It may be a chimera to say that science or specifically knowledge has an odor, and indeed it is unlikely that science and knowledge as phenomena have any characteristic odor.
When I chose the title of this textualized publication "Pages of knowledge with the smell of science", I did it thinking of inviting my readers to consider the idea of whether science and knowledge have a distinctive smell, in order to give a preamble to a botanical and biochemical theme on the smell emitted by books.
Those who are in the habit of reading classic books of any area of knowledge, well know that books emit pleasant smells that connect our senses to the point of achieving wonderful inspiring and very pleasant sensations.
We all love the smells emitted by our mother nature through flowers, leaves, stems and fruits, mainly fruits of the citrus taxon. However, it should be noted that these smells that characterize these plant organs are complex biomolecules, in less technical words, they are chemical substances that make up the cellular structure of the tissues of flowers, leaves, stems and fruits.
Now, it is important to remember that the leaves of books are the product of vegetable compounds, which are obtained from plants, namely leaves, vegetable fibers such as lignin, among other structures, and are then subjected to special procedures for the manufacture of all types of paper.
Therefore, if the leaves of books originate from plant structures, it is intuitive that the odor emitted by books is nothing more than the characteristic odor of the complex biomolecules that constitute the plant structures used in the manufacture of paper.
Yesterday I read a great article by Llorente A, (2021) entitled; Why do books smell so good? Science has the answer, the manuscript in question outlines in more detail elements about the chemistry behind the smell of books, if you like you can access the article to expand more on this wonderful subject.
SOURCES CONSULTED
➊ Llorente A Why do books smell so good? Science has the answer. Link