CAN ‘The LITERATURE’ BE READABLE? Available to Purchase

Literature, in the ordinary sense of the word, is the written record of something worth saying, well said. In the special sense in which it is now used, ‘the literature’ is everything that is published by scientists and about science. It includes weighty and scholarly monographs and textbooks, long and detailed reports of researches occupying half the lifetime of a man, substantial contributions by teams of workers announcing discoveries of first‐rate importance—and short notes of detailed observations, descriptions of new apparatus, fresh techniques, the use of a new reagent, sometimes merely the use of an old reagent but differently applied. The literature includes as well secondary literature, reviews of papers already published, lists of titles, abstracts, translations, patents. There is even a tertiary literature comprising reviews of topics already covered by other reviews and collections of abstracts. And as the backbone of the tertiary literature we always have the steady output of textbooks and handbooks, of published symposia and colloquia containing articles which are themselves reviews of abstracts of the primary literature in which the actual scientific facts are reported.