When reading modern nonfiction, you can read the lead sentences and skim the rest of most paragraphs and understand exactly what is being said. When reading science—modern or ancient—you have to read every word and every sentence carefully to learn the terminology. You can open a nonfiction book to any chapter and understand most of it without studying the preceding chapters carefully. But science and math start with developing precise language. If you skip even a few paragraphs defining their concepts, you get completely lost.

Many of the historical problems with understanding Sun Tzu's work can be trace back to its first Western translation. A Jesuit missionary, Father Amiot, first brought The Art of War to the West, translating it into French in 1782. Unfortunately, this translation started the tradition of mistranslating Sun Tzu's work, starting with the title, The Art of War (Art de la guerre).