perspectives.

Thus, art seeks to explain and understand both the natural and the social reality by means of the imitation of this reality itself. The artist must represent through the signs of the several languages (words, images, sounds, gestures, etc.), in a more or less verisimilar way, the surrounding nature, trying to explain the world by the way of symbolic representation. The work of art is, therefore, a message codified in a particular semiotic system, whose function is to produce a “sensitive” reading of the world. It is a reading achieved by senses, and filtered by emotion.

Science searches for the description and explanation of the facts of the natural and human world through logic: it is a rational attempt to create abstract models, equally verisimilar, of the objects and phenomena of reality. Science seeks to build a comprehensible, logically articulated, temporally cumulative knowledge, which, following the example of art, begins by the sensorial perception, but, unlike it, is processed by reason.

Religion also presents us a reading of the world, but made through the filter of intuition and faith. The mystical discourse does not aim at building knowledge, but at establishing a belief, founded on transcendence. Religion re-links man to divinity, by the communion of consciousness.
Finally, sports aim at bodily and mental harmonisation of the human being with nature. At the sport practice, nature is imitated by man through the search of a limit to be surpassed (either, for instance, defeating an opponent, breaking a record or escalating a not yet climbed mountain). Sports are the material link between the human being and the natural world; they are the symbolic representation of the mastery of man over nature and over himself.

What distinguishes science, art and sports from religion is the dynamic character of the former in view of the static character of the latter. In fact, new scientific theories and works of art appear every time; likewise, a sporting event never repeats itself. It is possible to say then that these three activities are ruled by the basic principle of creation: the scientist, the artist and the sportsman are creators, in the widest sense of the term. On the other hand, religious practice consists of the spatial diffusion and transmission from one generation to another of a doctrine that remains unchanged along time. Thus, the preacher only interprets doctrine, he does not create it. For the same reason, different currents of scientific thought, as well as different aesthetic schools, follow one another through time, but ideological renewals in the sphere of religion are a rare and exceptional phenomenon.

Besides, science, art and sports, contrarily to the utilitarian jobs, are basically founded on the principle of pleasure. This means that man does not make art, science or does sports because he needs to, but because he wants and likes to do it. In a certain way, also the religious practice is ruled rather by will than by need. But in this case it is not possible to speak properly of pleasure, for the will leading to the religious practice is not individual, but collective. Whereas practical activities aim at the satisfaction of needs mostly related to the very survival of the individual or the social group, scientific, artistic or sporting activities aim at the satisfaction of the ego, function by the way not less important to man’s well-being. This does not mean that other jobs do not require a deal of pleasure or talent, for it is well known that any task that one devotes to is better performed if one is willingly to perform it; furthermore if one has some talent to do it. Yet, pleasure and talent are not determining factors or basic requirements to practicing most professions. In this sense, the scientific career, the artistic and the sporting careers, as well as in this case also the religious one, are vocational careers, destined to rather peculiar individuals, shaped for this “sacerdocy”. It is above all in the scientific, artistic and sporting activities that great geniuses are revealed (only exceptionally one hears about geniuses of politics, industry or trade, for example), maybe because it is exactly at the instance of creation, rather than achievement, that superior intelligence manifests.

Thus, what leads the artist to use a special language to describe the world is the search for an egolatrous pleasure. The artist re-creates — literally creates again — in his work God’s work. The artist feels almost like an almighty creating god when he imitates the real Creator. The keywords of the artistic activity are creation and creativity. The objective of every art is the creation of a new, unknown and surprising message, able to reveal unsuspected nuances of the world around us. The motor of creation is exactly creativity, capability to create, to give birth, to extract the new from the old, to achieve new combinations and new arrangements of symbolic elements already known.

Likewise, what moves the scientist to research how and why things are as they are is an equally egolatrous feeling, a desire of feeling like God, when unveiling how the Universe works and how it has been created. The keywords of science are discovery and curiosity. The goal of scientific investigation is the revelation of “truth”, allegedly existing, that is, the exhibition to light of the hidden entrails of nature. It is exactly because this truth is unattainable that science does not come to exhaustion. Science seems to come closer and closer to it without ever reaching it. Therefore, every scientific truth is always a temporary truth. The search for this truth is caused by the pleasure of satisfying curiosity.

The sportsman, in his turn, imitates God by trying to overpass the limits imposed by nature. The keyword of sport is competition. The sporting pleasure comes from the search for victory, the obsession for perfection, the triumph upon nature and other men by employing strength and intelligence.

