The whole point of popular scientific books, as opposed to professional ones, is to simplify and reduce the amount of content. Even if everyone can understand the full complexity of the subject, not everyone wants to spend the time and effort studying it.
I want to learn about the accepted theories of biology and physics and chemistry, not all the competing hypotheses and caveats and special cases and supporting evidence and the history of their discovery, because I just don’t have time for all of that!
The quote seems to reduce to “scientific books should not be popular in the first place”. (In the sense of being aimed for the general population, not the sense of being bestsellers.)
I am sorry that I can’t really point you towards good English books:( but incidentally, Serebryakov’s Morphology of plants (from the sixties, I think) did start with an overview of dated theories, starting around Goethe; and he managed to write it logically and readably. (I think people should just accept that history of science is a discipline deserving popular books of it own, but so far, the best HoS stuff I’be come across was in introductions to pop-sci.)
IMO at least the cutting-edge biology today is extremely ‘model organism-oriented’, which limits its applicability. (It also seems to me that you’re not the kind of person to wish to learn about angiosperm evolution or archaeobacteriae from the deepest seas:) though I’ve read a cool monograph (1997, I think) on secondary metabolites in onion secreted when it is wounded, I can’t say it is an introductory book. It has a section on plants’ defences against infection… It’s fascinating when you think ‘wait, onions have mycorrhiza, and in other plants it was shown to influence the levels of sec. met. - I wonder how
their results would change if...’ But a layperson should be given the intro about onions in general—their observable properties, like smell when cut, and ability to keep well—maybe even their selection history (taxonomy of cultivated plants is often horribly convoluted.)
The whole point of popular scientific books, as opposed to professional ones, is to simplify and reduce the amount of content. Even if everyone can understand the full complexity of the subject, not everyone wants to spend the time and effort studying it.
I want to learn about the accepted theories of biology and physics and chemistry, not all the competing hypotheses and caveats and special cases and supporting evidence and the history of their discovery, because I just don’t have time for all of that!
The quote seems to reduce to “scientific books should not be popular in the first place”. (In the sense of being aimed for the general population, not the sense of being bestsellers.)
I am sorry that I can’t really point you towards good English books:( but incidentally, Serebryakov’s Morphology of plants (from the sixties, I think) did start with an overview of dated theories, starting around Goethe; and he managed to write it logically and readably. (I think people should just accept that history of science is a discipline deserving popular books of it own, but so far, the best HoS stuff I’be come across was in introductions to pop-sci.) IMO at least the cutting-edge biology today is extremely ‘model organism-oriented’, which limits its applicability. (It also seems to me that you’re not the kind of person to wish to learn about angiosperm evolution or archaeobacteriae from the deepest seas:) though I’ve read a cool monograph (1997, I think) on secondary metabolites in onion secreted when it is wounded, I can’t say it is an introductory book. It has a section on plants’ defences against infection… It’s fascinating when you think ‘wait, onions have mycorrhiza, and in other plants it was shown to influence the levels of sec. met. - I wonder how their results would change if...’ But a layperson should be given the intro about onions in general—their observable properties, like smell when cut, and ability to keep well—maybe even their selection history (taxonomy of cultivated plants is often horribly convoluted.)