In the late 1970s, an unlikely coalition of traditional farmers and young activists came together to fight the construction of a major new power line in Minnesota. Massive power lines were the source of harmful electromagnetic radiation, said the coalition members, radiation that made both farmers and animals sick. Scientists from the power companies and state agencies said the power lines were safe, but the farmers didn't believe them. They contended that the scientists were either shills for the power companies or just plain wrong. Animosity grew, and soon the tall metal power line towers began to fall in the night, the bolts on their legs cut through. Authorities couldn't find the culprits, but soon many law-abiding Minnesota farmers were wearing "Bolt Weevil" T-shirts adorned with toppled power line towers. During the past few decades there have been many such confrontations across the country, and often in these cases citizens have come to view science not as an objective source of truth, but as a weapon used by those in power to silence public voices.

That misuse of science and the concurrent alienation of the general public from science is the focus of Richard Harvey Brown's new book, Toward a Democratic Science: Scientific Narration and Civic Communication. Brown, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, clearly defines the competing sides and the source of tension in the opening words of his book. He begins by saying that science has become "a dominant form of thinking and of justifying . . . in modern societies." But science doesn't "adequately provide value and dignity to our existence. Instead, it is through public narrations that we give meaning to our world and to our lives." So according to Brown, we are left to choose between "the amoral rationality of science and the seemingly irrational moralism of storytelling."

Brown writes that scientific and moral discourses "are two ways to navigate the stream of language." But, argues the author, science should not be separate from the moral discussions and decisions involving everyday people in everyday life. Science must be "redeemed" from "absolutist pretensions of positivist ideologues, on the one hand, and (liberated) from the political and economic opportunism of the corporate state . . ."

The best way to bring science closer to the people is to understand science as a "rhetorical practice - a kind of storytelling," writes Brown. Science becomes a narration, and "thereby becomes available in principle to ordinary citizens in the rational, ethical construction of their common life."

Brown's thinking is fascinating, and he is not shy about severely criticizing scientists for becoming inordinately dependent on patrons. Indeed, Brown accuses scientists of trading "utility for patronage." Scientists, he says, are perhaps as "vulnerable as any other professional group to the temptations of power and privilege." His harshest criticism is aimed at psychologists. "Like other modern disciplines," Brown writes, "psychology has moved from the pastoral ideals of aristocratic play or professional communitas toward commercial greed, military secrecy, and scientific nihilism."

With all of that, it's a wonder psychologists can sleep at night. Brown's writing is thorough and thoughtful, and in the end, provocative. But be warned; unless one is steeped in the highly academic language of sociology, this book is a very hard read. Brown seems to enjoy creating new forms of words and constructing sentences that require a map to follow. While the point of the book is to urge the scientific establishment to use storytelling to make itself more understandable, Brown doesn't even try to follow his own advice. Imagine the reaction of the housewife at Love Canal, praised by the author for standing up to scientific obfuscation, if she came to this sentence early in Brown's text: "In this book I privilege a rhetorical sociological view, not merely to relativize science or its philosophies but more to show how the realities of nature and the truths of science are realized narratologically and, thereby, how they might be subsumed within a larger civic discourse."

Brown's writing style often evokes that of Karl Marx. The reader must wade through a swamp of "scientific objectification," "logics-in-use," and "logical universals," only to confront the "linguistically deprived" whose "delegitimation" somehow "delegitimates the lifeworlds of their users and the users themselves."

But if you can get past, or at least get used to Brown's academic writing style, his vision of a "utopian" world is fascinating. He is clearly attracted to the view of science put forth by what he calls the environmental justice movement; scientific inquiry is "a collective, persuasive, and political activity in both its production and its use and, hence, as comprehensible within the narrative capacities of all citizens."

In the end, Brown pleads for a greater respect, even a restoration, of the ancient art of rhetoric. The ancient Greeks developed rhetoric to link reason, ethics, and traditions for a public who needed to think well if they were to make wise decisions. In our modern world, much of the philosophical and moral significance of rhetoric has given way to pure technique (read science).

In Brown's utopia, "civic discourse is possible without abandoning science, because science itself is a form of narration. . . " that can fit within the flow of discussions that make up public life. As science and technology take on increasingly dominant roles in all of our lives, Brown's concerns become ever more important. One hopes he can restate them in a form that is assessable to the average citizens who need to hear them.