It can soon be noticed that science and art have in common the production of works codified in language and destined to the understanding. Thus, both the scientist and the artist can be regarded as intellectuals, that is, as professionals of thinking. The vehicle of science is the verbal code and formal languages, whereas art uses various forms of language, as seen above. Sport consists of a fundamentally gestic language, in which body attitudes are ordered, complying with certain rules, to reach a result. Although they are also a kind of language, sports do not produce material texts, i.e., works which can be registered in a durable, permanent way, such as books, pictures, records, etc. (unless we consider the TV-recording of sporting events as a document, which is not, anyway, customarily traded as a cultural good as books, pictures and records are). On the other hand, arts and sports have in common being both forms of entertainment. In fact, people attend sporting events for the same reason why they go to the movies, to the theatre, to concerts, listen to music or read fiction books: searching for amusement, that is, pleasure.

Sports provide a form of pleasure based on supporting an athlete or team, what means wishing that one’s favourite sportsman or association win a competition. Such a support is, no doubt, a form of catharsis, where the rooter projects on the sportsman or team his own wishes. In this way, the competition assumes a strong symbolic character, in which the conflicts of life themselves are represented. One can then say that sport consists of searching for a ludical pleasure, the pleasure of playing games, where competition, the challenge of overcoming an obstacle by means of the use of a specific ability and compliance with certain pre-established rules, is always present.

In art, pleasure is aesthetic. Art seeks to cause sensorial pleasure through the search for beautiful, sublime, extraordinary, plurisignificant. Catharsis in art takes place by the projection of the watcher on characters, or by the imaginary “trip” that one can undertake rocked by sounds, images and words.

As can be seen, arts and sports deal directly with people’s emotions, and they are responsible for real phenomena of mass gathering, as in the case of soccer games or rock concerts, that crowds stadiums. These collective manifestations have the power to often lead the spectators into a state of real euphoria. In this aspect, also religion acts on the emotional side of people, by operating a catharsis on mind and spirit. In many religions, the faithful are also led into a euphoric state, which many times can verge on collective hysteria. Anyone who has ever watched certain evangelical cults knows it very well. Because they deal with the emotional aspect of the human being, certain artistic and sporting practices lead to a worship of personality, where the artist or athlete is raised to the condition of popular idol and object of consumption. In religion, the worship of personality usually leads to the blind adoration of certain religious leaders.

But, what about science? What place is reserved to it amongst hedonic activities?

A possible definition of science, presently accepted, is: a process of search for truth and building of knowledge, for the improvement of life conditions of man. But the improvement of life conditions of man is not necessarily an exclusively material improvement. Science should also provide spiritual well-being, open up the human mind to new realities and new visions of the dynamics of existence itself, and this is maybe its main mission. In other words, science does not only exist in function of its possible technological applications, but above all to satisfy the thirst for knowledge of the human being. In fact, the great source of anguish of man since the early times has been facing a world full of mysteries that seem to be beyond his capability of understanding. Let us recall that science, as well as religion, has appeared exactly to search for answers to the number of questions that man ceaselessly poses himself. For this reason, the major function of science is the search for knowledge, which serves first of all to the satisfaction of the insatiable human curiosity, and, secondly, to the satisfaction of his material needs.
Thus, science, as well as art and sports, has a strong hedonic character: the search for pleasure, the satisfaction of a spiritual need rather than a bodily one. Being a social discourse, and having a hedonic, rather than pragmatic, nature, science is, therefore, and legitimately, a cultural activity. Notwithstanding, nowadays the scientific activity is associated with the search for solutions to problems of practical order. The primary objective of science today seems then to be the discovery of theories applicable to the generation of technological know-how. Science and technology are dialectically articulated in a constant feed-and-feedback process, in which scientific theories are tested by the various techniques, and thus confirmed or denied. When denied, they return to the scientist to be reformulated. Yet, this “utilitaristic” conception of science has not always prevailed. Historically, science has appeared having an end in itself, being an activity much more related to culture than to economy or politics, although not seldom has it been seduced by the political or economic power. This original vocation of science, as it seems, is far from being sepulchred.

Science: need or pleasure?

