The Origins of Popular Science as a Rhetorical and Protreptical Practice

Despite modern scholars’ efforts to explain the origins of science communication, their approaches to this phenomenon are often a response to current affairs and thereby ignore its historical roots in the classical world, where the phenome-non first emerged as knowledge popularization in general terms. Most modern authors confine their research to a modern concept of science and society that excludes the much broader idea of ancient episteme. In this introductory chapter, I propose a general approach to science communication as popular science—i.e., to the popularization of knowledge in antiquity—that focuses on dissemination formats, rhetorical strategies, and cultural techniques, all of which signal certain diachronic continuities and transformations.