Specific illiteracy is positively omnipresent. Try talking to an accountant about Renaissance art. Try talking to a butcher about linguistic theory. To a neuro

Specific illiteracy is positively omnipresent. Try talking to an accountant about Renaissance art. Try talking to a butcher about linguistic theory. To a neurosurgeon about Egyptian architecture. Specialisation is what our society mandates, and you don’t improve your lot by having knowledge which is extraneous to your specialisation - unless you have a lot of extraneous knowledge, in which case, congratulations, you’re an undesirable generalist. We live in a world built with the scientific method, however, which means that scientific illiteracy has greater scope for making poorly informed impactful decisions. Likely nobody will die if you don’t know a finial from a pilaster. So - rather than viewing this as a problem of scientific illiteracy, I view this as a problem of overspecialisation. We are taught, from early on, to focus on that which interests us, and to hone in on a tiny slice of information to pursue a specialised career. Crack that, make being a generalist desirable, and you have your scientific literacy - but doing so is incompatible with our current economies.