The weak interpersonal skills of many scientists contribute to lack of interest in science on the part of the general population, as was indicated in "The Persistent Misdirection." While there are some ways in which this problem can be ameliorated, I do not think it likely that scientists and engineers as a whole will ever be gregarious, and some of them, though brilliant in their specialties, will always be inarticulate.

The most important way in which academic scientists and engineers can promote their fields is through their teaching responsibilities. For a few hours each week, they have a completely captive audience, one which they can educate and intrigue regarding their field. Unfortunately, most professors do not take advantage of this sublime opportunity. Their success is measured primarily as a function of the research they do, and many think (and are told to think) of their teaching as a distraction from their "real work." Moreover, as indicated earlier, many scientists and engineers are simply not particularly engaging. Their stereotype as asocial beings is, of course, exaggerated, but it has a basis in fact. Although elementary teacher training can help to correct for this, it is unlikely to make a shy individual into a stellar teacher. (Incidentally, it is fascinating that our society requires extensive training and certification to teach children between the ages of five and eighteen, while it requires virtually none to teach individuals beyond this age.) Some improvements in the overall level of science teaching are possible, although it seems likely that the quality of teaching will remain primarily a function of the individual professor's innate talent and interest in teaching.

What can be remedied, however, is the shortage of well- written advanced books for students and professionals in the sciences and engineering. The paucity of good books at advanced levels is a major hindrance to the advancement of science and technology. It creates great barriers to the education of new scientists and engineers, pushing some out of science altogether and preventing those who remain from learning as much as they could. Lack of good books makes it harder for professionals to keep track of fields outside their area of expertise, and limits interdisciplinary (and sometimes even intradisciplinary) exchange of ideas.

A useful scientific book, of which few exist today, should bring together the disparate knowledge gathered in a series of papers and presentations. Consultation with the authors of these, and other experts in the topic and closely related areas, should be a must. It must be well-written, so that a person with a scientific background whose area of expertise lies elsewhere is able to comprehend its contents. The reader may need to read sections with deep conceptual implications slowly, but they should never have to stumble over linguistic abnormalities. Such books must also avoid the jargon which pervades so much of scientific writing, while presenting good definitions of terms specific to their subject matter. Just as translations of the Bible into the vernacular helped to set a standard for modern European languages, so, too, can a good scientific book establish the language in which further discussion can take place. Standardization of canonical terms, symbols, and equations can make the business of learning about others' research far less taxing and more efficient. Part of the problem stems from the shortage of symbols in the Roman and Greek alphabets. Scientists characterize thousands of different measurements and abstractions with only twenty-six letters in the Latin alphabet and twenty-four in the Greek, admittedly with the option of capitalization; inevitably, each symbol is used many times, exacerbating confusion. I offer a challenge to the scientifically educated reader which will prove my point: select a letter in either alphabet, capital or lowercase, and see how many variables one can associate with that symbol.

To be sure, there are additional ways of distinguishing variable names, such as using multiple letters (but is AB one variable or the product of A and B?) or utilizing subscripts and superscripts. These, however, are often confusing in and of themselves; how many meanings are there for the subscript "0"? Moreover, when handwritten, superscripts and subscripts rapidly become illegible.

There is an alternative: the adoption of a third alphabet for use in the sciences. To be sure, this would entail the learning of additional symbols, though this would be an easy task; at present, science students absorb the Greek alphabet with little or no difficulty. With the advent of computerization, printing and/or publishing in an additional font represents no challenge whatsoever. Any alphabet, from Thai to Hebrew, could be chosen--the possibilities are limited only by our own imaginations.

Though the establishment of a third alphabet of symbols requires considerable discussion and collusion among scientists, the rest of the above-cited requirements for good scientific writing are all attainable by a single, albeit well-educated, writer. An author who can combine great scientific understanding with exceptional writing skills can produce such a work, though it may be painstaking at times. The writers of such books must be integrative thinkers, knowledgeable in a range of fields and capable of unifying the information available to them into a coherent unit.

There are such people in science and engineering today, and some of them have written books that conform to the specifications outlined above. The difficulty lies in the fact that virtually all of these people have experimental or theoretical research as their primary occupational focus, insofar as it largely determines their standing with regard to tenure and the level of prestige which they are accorded by colleagues. They also have teaching responsibilities, which the best among them take very seriously. Furthermore, they are distracted by administrative concerns such as grant-writing, managing their departments, and the like. The time available to them to integrate disparate ideas and papers into a unified whole is thus short indeed.

This need not be the case, if universities were prepared to accord writing an equal status with research, and professors were to respect this field of endeavor and the challenges it entails. Isaac Asimov, the great science writer who helped to educate millions of young people (myself among them), was strongly criticized by his university colleagues for devoting himself to writing rather than research, which contributed to his dismissal. Fortunately, he persevered, but not all such talented people do so.

Every university wants to boast that it is on the cutting edge of research, so professors are encouraged to develop new knowledge rather than to comprehend and organize that which we already have. Certainly, at many universities, greater attention must be paid to the central importance of educating future generations; this has been the focal point of a longstanding debate in the academy. Moreover, some professors should be allowed to pursue writing and organization of knowledge rather than the creation of new information. Some universities might even establish departments of scientific writing specifically for this purpose. If universities fear the loss of grant money by following this approach, they should be reminded that they can compensate for it with book royalties. Moreover, the reputation of a university and its constituent departments can be greatly enhanced by having faculty members who focus, to a great extent, on writing for the general public. Carl Sagan, Douglas Hofstadter, and Steven Jay Gould have all done a great deal to increase the fame of their respective departments.

The biological field of taxonomy, the study of classification of living things, is a tempting target for the derision of outsiders; but its insights into similarities and differences among organisms are an invaluable aid to progress in biology. Were there to be "taxonomists" of the physical sciences--people whose focus was to organize and amalgamate the knowledge developed by others--the rate of scientific advance would surely increase, despite some professors ceasing to contribute directly to research. While the French Encyclopedists of the eighteenth century were wrong to think that they could compile all of the knowledge of their age into a single series of books, their aim of providing a summary of scattered information sources was both noble and useful.

Great thinkers devoting themselves to organizing knowledge, rather than expanding it, represents a longstanding tradition in science. Euclid added few new theorems to the study of geometry, but elegantly amalgamated what was known into a single work. His contribution is arguably the greatest of any of the ancient Greeks to the field. I am indebted to one of my teachers, Louis Girifalco, for permanently altering the way in which I view science. We are taught, said Girifalco, that science consists of a great edifice which we can explore and master, and to which we may add new rooms. There is no edifice, he argued, only books, papers, and bits of knowledge in people's heads. A more accurate analogy would be to compare science to an ocean, full of known and unknown phenomena; an individual may hope to grasp some of these in a lifetime, but the critical skill to attain is learning to row a boat.

This much is true. But, at the risk of carrying the analogy too far, we also need people who will look at the ocean from above, noting how it interacts with itself and external phenomena. We need individuals who will combine what we know about parts of the ocean into coherent maps, so that not every individual needs to stumble over the same rocks. We need more people to abjure the thrill of exploring virgin territory in order to serve as teachers, guides, cartographers, and communicators. Nor should those who focus their energies on writing fear that their contributions will therefore be neglected by future historians:

If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worth the reading,
Or do things worth the writing.