ABSTRACT
What does lay understanding of scientific knowledge of the environment actually consist of? Do lay people broadly accept what abstract science has to say or are they rejecting it? It is symptomatic of the general argument outlined in this study that lay understandings of the relationship between society and nature are under-recorded. A specially commissioned Directive by Sussex University’s Mass-Observation Archive illustrates the kinds of alienation to which the last two chapters have been referring. This chapter will argue that lay people are not so much dominated by abstract thinking as left with an inadequate understanding of their predicament and their relations to nature. They also do not necessarily share the theoretically informed social constructions which intellectuals and others attribute to them.
