Why is Scientific Literature so Dang Long?

    

        I've recently been trying to read Sigmund Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams", but as with most scientific literature, the book is insanely long. As a result, I feel less motivated to read more pages, because I must sift through all the information until I really become fascinated with a certain portion of the writing. Interestingly, I experienced this same reading block when trying to get through Darwins' "On the Orign of Species" a while back, so in this blog I aim to talk about both pieces of writing.

        Often times when these theoretical scholarly writings are assigned in a class, a student may get upset and comment something along the lines of "how come I need to read all of this, when the main point and thesis can be summed up in a sentence?" Especially now that most Uni frosh have already presented their half-hour long history presentations, and thus have also read through countless JSTOR articles, I hope I can illuminate how I feel about these outlandishly long writings.

        What the reader needs to understand is that often times these works are a scientist's lifetime encompassed on paper. "On the Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freuds' many books, and even current writings, form a thesis based upon often years of research and work. It is unfair to the writer to not have them iterate all the points which they formed throughout their research; Charles Darwin traveled the globe much of his scientific career to come to his conclusions, and thus he had a lot to say. Moreover, he lived in a time where his theory was consistentally challenged, and he had to re-iterate himself in response to others' criticisms. Sigmund Freud also wrote extensively, sometimes making some very odd claims, for a similar reason.

        Secondly, the more obvious reason that these books are so long, is that scientists need to substantiate their claims to have them reach a point where they can be considered theories. Moreover, someone needs to read the scientist's research and make sure that the conclusion taken from it is properly substantiated. For the writer it's impossible to know what piece of evidence will stick in a reader's head and make the most sense to them in terms of the scientific ideas proposed, so they try to encompass as many subjects as possible to entice the reader to fully understand a certain theory.

        All this being said, I don't see myself progressing through these types of books any faster because of this information. I still get bored sometimes when reading words on paper, however for me audiobooks tend to make reading about these theories feel more discussion-based. Additionally, I hope I could help other demotivated learners gain back some of that motivation through this blog by understanding the reasoning behind reading such long literature.

(edit: I feel now that comparing Freud to Darwin is unfair. Upon learning more about Freud, it's impossible to compare the case studies of Freud's research to the complex structured evidence in Darwin's studies. Freud's work has been disputed and for good reason.).