About the primordial role played by science, it is interesting to listen to what Malmberg says:

Every scientific research is based, after all, on man’s need to see more neatly what concerns to him and the world he lives in. The issues about practical applicability or utility of the results of this research stand off its authentic sphere of interest. Even if all our material progress is, at last, a consequence of scientific researches, progress itself, yet, has never been nor can be the main goal of research. The hunger for knowing — the curiosity, if one prefers — are inherent to man. Every time that other forces intended to decide the sense of research and influence its results — I think in a particular way of political pressures — science trod out bad ways, betraying its ideals and even reaching failure. It is necessary to point out that dangers of this gender are not exclusive of dictatorial regimes but they also exist in a democratic state structure: the need for economic support can determine a serious dependence on political power. Both researchers and governors should be conscious of this danger.

Moreover, it is convenient to remember here that also art, sports and religion have been, all along history, allured by certain political regimes or economic groups.

Above all since the emergence of bourgeois society, science has started to be co-opted by the economic power. The Renaissance wise, skilled in all the areas of knowledge, has been replaced with the highly specialised researcher, having a more and more profound and less and less extended knowledge, as required by the very increase in scientific information, typical of our age. The university has then become the laboratory of development of new technologies, serving both industry and the state. At the bourgeois university, basic science is only justified through its counterpart, that is, applied science. Heir of the 19th century’s positivism, this utilitarian conception of science has relegated basic research to a second plane, harnessing it to political and economic interests.

Another corollary factor of this attitude is the elitisation of knowledge and its consequent use as a form of domination. In the present world, who has information has the power. Yet, if this elitised knowledge interests the holders of political or economic power, it is silly to believe that scientists can be benefited from this process. Strictly speaking, the loss of intellectual freedom and submission of research to guidelines strange to the scientific spirit itself do not find its counterpart in terms of financial gains or prestige. Intellectuals just end up isolated, as if they were in an ivory tower, unattainable from the top of their wisdom, disconnected with the social context and, above all, not understood by the community in whose benefit the scientific activity is justified.

On the other hand, we should remember as well that many forms of art have not only an aesthetic objective, but also, and especially, a practical aim. For instance, if in music the aesthetic function is practically the only existing one, in architecture this function is important, but minor, for the main purpose of an architectural work is its practical use, especially if we think of the so-called functional architecture. Thus, architecture, couture, hairdressing, cuisine, among others, are forms of art which aim, besides pleasure, at the satisfaction of practical needs of man (dwelling, dressing, nourishment, etc.). Likewise, sporting practice is many times used as a form of military training, therapy, or even as a test laboratory of industry (think, for example, of the technological development provided by Formula 1 races to the manufacturing of passenger cars).

In the same way, there are more hedonic or more utilitarian sciences. Economics and chemistry, for example, seem to be completely utilitarian sciences: in fact, it does not seem us that somebody reads articles on economy or attends lectures by economists for pleasure, but because of a professional need or financial interest. The knowledge produced by economics is almost all directed to applications in management, both public and private, besides contributing to the comprehension of phenomena related to sciences like sociology and anthropology. Chemistry, in its turn, provides elements for studies in other disciplines such as physics and biology and, in addition, it generates technology by means of the creation of new chemical substances and compounds which are destined for industrial, medical and domestic applications. Now philosophy seems to have no practical utility or technological application, so much so that Italians have even jokingly defined it as “la scienza con la quale o senza la quale il mondo rimane tale e quale” (the science with or without which the world remains the same). Jokes apart, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, philosophy is often seen as a useless science, a “perfumery item”. I believe the valoration criterion of science should be all other: if one accepts the hedonic function to be as important as the pragmatic one, then the wider and more universal the object of study of a science is, that is, the more directly this object regards the essence of the universe, life and the human being, then the “nobler” this science is. From this point of view, philosophy is, no doubt, one of the noblest intellectual activities of man.

Between the extremes of philosophy and chemistry or economics, we evidently have intermediate positions, i.e., sciences with a strong hedonic charge, but also susceptible of rendering services of utilitarian nature. Thus, for example, physics satisfy our curiosity about the origin and functioning of the universe, as well as it allows the development of technologies, especially in the sphere of industry. Likewise, history fascinates us as an epic narrative of our past, as well as it provides behaviour models to the society so as to build a citizenship. Therefore, any conception of science, art or sport that limits these practices to one unique purpose is incontestably a reducing one.

