University of Virginia Library

A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement, commenting in 1972 on two bibliographical annuals, remarked, "To argue about the scientific nature of bibliography now is surely to pursue a red herring."[1] I could not agree more. When I observed a few years ago, "All that 'scientific' can mean when applied to bibliographical analysis and textual study is 'systematic,' 'methodical,' and 'scholarly,'"[2] I was only repeating what a number of others have said and what many more must believe. It seems obvious that the word "scientific," when used to describe bibliography—as it has been off and on for more than a century—does not mean the same thing as when it is applied to physics, say, or chemistry. Apparently the issue cannot be dismissed so easily, however, for there have been several recent essays—notably those by D. F. McKenzie, James Thorpe, Peter Davison, and Morse Peckham[3] —which take up fundamental questions regarding the connections between science and bibliography. In a sense one must agree with the TLS that "it is perhaps a pity that he [McKenzie] revived the old argument about the scientific nature of bibliography"; at the same time, the existence of this group of essays suggests that the issue is not a dead one, and the TLS admits that the matter is "currently very much in the air."

Actually, of course, what is in the air is an attempt to clarify the nature of bibliography as a discipline, and what is a pity is that the focus on science may only serve to confuse the central question. Both "science" and "bibliography" have many different meanings, and, when

the two words are joined, the possibilities for confusion are multiplied. It is in this sense that the issue may be regarded as nonexistent, for "scientific bibliography" can mean almost anything, and arguments about it may amount to no more than knocking down straw men. Self-examination, though, is presumably a healthy thing, and bibliography will no doubt profit, as it has in the past, from soul-searching. It may be that bibliographers, at one stage, needed to overemphasize the scientific aspect of their work as a means of calling attention to, and insisting upon, its rigorous and scholarly nature, and that they have now reached a stage where they feel an urge to redress the balance. Bibliography—like many of the so-called "social sciences" (and I am not at this point claiming that it is a social science)—has been somewhat uneasy about its own identity, and it would not be surprising to find that attempts to define it have followed a pendulum-like course. Current discussion which questions in various ways the notion that bibliography is "scientific" may eventually lead—if a debate about "science" itself does not get in the way—to more fruitful analysis of the relations between one kind of bibliographical inquiry and another and of the procedures appropriate to each. In supposing that there is little to be gained by further discussion of how "scientific" bibliography is, I am not complaining about the general direction in which these recent articles are moving but about their circuitous path.

It is easy to understand why bibliographers have had a tendency to proclaim the scientific nature of what they were doing. For one thing, they have wanted, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to demonstrate that bibliography is a scholarly pursuit, to be distinguished from a merely dilettante concern for book collecting. In their zeal to show the respectability of their relatively new discipline, bibliographers were naturally tempted to play up the aspects of their work that could be compared to science, for the spectacular accomplishments of the physical sciences made "science" glamorous and gave particular advertising value to the word. This temptation has been intensified by the fact that bibliography has been associated most closely with the study of literature and that bibliographers are frequently members of English departments who assume that, since much of their work seems more objective than literary criticism, it is somehow scientific. The misunderstanding which occasionally exists between bibliographers and other members of English departments seems to turn on the matter of "science": the bibliographer often makes extravagant claims for the definiteness of his conclusions and may feel flattered to think that he is a scientist of sorts;

certain literary scholars, on the other hand, believe that imagination and insight are unnecessary in the search for scientific facts and assume that bibliographical work is on a lower intellectual plane than literary criticism. Both are wrong in their understanding of science;[4] but the fact remains that it has become a cliché, in the context of literary studies, to regard bibliography as scientific in some way.

Any such tradition has a grain of truth at its center: obviously there is something more "factual" about bibliography than about literary criticism. But the usefulness of science as an analogy has led some people to take the claims for the scientific status of bibliography more literally or in a more precisely detailed sense than was originally intended. I think that a glance at the ways in which science has been linked with bibliography ("the scientific analogy")[5] over the years will reveal the shifting meanings of the two terms, the repetitiveness of the discussions, and the growing tendency to be critical of the comparison itself. And perhaps this kind of survey can provide a perspective from which to view the current situation.[6]