The Science Preface

In The Discoveries, Alan Lightman writes a forward to what he considers the twenty-two most consequential scientific discoveries of the 20th Century. From Max Planck’s discovery of the quantum to Linus Pauling’s theory of the chemical bond, Lightman walks his readers through the backgrounds of the scientists, the gritty details of the experiments, and the effect these papers had on the arc of scientific pursuit. Then, following every forward, he presents the actual paper in question, mostly in full. 

The format — what I call a science preface — is one of my favorite types of science writing, but it’s also one of the rarest. Why? And the bigger question: why don’t we see more creativity in the realm of science communication?

To explain what a science preface is, it’s easier to start with what it’s not. A good science preface is not a summary. Summaries abound: Nature Briefings, ResearchHub, most science journalism. There’s even an AI application that generates a one-sentence summary of any paper.

Summaries are important — and there can be aspects of summarization in a preface — but I’m not sure we need more of them. In fact, every published paper already has one: the abstract! In my opinion, for any given paper, there are two important summaries. The first is the abstract, which is the author’s best approximation at the relevant bits being presented. The second is from the side of the reader — the intellectually arduous work of trying to fit everything they’ve read into a coherent, shortened explanation. Third party summaries are inconsequential compared to those two.

A science preface aims not at the what but the why. It provides context and color about how the subsequent paper fits into the broader pursuit of knowledge and, most importantly, why it is worth reading. The feeling of reading a good science preface is not a satisfied understanding of the topic, but a burning excitement to read — to truly invest the time — and understand what the author or authors are trying to communicate.

Lightman’s forwards take the long view, like his generational placement of Perutz’ discovery of the structure of hemoglobin:

It took Max Perutz twenty-two years to unravel the structure of hemoglobin and another ten to figure out how it worked. During much of that period, from the mid-1940s to the end of the 1950s, Perutz helped lead two revolutions in science. First, the tools and thinking of physics were applied to biology. Here were the beginnings of molecular biology, the study of biological systems at the ultrasmall level of atoms and molecules… The second revolution was the transition from the “small science” of the nineteenth century and earlier to the “big science” of the mid-twentieth century and beyond. Big science is driven largely by the complex instruments and equipment needed to pursue science at the cutting edge of today — such instruments as the X-ray diffraction machines and analyzers employed by Perutz and his colleagues or the subatomic particle accelerators used by physicists or the earth-orbiting telescopes launched by astronomers. Unlike the more modest experimental demands of earlier science, the equipment and analyses of big science require large teams of scientists and huge financial support. Thus, in the 1960s and later, we begin to see scientific papers coauthored by half a dozen people or more.”

And Lightman brings precise details to set the scene, like adding colleagues’ comments on the condition of the laboratory of William Maddock Bayliss and Ernest Henry Starling, who discovered hormones:

The two scientists conducted their experiment that day in Bayliss’s small laboratory at the college. The working space was so crammed with odds and ends and various equipment hung from the rafters that a friend said the room “wanted only a stuffed crocodile to make it a complete alchemist’s den.”

Most importantly, though, the thoughtfulness and care of the preface allows us to see further than the simple stories that emerge from science and permeate popular culture. For example, Alexander Fleming’s discovery of antibiotics is popularly known as the shining example of a chance discovery. But it was far from it. Fleming is actually a better example of someone with a relentless commitment to a problem and a systemic approach to inviting serendipity. In two paragraphs, Lightman paints this clearer picture:

Fleming dedicated himself to a kind of studied disorder. Often chiding his colleagues for being too neat and tidy, for carefully putting away their test tubes and plates at the end of the day, Fleming left his festering dishes of bacteria lying about his lab for weeks at a time. Then he would look at them carefully to see if anything unexpected or “interesting” had occurred.

The appearance of white fluff in the culture of staphylococci was such an occurrence. Fleming had not been searching for antibacterial agents. Rather he had been investigating the abnormal forms of staphylococci for a routine academic article. This mold was a surprise. Yet Fleming was ready. Since his 1908 medical school thesis on “Acute Bacterial Infections,” he had devoted himself to finding the means of fighting bacterial infections, which he considered the most dangerous illnesses threatening the human race.

Language is the connective tissue of science. Mathematics and experimentation are the heart, but words are what make it come alive. In the long term, science advances through discovery, new technology, and effective communication. The measurable unit of progress is still the published peer-reviewed paper. However, papers aren’t always easy. The scientists who write them are aiming at the bleeding edge of their field, usually with terms and concepts that require years of diligent study to comprehend. And despite a growing trend of open science practices, many consequential papers live behind expensive paywalls and subscriptions only available to university researchers.

The walls around knowledge have given way to entirely separate genres of science communication — science journalism, Youtube explainers, etc — that seek to bring the fruits of science to new audiences. They succeed to varying degrees of educational and commercial effectiveness, but there is a clear trend towards matching the popular media of the day: television, magazines, TikTok. It makes sense if the goal is to reach the most number of people, but surely that can’t be the only metric (or even the most important one).

The science preface runs counter to the prevailing winds of science communication. It doesn’t scream for views like a popular television or Youtube show, which bias towards the sensational. A science preface doesn’t compete on a news cycle. It leverages the goal of timelessness to remove any tendency towards shock value. As Lightman shows, a good science preface can come a century later. In fact, they get better with aged source material. It’s slow science communication.

There are small troves of science prefaces online, notably Citation Classics or The Winnowers’ Grain & Chaff. I would love to see more. I would happily consume them in a journal format, a sort of New York Times Review of Books for scientific papers. I learned through reading the Collected Papers of Michael E. Soulé: Early Years in Modern Conservation Biology that this format is a wonderful way to communicate the work of a scientific career. I suspect this would be an interesting way to present an entire discipline, too. It might leave the reader more aware of the nuance and trajectory of the field, and hopefully motivated to add their own contribution. As opposed to textbooks, which can leave disciplines seeming complete and orderly.

Just as science continues to evolve, so too should the way we communicate and interact with it. There’s no law that says we must only work within the bounds of popular media. As Andy Matuschak and Michael Neilsen are showing, we are free to invent new models that compete on effectiveness rather than likes and views. Science prefaces are one idea. What else?

Below is my ongoing Twitter thread of science prefaces I find around the web. Feel free to add to the list!