As was demonstrated by the recent decision to end funding for the super-conducting super collider, scientists--even physicists--can no longer assume public support for their scientific endeavors. Scientists must capture the interest of the public. And, as Ms. Moira Rogers is investigating in her dissertation under the direction of Professor Ann LaBerge, scientists cannot expect that the public will passively accept everything that scientists pass on to them. Ms. Rogers is carrying out her investigation in the context of the German Enlightenment; but as she is discovering there, the public interest in science is aroused in extremely complex, dynamic ways. Understanding of this complex dynamic is essential for the continued public support of what may seem to be esoteric scientific research. Ms. Rogers is studying the culture of the Enlightenment which was marked by the public ascendance of science to a position of cultural authority. Complex literary and socio-political processes converged in the excitement and satisfaction of a public taste and curiosity for science. "It is from Saxony that the light of science has spread through Germany and other countries" was a common contemporary opinion. The fairs, publishing industry, and the university made of Leipzig a key center for the German Enlightenment. Records of public meetings, periodicals for lay publics, advertisements diaries, popular science books, poetry newspapers, letters, invitations to public performances and many others, if subjected to careful historical analysis, can help to portray the public face of science as seen by a variety of social groups within the reading and listening publics. Science spread through society as the result of the common efforts of printers and servants, philosophers and instrument-makers, Clergyman and ladies, children and censors etc. The processes that made science transcend the boundaries of academies and universities were not merely "transmission" of ideas to essentially passive and receptive audi ences, but complex dynamics that contributed to the promotion of broader Enlightenment interests in German culture. This study will provide with an account of the cultural status of science in the German Enlightenment