Thus, if it is true that in the sphere of applied science a practical end is always the reason for research itself, so much that it is usually carried out at the request of industries, pharmaceutical laboratories, governments, etc., always this is not valid in basic science. In fact, most theoretical scientists are able to spend years of their lives leaning on a certain problem, without necessarily getting a glimpse of any practical application for the theory they might extract from there. Even many scientists do not have any technological vocation. So, what leads them to devote themselves obstinately to their researches is simply curiosity. For no other reason have men started since the early times to watch stars, to scrutinise the microscopic world, to dissect animals and plants, to reflect about life in society, about the functioning of mind, about existence after all. Of course, the knowledge thus obtained finds practical applications sooner or later, but when a certain theory will find its use in industry, in medicine, in education, and what this use will be, are usually unpredictable facts at the time of discovery. So it is necessary to eliminate the immediate mentality that characterises our civilisation: of course, cultural activities, including science, do not bring short-term financial return, but if we banished culture from our everyday life and consecrated ourselves exclusively to utilitaristic, i.e., “profitable” activities, our society would soon turn to a real chaos, and humanity would be nothing more than a horde fighting roughly for subsistence. There can and must be room for uninterested culture, exactly as a form of preserving our own social sanity.

Therefore, what determines man’s obsession for knowledge is the search for an intellective pleasure, the satisfaction of his huge curiosity. If to the United States government, for example, the conquest of the outer space stood for a form of affirmation of their supremacy, above all in view of the increasing power of the Soviet Union, as well as a test laboratory of technologies potentially employable in the sphere of war, to the American people, who afforded by means of taxes most of the project, the curiosity about the universe around us alone justified the investment. For no other reason sound pieces of equipment are sent today to research the surface of other planets of the Solar System, as well as enormous radio transceivers are built expecting to make contact with possible extraterrestrial civilisations. If, for example, the main reason of astronomy were its practical application in guiding navigators, astronomic researches would not have been undertaken anymore since a long time ago, for an absolute exhaustion of their utility. Likewise, it is no possibility of technological generation what justifies archaeological research: in fact, in what manner would knowing the way of life of our ancestors over 3,000 years ago affect our current way of life? In all these examples, and even in many others, the main propelling element of scientific research is the simple human curiosity. And it is exactly this curiosity, the search, as said before, for an intellective pleasure, what makes science a sort of entertainment as well.

For example, the book A brief history of time, by Stephen Hawking, is one of nowadays’ best-sellers and it is evident that its readers are not all physicists, astronomers or engineers. If this were the case, its sales would be derisory. The same could be said about Carl Sagan’s books. In fact, many people — maybe most of them — do not go to courses, attend lectures or read science books properly because of a professional need, but simply to take delight. Today proliferate workshops and symposia about the most various themes, to which a multitude of lay persons, eager for knowledge, rush. Subjects range from the origin of the universe to the mind power, making through the existence of flying saucers or life after death, or even the attainment of personal success by means of the use of autosuggestive techniques. Even if in certain cases the search for information is the most important aspect of the demand for scientific events, as happens about informative lectures about AIDS, for instance, it is important to emphasise that scientific divulgation almost always offers the possibility to be a show, in the sense of an event of public interest, comparable then to an artistic exhibition or sporting event. It is important, here, to distinguish utilitarian public lectures on economics, medicine, neurolinguistic programming, etc., from lectures on the most various scientific themes, both in “hard” and “soft” sciences, ranging from astronomy to literary criticism, aiming at entertaining the audience and opening up their minds. For the same reason does the television show debates concerning the scientific point of view about themes involving mystery, dogmas, popular tenets and philosophical issues.

Scientific research, public and mass media

I do not intend here to banalise the idea of science, reducing it to a mere amusement. Evidently, its main function is, as I said before, the search for knowledge for the improvement of life conditions of man, but improvement in a holistic perspective, and not only in the material aspect. In this sense, I do not fail to recognise the importance of the scientific events that aggregate researchers for exchanging information, such as congresses and meetings of scientific societies, as well as specialised articles, issued in periodic publications. But I do want to sustain that science, as a cultural and public activity, must not be enclosed to a small circle of experts. The great problem of mankind as late as today is the extreme ignorance in which most people are living, and which is responsible for material and moral misery, violence, intolerance, prejudice, political oppression, economic exploitation, religious fanaticism, in a word, for every kind of obscurantism, for everything contrary to civilisation that exists. Science should therefore try to reach the mass public, and to do so its seduction power is enormous. The vulgarisation of science is the path through which this objective can be reached. By employing the several existing communication media (books, magazines, radio, television), it is possible to divulge science, and nowadays there is already a considerable number of authors who are devoted to write texts popularising the scientific knowledge, as well as scientists who write books in a language accessible to a non-initiate public. There is also a reasonable number of scientific documentaries on television, as well as reviews of scientific divulgation. Besides, with the popularisation of Internet, the transmission of scientific information, formerly restricted to the academic community, can now reach the lay computer user. Internet tends to become, in the coming years, the main vehicle of scientific divulgation.

