The Last Word On Nothing

“Math and graphs are necessary to make a story like this interesting.”

“He doesn’t provide any drawings or graphs, which would have appealed to and been understood by many readers.”

“He tries to describe graphs without using any pictures at all … why? I myself would also have liked some representation of the mathematics, because I believe that many of those interested in this kind of topic has had at least some math & science education, and the others can ignore them.”

Many has, I’m sure. But despite what these online comments about my most recent book contend, the crucial question for someone writing about science for a non-specialist audience is: Will “the others”—readers without the benefit of a math or science education—actually ignore the graphs and charts and equations, or will they, fanning pages in the New Nonfiction aisle or idly clicking “Look Inside!” online, find themselves confronting their inner eighth grader’s greatest nightmare, and go buy The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Subject-Verb Agreement instead?

It’s become somewhat fashionable to say that in the internet age, everyone’s a critic. That’s not true. Everyone has an opinion, which has always been the case. The difference now is that everyone has a means to express it. But that’s not being a critic; that’s being opinionated. A critic asks the same question that the last “critic” above asks—“why?”—but then goes on to try to answer it. A critic tries to figure out why the writer has done whatever the writer has done, rather than recite a wish list of what else the writer might have done. The critic might then disagree about the soundness or execution of that strategy, but not before trying to understand the project on the writer’s terms.

Still, I take seriously many of the online comments because I do care what people think—not so much their thumbs-up/thumbs-down verdicts but what is and isn’t working for them. And clearly for a certain readership a particular choice of mine didn’t work. So I have recently been asking myself the critic’s question: Why did I choose—deliberately—to omit illustrations?

Two reasons, I think. The first is the practical one I mentioned above. Why risk alienating readers who might be intimidated by this kind of material? Usually I write about science because I’ve found a particular subject that I consider mind-expanding, or even mind-blowing. Either description certainly applies to the recent discovery at the heart of the book in question:  that 96 percent of the universe exists in some form that we can detect only indirectly, through its influence on the 4 percent that we can detect directly (which is what, throughout the history of civilization, we’ve always assumed the universe in its entirety might be). But no matter what my subject is, I want to communicate a sense of intellectual wonder to as many readers as possible—especially those who otherwise might never experience it. And in fact a lot of other online responses have expressed the opposite opinion of the ones I quoted above: The absence of graphs, charts, equations is what made these readers decide to purchase the book.

The other reason to omit illustrations is aesthetic. That absence doesn’t reflect a prejudice against illustrations. I’ve got nothing against illustrations. Some of my best friends’ books contain illustrations. In fact, part of the pleasure of writing for LWON is that we the contributors get to choose our own accompanying artwork. I can’t speak for my colleagues, but for me the artwork is almost always associative, not explanatory. The post could live without it. Today’s art, for instance, is the symbol for the empty set, a visual representation of what these 1000 words (well, 837) would be worth if rendered as a picture—picture in this case being a category that includes graphs, charts, and equations. But you don’t need to understand the reference in order to understand the meaning of these words.

And that’s my prejudice: words. I consider writing about science a challenge: Can I describe whatever esoteric concept I’m describing without resorting to illustrations?

I don’t think that including graphs, charts, equations is right or wrong. And I don’t think that not including them is right or wrong. But contrary to what some online commentators might assume, I’ve got my reasons.

Ideally the two reasons would complement each other seamlessly. Even the reader who might prefer graphs, charts, and equations wouldn’t mind their absence; the right words in the right order would suffice. For some readers, however, my efforts apparently weren’t enough. Those readers do mind the absence of illustrations. And I can’t blame them, because, well, they’ve got their reasons.

Still, I take some solace that for other readers I’ve succeeded in synthesizing my two reasons. As one Italian “critic” has noted (via Google translation):

“Whenever an idea or concept is introduced technical explanation arrives on time, dry and very clear, for those who are scared, you do not see mathematical formulas, numbers, occasionally, sparingly but with the values ​​of dizziness, of those who find it hard to imagine.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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