Popularization of science, also known as popular science or popular science, refers to the use of various media to make the public accept the knowledge of natural science and social science, promote the application of science and technology, advocate scientific methods, spread scientific ideas and carry forward the scientific spirit in an easy-to-understand way. Popular science is a kind of social education.
On June 25th, 20021,the State Council issued the Outline of the Action Plan for National Scientific Literacy (20021-2035), proposing to promote the establishment of popular science majors.
From the perspective of sociology of science, the popularization of science is a universal social phenomenon, which inevitably has its own "growing point". The growing point of popular science lies in the intersection of nature and man, science and society. In other words, the interaction between natural science and human society has produced scientific popularization, and science and technology and society, as the "soil" of scientific popularization, have nurtured its growth.
Scientific and technological progress and social development have provided new growth points for popular science work, which has a fresh vitality, strong sociality and the times. Figuratively speaking, popular science is a "modern civilized drama" with the times as the background, society as the stage, people as the protagonist, science and technology as the content and facing the general public. There are no traditional reserved programs on this stage.
In essence, the popularization of science is a kind of social education. As a social education, it is different from both school education and vocational education, and its basic characteristics are sociality, mass and continuity.
The characteristics of popular science show that the work of popular science must use socialized, popular and regular popular science methods, make full use of various circulation channels and information media in modern society, and lose no time in infiltrating into various social activities to form large-scale, dynamic and socialized popular science.
Modern science and technology is an extremely huge and complex three-dimensional structural system with rich connotations and various social functions. In popular science work, we should not only attach importance to the external utility of scientific and technological knowledge, but also ignore its internal scientific thought, scientific method and scientific spirit.
Among the four different levels of knowledge and information (namely, data, information, knowledge and intelligence), intelligence occupies the highest level and is the most active and important quality that constitutes a person's scientific and cultural quality. This is especially important for leading cadres at all levels and managers of scientific and technological work in different positions.