I went over to one of those big-box bookstores last night looking for a science book. It was something of a hunt to find what I was looking for because this store (part of a chain that touts its nobility and claims it sells everything) hides most of its science books on a few shelves ‘way back in the corner, stashed in like poor stepchildren with the computer books. You almost have to know that they’re there. Kind of a shame actually, considering they have stuff like astrology and crystal power and religion and self-help out in the middle of the store where you can’t help but stumble over their sumptuous rows of books on the subjects.
Note: there’s nothing wrong with having books on those subjects. What I’d like to see is some balance in bookstore selections. While bookstore owners may mutter at us that they only stock what sells, I do think one could make a case for doing a better job selling what one stocks… and being democratic in what one stocks. The cosmos is just too fascinating to closet away the good stuff almost as if the bookstore doesn’t quite know what to do with books on astronomy and space science and geology and biology and other science subjects.
What have we come to that readers looking for good science books have to wander almost fruitlessly through this barn of a store looking for what they want? What message does it send to people when science is hidden away so it doesn’t take away from sales of the almost-soft-porn books about girl pop singers or the latest blockbuster by Tom Clancy or the Nth book in a pictoral series on travel? All those are well and good (mind you, I’m a Tom Clancy fan myself) but it seems to me a little balance is needed — at least at THAT particular store.
Of course, I’m somewhat biased, since my own book is due out on the shelves in the next two weeks — it’s a book about astronomy (read more about it here: Visions of the Cosmos) and I’d sure like to be able to point people to where it can be found in that big store. Thankfully one of my favorite stores, Borders, doesn’t hide their science section, although I do notice that it has shrunk a little bit. Of course, you can always order books through Amazon (I’ve helpfully included a link on the afore-referenced page for my own book — plug, plug).
But, I fear that we are fast becoming a nation that abhors science at the same time we’re living off the fruits of science. Are we sort of like the meat-eaters who love a steak but don’t want to know about how that steak gets from live animal to grill? Or the mushroom-lovers who’d rather not be aware of just exactly what it is that their portabellos and shiitakes are growing in? I hope not, but with the proliferation of books that promulgate nonsense like crystal power and using the stars to guide your destiny and so on, it gets frustrating to see perfectly wonderfully written science works get thrust aside in a given bookstore. I blame people who are afraid of the beauty of math and the magnificence of science for relegating science books to one side. It’s like people who buy computers but don’t bother to read the manual on how the operating system works. Wait. Maybe that’s not a good analogy. I don’t always read those manuals…
Okay, how about this: I’m not religious at all, but imagine a Christian without a Bible, or a Moslem without a Koran, or a Buddhist without the works of Buddha to instruct on the precepts of individual belief systems. Science books provide an explanation of the cosmos. Sure, they sometimes use a language that looks like this:
v = Ho * d
or
(? – ?o)/?o = v/c
and such stuff scares the holy bejeebers out of those who see only the math and interpret THAT as science. The math is a language and it’s only one of many that describes what happens in the cosmos, from physics to biology to medical science to geology to chemistry. Another way to learn about the cosmos is to read blogs like this one, or webpages like my site or some of the sites I have listed at the left. There’s more than one way to approach science, but I can guarantee you, if you don’t approach it, or worse yet, let bookstores determine how important science books are, you’ll lose out on an amazing dimension of existence!