Let's talk about the controversial phenomenon and the word behind it. “Popularization" is our object of study. On the one hand, when ideas come out of their environment, this is good, but when changing places, various distortions occur. Let us examine not only the meaning of the word, but also the subtleties associated with it.
Popular science literature and the meaning of the word
A person who loves popular science literature can easily say that the main thing in popularizing ideas is that they are transferred to a simpler and more accessible language. Academic science does not have steel doors with heavy bolts, but scientists have their own dialect, which few understand among those who are not in the circle of initiates. We’ll talk more about this, but the inception requires that we turn to the explanatory dictionary. As always, this is inevitable. So, to popularize is:
- Make it clear, accessible, popular.
- Make popular, that is, spread in wide circles.
If you look briefly at the meanings of the word “popularize” (from “popularize”), then it may seem that they are similar or even the same. Therefore, clarification is required. Recall that there is popular science literature that does not sin by excessive simplification, but at the same time conveys complex things to the reader in an accessible form. Of course, the subtleties of knowledge elude, but they are nothing to the neophyte or amateur.
Comprehension of subtleties is a matter of the future. Another thing is the attitude of professionals to this genre. In the West, a similar way to make money is perceived normally. Our scientific environment is full of snobbery. For example, both professional historians and readers of historical literature are dismissive of Edward Radzinsky. Like, he thinks a lot, comes up with. Even so, but at least it gives some idea of ​​Russian history to those who cannot read boring textbooks.
Sometimes popularization is a thankless task. Anyone who deals with it runs the risk of falling out of favor with colleagues or gaining an appropriate reputation. But, as a rule, a person formulates his life task, relying on the interests and internal needs, and not on the opinions of other people, and this is good. If everyone was engaged only in that which is prestigious, but unprofitable or, conversely, not prestigious, but terribly profitable, the world would be more boring. In his defense, the same Edward Radzinsky can talk about his circulations, and who reads and knows academic historians?
Literary environment and the second meaning of the word
The second meaning of “popularization” already implies that some ideas have become widespread. It is difficult to give a similar example in science, but the literary environment literally does not know any other popularity. In Soviet times, the work was passed from hand to hand, and then it was either published if it was trustworthy, or went to samizdat. It’s hard to say how the same process is going on now, but literary magazines probably open new names.
Yes, there is another subtlety: in fact, to clear up a clear language and the dissemination of ideas will not work. One who writes clearly will likely find understanding among people than one who writes darkly and obscurely. This is worth remembering.
Does popularization harm ideas?
It all depends on the degree of simplification. But all the same, over time, from the idea there may remain a skeleton or even fragmented bones, that is, some basic provisions that are distorted to impossibility. For example, take the fate of psychoanalysis in the 1920s. The doctrine in the USSR was terribly popular, because it was fully consistent with the materialistic picture of the world, then Freud, as a thinker, was not too favored.
But if you now look at the image of the father of psychoanalysis in the mass consciousness, then the portrait in attractiveness can compete with the picture depicting Dorian Gray at the moment when the hero of Oscar Wilde had already come to taste and gained mastery in terms of self-destruction. From psychoanalysis some ideological “flaws” remained:
- Freud had sexual problems, so he created such a theory.
- Freud reduced everything to sex.
- At the forefront are children's experiences and love for their mother or father.
By the way, the last thesis is played out in the film “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947).
From this, a holistic image does not work out in any way - only a ghost. Maybe we have forgotten something else, but the reader will probably remember it. Such is the ambiguity of popularization. This thesis does not need proof, it is obvious.
Why is bad advertising better than none?
But do not despair, any idea finds both good and mediocre interpreters and is inevitably distorted, but this gives rise to a surge of intellectual life. And if any doctrine remained in the dusty offices of scientists, then there would be no revival, and each of us was less educated.
How many formations can a person get in his life? In the best case, three full, different courses will not be considered. It turns out that there are three areas of knowledge where a person feels like a fish in water and understands texts of any level, but with the rest of the areas everything is not going so well.
The question arises: what does “popularization” mean in this case? This is a way to increase the stock of your knowledge without having professional training in this field. And books are always of two kinds - good and different.
In the end, if people scold the thinker or writer, it means that he catches nerves, annoys, and therefore, you need to get acquainted with him in order to make your own opinion. Henry Miller also shocked everyone at the time, and now he is being studied at the philological faculties, he is a classic. In other words, the roads of popularization are a closed book, and which of the ideas will remain for centuries can never be predicted. The life of ideas and people combines unpredictability.