354 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 11, NO. 15 



however accurate, thorough, and complete it might be from the stand- 

 point of a specialist. 



It is also desirable that the book should not be professedly a text- 

 book, nor should it be written in text-book style ; that is, it must not 

 be a book intended primarily for the seeker after information regard- 

 less of whether the information be interesting reading or not. It 

 is perhaps needless to add that it should have been written by an author 

 who knows his subject thoroughly, and should not be so old as to be 

 obsolete in its facts and speculations.^ 



The user of such a list may well be reminded at the outset that the 

 field of science is not sharply divisible into little compartments labeled 

 "Chemistry," "Botany," and the like. On the contrary, there is 

 one vast field of human knowledge, and facts concerning any part 

 of that field have a bearing on every other part. The usual subdi- 

 visions, which are those employed here, are not fundamental; they 

 are largely accidental and have arisen merely as a matter of human 

 convenience. 



If we believe with Pope that "The proper study of mankind is 

 Man" we may well begin with books about Man himself, rather than 

 follow the austere and logical order laid down by philosophers, be- 

 ginning with mathematics and ending with sociology. The natural 

 order of human education is just the reverse, beginning with impres- 

 sions of human nature and reaching formal logic and philosophy last, 

 if ever. In this preliminary list, however, the Committee does not 

 attempt to recommend any books in the fields of psychology, sociology, 

 and related sciences, but begins with Man considered rather as a 

 species or as an organism, suggesting the following books in anthro- 

 pology and physiology : 



2 These specifications are not easy to meet. Popular scientific books of a class which 

 might be described as "interesting if true" are not uncommon, but the production of such 

 books seems to demand primarily a sufficient dearth of conscience and professional pride 

 on the part of author and publisher. Others fall on the borderline between the merely 

 "unorthodox" and the "misleading" or "misinforming." It is no great objection to a 

 popular scientific book that its speculations are somewhat wild, provided its statements 

 of fact and principle are based on knowledge and not on ignorance. 



Librarians and interested readers can be depended upon to compile lists of scientific 

 books that are interesting, but they have no good way of finding out which of these are 

 reliable. It is here that the Academy can do a service, for there are on the shelves and 

 recommended in library lists books of popular science which, under even the most 

 liberal of "pure food laws" for books ought to be labeled "misbranded" or "adulterated" 

 if not "poisonous." They are particularly common in those branches, such as meteo- 

 rology and anthropology, in which every man considers himself something of an expert. 



