Election Polling Forecasts and Public Images of Social Science.

This article presents a case study in the shaping of opinion among strategic public, aimed towards election polling forecasts and determining public images of social science. According to the author, the growth and development of science is in part dependent upon the climate of social opinion regarding its nature, past achievements and future prospects. The prevailing images of science go far to restrain or to accelerate the realization of scientific potentialities. The higher the social repute of the discipline, the more likely it is to recruit talents and to gain widespread support, and the greater, therefore, its later achievements. The public image of social sciences was approximately same as the prevailing images of physical science three centuries ago. There is little systematic evidence concerning the sources of the prevailing images of science, either in the seventeenth century or today. But among the greater part of the lay public, it would seem that the authority of physical science rests rather heavily on the technological achievements which it ultimately has made possible.