Science for the Citizen: a Self-Educator based on the Social Background of Scientific Discovery

First published in 1938, with many reprintings.THIS is no ordinary book. Like its predecessor, “Mathematics for the Million”, it is a portent of a new understanding and a new purpose in science. We have had in plenty popular expositions of scientific discoveries ; we have had attempts at the analysis of the history of science; we have had essays on its social implications; here we have all three together. They gain immensely from being presented as a unity and worked out by a single mind. In this new primer of one thousand pages, Prof. Hogben sets out to teach, to chronicle and to preach the gospel of science. First published in 1938, Science for the Citizen is partly written for the large and growing number ofintelligent adults who realize that the Impact of Science on Society is now thefocus of genuinely constructive social effort. It is also written for the largeand growing number of adolescents, who realize that they will be the firstvictims of tie new destructive powers of science misapplied. Since it is thefirst British handbook to Scientific Humanism, it has, inevitably, the glaringfaults of any new thing. Education segregates the scientific specialist fromthose who study problems of government and social welfare. So, like anyoneelse who in this generation might have attempted a task so ambitious, Ihave had to re-educate myself in the process of writing it.