It is necessary to recall that religion, art and sports establish a direct communication link with their public, through a language accessible to practically any individual, and therefore not requiring that the receiver of this communication be an “initiate”. That explains why these activities end up being quite more popular than science.

Let us make an analogy between the scientist’s and the music composer’s job: the latter writes a partitura that, being codified in a technical language, can only be read by experts, that is, musicians. That which the audience have access to is the sound of music, either performed live or recorded in discs, not the partitura that translates this sound into graphic signs. Likewise, scientific articles, due to their highly technical character and hermetic language, are exclusive for use by specialised professionals, in the present case, scientists themselves. What interests the lay public is not scientific texts, but the ideas they contain, which, in their most general aspects, can perfectly be issued in non-technical language, by the most different existing media. A complex scientific theory like Einstein’s theory of relativity, only to mention an example, is composed of very complicated mathematical equations and very simple ideas. What strikes people is the revolutionary character of these ideas and not their complexity. Not by chance, Einstein has not only been one of the greatest thinkers ever, but also one of the scientists who concerned most about popularising science, having written several works with this purpose. The popularisation of science implies that the debate about ideas be taken to a general audience, and count on the participation of the common man, instead of being confined to conference rooms.

The barriers of metalanguage

When the popularisation of science is discussed, a disturbing question is posed: scientific discourse, whose main characteristic is no doubt the theoretical rigour, leans for this same reason on a precise metalanguage, exempt from ambiguity or plurisignification. This metalanguage — the scientists’ jargon — has evidently a quite hermetic character, what makes difficult or even impossible the decoding of scientific texts by the lay public. It is known, however, that the complex terminology of the numberless technolects has not been created by pedantry of scientists, but by a need of scientific rigour, which can only be guaranteed by a metalanguage that stays as far as possible from the common sense language, naturally imprecise and ambiguous. The big challenge facing science today is to be able to diffuse among masses the highly sophisticated knowledge that is nowadays exclusive of a small intellectual elite, without resigning rigour and precision, that are the own appanage of science. In other words, how to translate all the scientific knowledge available at the present day into the average citizen’s language, if most technical terms do not admit synonyms in that language?

One has the current idea that science cannot be simple, because its purpose is exactly to study objects and phenomena that are not simple. If nature, both physical or social, is extremely complex, how to describe it or explain it in a simple language? For this very reason, the more the scientific knowledge advances, the longer and more complex the mathematical equations become.

In this perspective, art and religion enjoy a larger liberty of creation regarding their objects. The same phenomena that are the object of scientific investigation can be mystically “explained” by means of dogmas, whose establishment is totally arbitrary. Art, in its turn, also enjoys full liberty when recombining the elements of nature in the most different manners, in order to produce an aesthetic effect. In this way, art and religion are not stuck to an objective reality and they can, therefore, build subjective realities without any necessary compromise with verisimilitude. On the other hand, science is slave of facts: if scientific theories are not “true”, they should at least be verisimilar. As a result, the scientist’s liberty of creation is very small, and this linking to reality makes the scientific discourse almost as complex as reality itself.

However, it was said above that, behind very complicated mathematical equations, sometimes hide very simple ideas. The real raw material of science is ideas and not the metalanguage expressing them, which is nothing but a mere work tool. It is perfectly possible to deal with very complex realities in a rigorous and precise way by means of a simple and objective language. The possibility of popularisation of the scientific jargon is not excluded here, as happened to some disciplines, as psychoanalysis, for instance.

On the one hand, scientific rigour should not be a synonym of hermeticism. In many cases, technical jargon is rather used, inclusively in the mass media, as a form of ostentation of an assumed knowledge or camouflage of truth (what in the last resort configures the use of knowledge as an instrument of domination) rather than as a tool of scientific rigour. This is often observed when economists address to the public expressing themselves in jargon, or when doctors give information about the prophylaxis of diseases through a language inaccessible exactly to that layer of population most subject to these diseases. On the other hand, some sciences have a less hermetic metalanguage, closer to common sense language, what makes their diffusion easier. It is especially the case of the humanities, that, moreover, by dealing with subjects concerning more directly the citizen’s everyday life, can fulfil this objective in a very satisfactory way.

