It's been said many times, but the best resource for learning how an airplane flies from the pilot's perspective is the book "Stick and Rudder" by Wolfgang Langewiesche. That book has been in print since the 1940's and has never gone out of date. While it's not "scientific", it presents all of the airplane's flight characteristics from the pilot's point of view and perception. It works for model airplanes as well as the full-size ones it was written about.