How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [126]
Mathematics is very often employed by scientific writers, mainly because it has the qualities of preciseness, clarity, and limitedness that we have described. Usually you can understand something of the matter without going very deeply into the mathematics, as in the case of Newton. Oddly enough, however, even if mathematics is absolutely terrifying to you, its absence from certain works may cause you even more trouble.
A case in point is Galileo's Two New Sciences, his famous treatise on the strength of materials and on motion. This work is particularly difficult for modem readers because it is not primarily mathematical; instead, it is presented in the form of a dialogue. The dialogue form, though appropriate to the stage and useful in philosophy when employed by such a master as Plato, is not really appropriate to science. It is therefore hard to discover what Galileo is saying, although when you do you will discover that he is stating some revolutionary things.
Not all of the scientific classics, of course, employ mathematics or even need to employ it. The works of Hippocrates, the founder of Greek medicine, are not mathematical. You might well read them to discover Hippocrates' view of medicine-namely, that it is the art of keeping people well, rather than that of curing them when they are sick.· That is unfortu-How to Read Science and Mathematics 267
nately an uncommon idea nowadays. Nor is William Harvey's discourse on the circulation of the blood mathematical, or William Gilbert's book on magnets. They can be read without too much difficulty if you always keep in mind that your primary obligation is not to become competent in the subject matter but instead to understand the problem.
A Note on Popular Science
In a sense, there is little more to say about reading scientific popularizations. By definition, these are works-either books or articles-written for a wide audience, not just for specialists. Thus, if you have managed to read some of the classics of the scientific tradition, you should not have much trouble with them. This is because, although they are a bout science, they generally skirt or avoid the two main problems that confront the reader of an original contribution in science.
First, they contain relatively few descriptions of experiments ( instead, they merely report the results of experiments ) . Second, they contain relatively little mathematics ( unless they are popular books about mathematics itself) .
Popular scientific articles are usually easier to read than popular scientific books, although not always. Sometimes such articles are very good-for example, articles found in Scientific American, a monthly magazine, or Science, a somewhat more technical weekly publication. Of course, these publications, no matter how good they are or how carefully and responsibly edited, pose the problem that was discussed at the end of the last chapter. In reading them, we are at the mercy of reporters who filter the information for us. If they are good reporters, we are fortunate. If they are not, we have almost no recourse.
Scientific popularizations are never easy reading in the sense that a story is or seems to be. Even a three-page article on DNA containing no reports of experiments and no diagrams or mathematical formulas demands considerable effort on the 268 HOW TO READ A BOOK
part of the reader. You cannot read it for understanding without keeping your mind awake. Thus, the requirement that you read actively is more important here than almost anywhere else. Identify the subject matter. Discover the relation between the whole and its parts. Come to terms and plot the propositions and arguments. Work at achieving understanding before you begin to criticize or to assess significance. These rules, by now, are all familiar. But they apply here with particular force.
Short articles are usually primarily informational, and as such they require less active thinking on your part. You must make an effort to understand, to follow the account provided by the author, but you often do not