Language is not necessarily a barrier to the divulgation of ideas: the Bible, for example, is a quite hard book to read, due to its metaphoric language and its text full of scholar terms, many of them out of use nowadays. However, it is one of the most read books in the world (and, no doubt, the most re-edited one of all) and it is curious to notice that most of its readers find themselves in the lowermost, and, therefore, least educated, social classes. What happens is that the religious discourse, despite its solemn, hermetic and intentionally polysemic aspect, is in actuality quite simple, and the role of the religious preacher is exactly to explain the holy text, by dissecting it into parts and analysing these parts, giving examples, interpreting it at last. In this fashion, the religious discourse seduces people exactly by its apparent hermeticism, that grants an aura of transcendence to it. But such a hermeticism is only seductive as the discourse itself gives the faithful the key to decode it, on what does the very spiritual salvation depend. The religious discourse is very effective, including from the marketing point of view, since it offers the public exactly what they want. More than that, many times such a discourse sets on the public this wanting. It can thus be seen that language is not necessarily a barrier: it can be, rather, a bridge.

The challenge of a popular science

It is interesting to notice that basic science is exactly that which suits best for vulgarisation. Certain subjects such as astronomy, cosmology, archaeology, natural history, history of civilisation, sociology, politics, among others, always awake the public’s curiosity. Even non-consensually scientific themes, as ufology, parapsychology, neurolinguistic programming, non-confirmed theories, as Erich von Danicken’s in Were gods astronauts?, etc., are object of big interest on the part of the public. Such an interest is a consequence, as seen above, of the fundamental pleasure that the satisfaction of curiosity produces in our understanding, which pleasure moves the scientist forth to research uninterestedly and the science fan to want to learn about the result of such a research, as well as the ludical pleasure of sports impels the sportsman to practice it and the rooter to support it, or the aesthetic pleasure of art touches both the artist producing the work and the viewer contemplating it. In fact, there can be as much poetry in a scientific theory as in a work of art or in a sporting exhibition. The big challenge facing scientists is to make this poetry accessible to as many people as possible.

An important role is played in this sense by university extension courses. This is the channel through which the university opens its doors to the general public. Through such courses, it is possible for the lay viewer to be in touch with the scientific knowledge, as well as it is necessary for the scientist to learn how to be didactic, to develop an effective discourse in two different senses: being able to account for the object studied and to be understood by somebody else besides scientists themselves.
Another important reason of scientific divulgation is the sponsoring of researches. As a cultural activity, science can go for a part of the necessary resources to the implementation of scientific projects in the same sources as art and sports. But where do these activities go for their resources?

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, art was sponsored by Church and by Maecenases belonging to nobility or high bourgeoisie. Since the Industrial Revolution, and with the end of the Ancient Regime, art has become an object of consumption. Nowadays, the artist must sell his work to as many people as possible. Likewise, the professional sport depends basically on the collection from ticket windows. For this reason, moreover, a few less popular sport modalities remain amateurish.

At the present day, the resources destined for science come from the state or the big private capital. This “modern maecenatism” has little romantic reasons to fund research projects. Thus, the search for financial support by means of the direct sale of scientific knowledge to the public is a possible alternative, that demands however the popularisation of science, either through the adoption of a less hermetic language, or through the approach of themes closer to the popular interest, or still through the introduction of scientific debate in so far little explored fora, as mass media, for example. Once again, humanities take a slight advantage over natural sciences: besides satisfying better these basic requirements of scientific divulgation, they are also the sciences that depend least on external sponsoring, since most projects in this area present a much lower cost than projects in natural sciences, which depend on equipment, laboratories, chemicals, etc., usually too expensive. In the sphere of humanities, many researches have a cost close to zero.

Undertaking a discussion on the cultural issue and, especially, on the role of science in that context, is, undoubtedly, no easy task, mainly bearing in mind that such an issue has been shaking the intellectual environment for at least 2,500 years, never exhausting its interest, that, on the contrary, always seems to be renewed. If it is not possible — nor desirable — to end this discussion, my goal was to launch a new light on it, and to do so, I believe to have launched more questions than answers. Thus, I prefer to conclude these considerations with another question. After all, isn’t this exactly the purpose of science? Isn’t it exactly in curiosity that lies its hedonic character?