A model for understanding the dynamics of scientific culture

A spiral of scientific culture, proposed by a Unicamp professor, may make it possible to identify common scientific traits between Brazil and the Ibero-American nations.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – The cultural dynamic of countries like Brazil and the Ibero-American nations can be represented as a spiral that follows the development of their scientific institutions and may help in visualizing their common traits.

The proposal was presented by Carlos Vogt, professor at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), in an article published at the end of October in Public Understanding of Science magazine. In the article, Vogt presents the “spiral of scientific culture” concept, developed during the time that he worked at FAPESP (2002-2007), when he began to reflect on the dissemination of scientific culture. In 2003, he coined the phrase “Divulging scientific culture” at Agência FAPESP.

Vogt elaborated the idea of the spiral of scientific culture and wrote the first version of the text on this concept, which was published in FAPESP’s third Boletim de Ideias (Journal of Ideas) in December 2005.

“The idea was to find a way to represent the dynamic of scientific culture from the moment of the production of knowledge until the appropriation and circulation of it in society in general, showing how this process, which has very particular characteristics, happens in an organized fashion, with different protagonists at each of the different stages,” Vogt stated.

To represent this continual process of production and circulation of scientific knowledge, the researcher conceived a spiral that revolves on two axes and through four quadrants, where these represent institutional facts and events in Brazil and other Latin American countries.

Superimposing these facts and events on the movement of the spiral makes it possible to identify events and trace common lines between countries with similar economic, cultural and social characteristics and to specify these societies’ relationship with, attitudes toward, and comprehension of science and technology.

Vogt said, “The spiral of scientific culture can be read as a large metaphor that helps understand the construction of knowledge and its transformations in a certain geopolitical sphere.” In the article, the first quadrant of the spiral, representing the production and diffusion of the scientific culture of Brazil and Latin America, appears near the time of FAPESP’s founding in 1962, the creation of Argentina’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet) in 1958, and the establishment of Chile’s National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research (Conicyt) in 1968.

The second quadrant, which represents scientific education and formation, shows three concurrent events in 1999: the creation of Pesquisa FAPESP magazine, the creation of FAPESP’s José Reis Program for the Promotion of Science (Programa José Reis de Incentivo ao Jornalismo Científico or MídiaCiência) and the creation of the electronic magazine ComCiência by Unicamp’s Laboratory of Advanced Studies in Journalism, coordinated by Vogt.

The third quadrant, which represents science education, includes the creation of the Universidade de São Paulo’s Estação Sciencia (Science Museum) and the Museu Experimental de Ciências (Experimental Science Museum) in Rosário, Argentina, both in 1987.

Finally, the last quadrant, which represents scientific teaching and the formation of scientists, shows the founding of USP in 1934, Unicamp in 1966 and the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) in 1976.

“In evolving through each of these four quadrants, the spiral of scientific culture returns to its starting point in a new way due to the dynamics of the transformations that scientific knowledge passes through,” Vogt explained.

Scientific perception

According to Vogt, the concept of the spiral of scientific culture can work as an explanatory and descriptive model, and as a principle for classifying and organizing scientific culture and the cultural indicators of science and technology in different countries.

In relation to studies on the public perception of science, these indicators have been found in projects involving many different countries. These studies attempt to establish relationships between science and society, and they examine issues such as the level of information and knowledge, and the attitudes of citizens about science and technology.

“These indicators seek to identify common traits between countries that have a series of similar characteristics, from an economic, cultural and social point of view and specific traits in terms of the relationship, attitudes and comprehension of their societies in relation to the topics of science and technology,” Vogt explained.

Vogt coordinated a study on the cultural indicators of science and technology at São Paulo State, titled Percepção pública da ciência e da tecnologia no Estado de São Paulo (Public perception of science and technology in São Paulo State) and published in chapter 12 of Indicadores de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação em São Paulo 2010 (Indicators of Science, Technology and Innovation in São Paulo 2010), released by FAPESP in August 2011.

The article also introduces the term “cultural well-being,” which is, according to Vogt, “a sort of comfort beyond social well-being, that has to do with the relationship of society with the technosciences, involving values and attitudes, habits and information, and that presupposes actively critical participation on the part of society in all relationships.”

The article titled The spiral of scientific culture and cultural well-being: Brazil and Ibero-America, by Carlos Vogt, can be read by subscribers of Public Understanding Science at http://pus.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/21/0963662511420410.