You’re approaching the book the wrong way. The original came with a big pile of colored papers. You are supposed to spend dozens of hours over the course of months doing careful visual study of various arrangements of them. If you don’t do the exercises in the book you’re not going to get much out of it.

Albers is not dogmatic. His purpose is not to prescribe a particular style or method. This is not a recipe book. He wants his students to explore deeply and learn how colors interact by spending a whole lot of time looking at them carefully, and then develop their own methods and styles.

The book is not supposed to be about “scientific progress”. It’s supposed to be a pedagogical tool aimed at artists. If you want a technical explanation, you are looking at the wrong book.

It sounds like you wanted to read a technical color science book. There are plenty of those out there, pitched at various audiences.