Bryson, Darwin or Gurwitsch?

          In the first few sentences I provide insight into what I am going to write about, science and technology, and first impressions are made from my word usage and tone. I could now reference a couple people that I have learnt about to sound respectable and show that I know what I am talking about. Instead, I will not. When it comes down to who should write science, audience and purpose create the cement foundation that leads to an answer.

         Take Bryson as an example. He has been criticized as dumbing down scientific theory and stopping science from advancing. Take a moment to think about his audience and purpose, which he even mentions. He is talking to others like himself, dabblers in science that are interested but not professionals. His purpose is to provide insight to these fellow people. He achieves this goal. Darwin on the other hand wrote for the scientific community in the latter part of his career. His audience was a group of professionals, and his purpose was to convince. He achieves this goal. Gurwitsch is a foreign name for anyone who is not familiar with psychobiology. In some ways, he is even more ‘scientific’ than Darwin for he focuses on very specific topics that none outside of his field would be interested in. Was he a failure because his work is not widely known? A better question to ask is: is his work supposed to be widely known? Gurwitsch’s work is to better science, not to inform the dabbler.

         So how can you say who is worthy to write science? I agree that Bryson should not be writing scientific theory books that try to propel quantum mechanics to a new level. If he wishes to do this, he may need to change professions. Should Gurwitsch spend his time writing books that explain mitogenic radiation or the morphogenic field theory to dabblers in science? To each their own, and in this case, each does a wonderful job of translating their purpose to their respective audience.

Bryson talks about Darwin in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything if you do not wish to read   Darwin's On the Origin of Species.