Popular science

Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad-ranging. It may be written by professional science journalists or by scientists themselves. It is presented in many forms, including books, film and television documentaries, magazine articles, and web pages. Before the modern specialization and professionalization of science, there was often little distinction between "science" and "popular science", and works intended to share scientific knowledge with a general reader existed as far back as Greek and Roman antiquity. Without these popular works, much of the scientific knowledge of the era might have been lost. For example, none of the original works of the 4th century BCE Greek astronomer Eudoxus have survived, but his contributions were largely preserved due to the didactic poem "Phenomena" written a century later and commented on by Hipparchus. Explaining science in poetic form was not uncommon, and as recently as 1791, Erasmus Darwin wrote The Botanic Garden, two long poems intended to interest and educate readers in botany. Many Greek and Roman scientific handbooks were written for the lay audience, and this "handbook" tradition continued right through to the invention of the printing press, with much later examples including books of secrets such as Giambattista Della Porta's 1558 "Magia Naturalis" and Isabella Cortese's 1561 "Secreti". The 17th century saw the beginnings of the modern scientific revolution and the consequent need for explicit popular science writing. Although works such as Galileo's 1632 "Il Saggiatore" and Robert Hooke's 1665 "Micrographia" were read by both scientists and the public, Newton's 1687 Principia was incomprehensible for most readers, so popularizations of Newton's ideas soon followed. Popular science writing surged in countries such as France, where books such as Fontenelle's 1686 Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds were best-sellers.