Comprehension, Apprehension, Prehension: Heterogeneity and the Public Understanding of Science

This article examines the main approaches to public understanding of science (PUS) in light of recent developments in social and cultural theory. While traditional and critical perspectives on PUS differ in terms of their models of the public, science, and understanding, they nevertheless share a number of commonalities, which are humanism (an emphasis on the pure person), incorporeality (a neglect of embodiment), and discrete sites (science and the public are presupposed as separate entities). These are contrasted, respectively, to versions of the person as hybridic, to treatments of embodiment drawing especially on Whitehead’s notion of prehension, and to a rhizomic view of science and public as interwoven. Throughout, it is stressed that the alternatives posed do not constitute an accusation of deficit on the part of traditional and critical PUS. Some research and political implications of interweaving these three perspectives are presented.