ABSTRACT
Can science be explained? Science has been popularized and televised, demonstrating that indeed it can be explained. Moreover, it can be made entertaining, amusing, and enlightening. If a computer can be programmed to entertain, we can be quite sure that science can be made entertaining as well. Then why is it not widely read and enjoyed? Probably because not too many scientists have tried to popularize science. Old professors in graduate schools repeatedly exhort students not to delve into popular writing. They name people whose academic careers were ruined because of their inadvertent adventure into popular writing. Understandably, their concerns are genuine, but mistaken: A scientist and a popular writer are not mutually exclusive – being one cannot be the other. Numerous scientists are popular writers. However, when Marshall McLuhan labeled one mass medium hot and another cold, it was a figure of speech, no more or less, but a gross distortion in science, because he had not defined "cold" and "hot," nor had he provided a shred of evidence why one was hot and the other cold. Science demands rigor, precision, and accuracy, but no popular writer need meet the criteria. A graduate student in science would immediately get into trouble, if he or she wrote "Since the dawn of history ... " or ''The bell indeed tolls for the glorious .... " Poetic? Yes. Proof? No.
