(2021-09-22) Hoel Why Do Most Popular Science Books Suck

Erik Hoel: Why do most popular science books suck? In the science section of the average bookstore rests a bunch of overhyped and uninteresting books. There are a slim number that are original and interesting—they’re there, but they’re rare

Let me given an example of what I don’t want to do by picking on someone I know can take it: Michio Kaku

Let’s face it, someone needs to be the resident brainiac scientist that CNN dials up, and he does a good job of this.

But his books. . . oh man, his books are terrible.

let’s start building up instead of tearing down and ask: What makes a nonfiction book really good? Or at least, objectively not terrible.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari might not be your cup of tea, but it is undeniably not-terrible tea

Is it original? Well, it’s original in its synthesis and scope and writing quality, and the pith of the book, the idea that human progress rests on fictional stories (democracy, religion, money—according to Yuval) was original enough that I hadn’t really heard it put together like that before.

I think the best nonfiction books are fundamentally amateurish, authored by dilettantes

amateurish doesn’t mean not researched. Godel, Escher, Bach is amateurish. The ruminations of Plato at the Googleplex, or the poetry of Dava Sobel’s The Planets—amateurish. I mean this in a good way.

The Selfish Gene isn’t a classic of science writing because Dawkins offers such a pellucid view of genetics, no, it’s because of the final highly playful section where he introduces the idea of memes, a part that is fundamentally amateurish.

Another example: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes is incredibly amateurish, clearly wrong.

It’s nowhere near any sensible standard of rigor. And yet it’s also a genuinely interesting book and a classic in the field of consciousness research, and, in its own way, immensely influential.

Consider Stephen Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. Its thesis on historical social progress made it one of the most influential books of the last decade. But why did it take a cognitive psychologist to write it, and not a sociologist or historian? What about neuroscientist Ian McGilChrist’s celebrated The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World? Note that last part. By any reasonable academic standard Ian McGilChrist should not be writing about the “making of the western world.” He puts forth a kind of neuro-fairy tale of historical development. But it’s a good tale. It’s a good book!

a nonfiction work of “popular science” should take full advantage of the fact that it is a discussion occurring outside the normal standards of academia.

To join them I’ve been trying to get into this mindset, to shed the strictures of traditional academia.