The Science and Culture Initiative

The Oxford English Dictionary defines culture as “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement”, along with the “distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviour, products, or way of life of a particular nation, society, people, or period”.  Culture varies quite a bit around the world today, but almost everywhere an integral part of culture is technology, in the form of cell phones, medicine, and other products of science, and perhaps to a lesser extent scientific knowledge.  Technology and scientific knowledge are part of science, but on a more fundamental level science is a way of thinking, a way of explaining the world that demands the world actually match the explanation.  And unfortunately, scientific thinking is not widespread.  The mission of the Science and Culture Initiative (SCI) at the University of North Florida is to promote public understanding of science, and especially an understanding of the scientific process, and to illustrate the relationship between science and culture.