These days, science is everywhere. It pervades our whole society. Sometimes
it is just a clutter of commonplace frivolities, like new fashion fabrics.
Sometimes it miraculously preserves our life, like penicillin. Sometimes,
like climate change, it looms over us as a portent of doom: sometimes it
promises a way of escape from such a fate. Sometimes, like a nuclear warhead,
it enshrouds us in political terror: sometimes, like a verification technology,
it offers an antidote to such evils. How should we respond to this ambiguous
and ubiquitous thing called science?
John Ziman, himself a distinguished scientist and fellow of the Royal
Society, here asks what science is for, how it relates to the academic
world, to politics, and in particular how it should be understood and used
by the citizen in civil society.
