Scientific Literacy: Its Relationship to “Literacy”

Discussions of scientific literacy often propose answers to one or both of two distinct questions: (a) What is the meaning of scientific literacy? (b) What is the significance of scientific literacy? The first question tackles the semantic issue of how individuals in some specific group (say, a particular society) actually could, or should, use the expression. The second question deals with what is important about scientific literacy conceived in a particular way.

Meanings of “Literate” and “Literacy”

In modern English usage, the words “literate” and “literacy” have two distinct senses. “Literate” is the older of the two words, having been traced to the Latin “litteratus,” meaning “marked with letters,” and occurring first in late middle English in the fifteenth century. “Literacy” did not appear in usage until the late nineteenth century, which is when the meanings of the terms started to change. During most of the history of its usage, “literate” meant generally to be well educated...