Why Science?

I am as passionate about science as I am about art. I did a minor in geology and seriously considered going to graduate school for geology (which still might happen someday). A few weeks ago I began thinking about scientific literacy as what I might be trying to achive with my work. Can art be used to deliver science to people, whom are ususally turned off by sitting in a scientific lecture or reading scientific journals? ( Can my art do this? *worries*)
Since I only had a vauge idea of what scientific literacy actually is, I bought a book on the subject, titled Why Science by James Trefil, a physics proffessor at George Mason University. Ive decided to post as a read in hopes of getting things a little clearer in my own head and maybe getting some insights from you wonderful people who read my blog.
I'm going to start with the basics:

Sicentific literacy is a part of cultural literacy, which Trefil defines as "the knowledge that educated people, at a given time, assume that other people possess." In other words, all those little things that you assume everyone else knows. I suppose another way to put it would be "common knowledge" Scientific literacy is "the matrix of knowledge needed to understand enough about the physical universe, to deal with issues that come across our horizon, in the news or elsewhere."
So think about it as the scientific facet of common knowledge. Surely that's not so scary?
So why do we need it? Stay tuned . . .