  The democratically equal regard for everybody makes scientists write popular works to familiarize laypersons—as far as it is possible—with a current state of knowledge. They use widely understood common language full of imprecise expressions and metaphors. Since popular texts cannot include complications which a professional meets every day in her work and because an author speaks to the public as an authority, such books and articles have a dogmatic character. Instead of provisions like “it seems that”, “as we tried to prove” often present in scientific papers, in popular works there are expressions like “it is a fact that” or “as science has proven”. This has serious (although not intended) effects on the development of science itself, for those who are to become scientists in future have their first contact with a discipline precisely through popular readings. Thus, what was created by a group of people acquires an impersonal, autonomous character. “Social distance transforms the author from a creator to a discoverer”—and this is how a mythical ideal of knowledge “as representation of reality independent of the subject of cognition” (1936, VI) arises.