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In fact, this situation, although it is more extreme in science than elsewhere, obtains in many other fields as well.

Nowadays, philosophers seldom write for anyone except other philosophers; economists write for economists; and even historians are beginning to find that the kind of shorthand, monographic communication to other experts that has long been dominant in science is a more convenient way of getting ideas across than the more traditional narrative work written for everyone.

What does the general reader do in these circumstances?

He cannot become expert in all fields. He must fall back, therefore, on scientific popularizations. Some of these are good, and some are bad. But it is not only important to know the difference; it is also important to be able to read the good ones with understanding.

U nderstanding the Scientific Enterprise

One of the fastest growing academic disciplines is the history of s�ience. We have seen marked changes in this area within the past few years. It was not so long ago that "serious"

scientists looked down upon historians of science. The latter How to Read Science and Mathematics 257

were thought of as men who studied the history of a subject because they were not capable of expanding its frontiers. The attitude of scientists to historians of science could be summed up in that famous remark of George Bernard Shaw's: "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

Expressions of this attitude are seldom heard nowadays.

Departments of the history of science have become respectable, and excellent scientists study and write about the history of their subject. An example is what has been called the "Newton industry." At the present time, intensive and extensive research is being undertaken in many countries on the work and strange personality of Sir Isaac Newton. Half a dozen books have been recently published or announced. The reason is that scientists are more concerned than ever before about the nature of the scientific enterprise itself.

Thus we have no hesitation in recommending that you try to read at least some of the great scientific classics of our tradition. In fact, there is really no excuse for not trying to read them. None of them is impossibly difficult, not even a book like Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, if you are willing to make the effort.

The most helpful advice we can give you is this. You are required by one of the rules for reading expository works to state, as clearly as you can, the problem that the author has tried to solve. This rule of analytical reading is relevant to all expository works, but it is particularly relevant to works in the fields of science and mathematics.

There is another way of saying this. As a layman, you do not read the classical scientific books to become knowledgeable in their subject matters in a contemporary sense. Instead, you read them to understand the history and philosophy of science.

That, indeed, is the layman's responsibility with regard to science. The major way in which you can discharge it is to become aware of the problems that the great scientists were trying to solve-aware of the problems, and aware, also, of the background of the problems.

258 HOW TO READ A BOOK

To follow the strands of scientific development, to trace the ways in which facts, assumptions, principles, and proofs are interrelated, is to engage in the activity of the human reason where it has probably operated with the most success. That is enough by itself, perhaps, to justify the historical study of science. In addition, such study will serve to dispel, in some measure, the apparent unintelligibility of science. Most important of all, it is an activity of the mind that is essential to education, the central aim of which has always been recognized, from Socrates' day down to our own, as the freeing of the mind through the discipline of wonder.

Suggestions for Reading Classical Scientific Books By a scientific book, we mean the report of findings or conclusions in some field of research, whether carried