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Notes
McKenzie, "Printers of the Mind: Some Notes on Bibliographical Theories and Printing-House Practices," SB, 22 (1969), 1-75; Thorpe, "The Ideal of Textual Criticism," in The Task of the Editor (1969), pp. 1-32; Davison, "Science, Method, and the Textual Critic," SB, 25 (1972), 1-28; Peckham, "Reflections on the Foundations of Modern Textual Editing," Proof, 1 (1971), 122-55.
F. H. Ludlam has commented, in another connection, on the failure of some scholars to recognize that "the aim of both artists and scientists is to communicate a new and valuable way of regarding the phenomena, an enterprise in which there can be no absolute and permanent correctness" ("The Meteorology of Shelley's Ode," TLS, 1 September 1972, p. 1015). Cf. A. E. Housman's classification of scholars as scientists (and his distinction between literary critics and scholars) in The Confines of Criticism, ed. John Carter (1969), pp. 26-34.
I shall use the term "scientific analogy" as a convenient shorthand to refer to any linking of "bibliography" (in any sense) with "science" (in any sense).
I have not attempted to provide an exhaustive history of the scientific analogy but rather a sketch which incorporates a representative sampling of relevant pronouncements over the years.
I am using the terms suggested by Lloyd Hibberd in "Physical and Reference Bibliography," Library, 5th ser., 20 (1965), 124-34.
The history of the word "bibliography" has been studied in great detail: one thorough survey is the opening section of David Murray's "Bibliography: Its Scope and Methods," Records of the Glasgow Bibliographical Society, 1 (1912-13), 1-105 (reprinted separately in 1917), which refers to bibliography as "one of the oldest, and yet one of the most modern of the sciences" (p. 2); an even more extensive survey is Rudolf Blum's "Bibliographia: Eine wortund begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung," Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 10 (1970), cols. 1010-1246. A convenient collection of quotations of definitions of bibliography appears in Percy Freer's Bibliography and Modern Book Production (1954), pp. 1-13.
Even at this early stage, however, the word "science" in this context did not go without criticism. Macvey Napier, writing the first full article on "Bibliography" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (in the Supplement of 1816), complained about Horne's remark: "He seems to have allowed himself to be imposed upon, by the vague verbiage of those French Writers, who claim for this branch of knowledge a character of vastness which does not belong to it." In another criticism of the French view, he says that "some of her Bibliographers have lately fallen into a very extravagant mode of describing the nature and rank of this branch of Learning. They go so far as to represent it as a Universal Science, in whose ample range all other sciences, and all other kinds of knowledge, are comprehended."
Library Journal, 1 (1876-77), 67-69. It is worth noting, however, that his inclusion among the bibliographer's concerns of "the materials of which books are composed" and the "external peculiarities or distinctions of an edition" foreshadows the later emphasis of physical bibliography.
He also referred to the development of "material" (or physical) bibliography as "due to the gradual formation of a technical science of books" and ended by saying that bibliographers should "recognise the chief value of their science as the handmaid of literature." Taylor's article followed the same plan as Napier's 1816 article but was largely rewritten.
Quoted (from the Printer's Register, 6 March 1886) in G. W. Prothero, A Memoir of Henry Bradshaw (1888), p. 363. Reed called Bradshaw "the keenest of the new scientific school of bibliographers" (Blades, Pentateuch, p. xiii).
"There can be no doubt," Copinger said, "that Bibliography is now in process of development, and is fast becoming an exact science. It is high time, therefore, that it should be recognized as something very different from mere cataloguing." See Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 1 (1892-93), 33. Henry Guppy, a few years later, said that "bibliography has, properly speaking, assumed the form of a science"; see "The Science of Bibliography and What It Embraces," Library Association Record, 2 (1900), 173.
"Some Aspects of Bibliography," Publications of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 4 (1899-1901), 2-3. Ferguson's monograph (amounting to 102 pages with its book list) was also issued separately in 1900.
Brown makes similar statements on pp. 8-9, 16-17; and the words "science" and "scientific" turn up repeatedly—e.g., see pp. 1, 3, 4, 15, 18, 157.
Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 12 (1911-13), 211-318. McKerrow recognized, however, that editing requires more than analytical bibliography by itself can provide: "The knowledge and literary training of a scholar like Dyce could and often did enable him better to represent his author's intention, than more 'scientific' methods in the hands of men unskilled to use them" (p. 219). In another comment in the "Notes" he expressed both the relative objectivity of analytical bibliography and its historical nature: analytical bibliography is "one of the most absorbing of all forms of historical enquiry," he said, in part because "such discoveries as we may make are real discoveries, not mere matters of opinion, but provable things that no amount of after-investigation can shake" (p. 221). His optimism about the possibility of conclusive proof in analytical bibliography had not altered by the time he converted the "Notes" into An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), for this statement remains (p. 5).
"Our Twenty-First Birthday," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 13 (1913-15), 24. A few years earlier, in his article for the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910), Pollard did not call bibliography the science but rather the "art of the examination, collation and description of books." Though he did not discuss the issue in Shakespeare Folios and Quartos (1909), one of the early monuments of the "new" bibliography, he did talk about establishing a "scientific hypothesis" to account for the 1619 quartos (p. 99).
"Bibliographical Problems, with a Few Solutions," PBSA, 10 (1916), 124. In this essay he also described bibliography as "the comparative anatomy of the book" (p. 127). Four years later in "Bibliography —A Forecast," Cole asserted that bibliography could be regarded as a science in the light of the Century Dictionary's general definition of "science" and again likened it to anatomy in its minute examination of books "to discover the relations that each part bears to the whole" (PBSA, 14 [1920], 10-11).
One essay from the 1930s may be taken to show some of the problems that arise. Hereward T. Price, in "Towards a Scientific Method of Textual Criticism for the Elizabethan Drama," JEGP, 36 (1937), 151-67, complained about what he called the "bibliographical school" of editing because he found its adherents guilty of "hasty generalization on insufficient data"; yet one of his chief examples was Dover Wilson, whose work would not be regarded by most analytical bibliographers as illustrating the way their discipline operates. (His criticism, however, is understandable, since Wilson himself spoke of bibliography as forming "the only secure and scientific basis for textual investigations"—see, e.g., Library, 3rd ser., 9 [1918], 153.) Price concluded by urging greater scientific rigor for "textual criticism": "Scholars think too much of an explanation which may be true and not at all of an explanation which must be true. It rarely occurs to scholars that their business is not so much to find explanations for special cases, as to discover the explanation which fits all the cases of the same sort. This is a truism in the natural sciences; let us hope we can make it a truism in the science of textual criticism" (p. 167). It is not clear whether "textual criticism" here means the same as "analytical bibliography" or whether it includes editing as well; the statement would be more effective if it clearly distinguished between the two and recognized the possibility that different procedures might be appropriate to each.
Greg apparently found it compatible to speak of bibliography as an independent subject and at the same time to define it in terms of literary study or as the "grammar of literary investigation." Of course, one of his reasons for stressing its independence was to oppose the notion of bibliography as a list-compiling service for other disciplines. In another address, a year and a half later, he emphatically stated that the "bibliography" he was talking about was "in no way particularly or primarily concerned with the enumeration or description of books—a belief which has done much in the past to reduce it to futility and retard the recognition of its real nature and importance." This kind of argument is merely an attempt to segregate analytical bibliography from what is regarded as "bibliography" in the popular mind; but he went on to explain once again that his kind of bibliography dealt with the "formal aspect," not the subject matter, of books, thus implicitly linking it with "exact" or "objective" studies. Indeed, he continued to define bibliography as "the science of the transmission of literary texts." See "Bibliography—An Apologia," Library, 4th ser., 13 (1932-33), 113-43. The same ideas also appeared in his address "The Function of Bibliography in Literary Criticism Illustrated in a Study of the Text of King Lear," Neophilologus, 18 (1933), 241-62: he praised critical insight but felt that the critic should accept bibliographical facts not with antagonism but "with the welcome accorded by the true scientific spirit, the spirit of intellectual integrity" (p. 244).
By "textual critic" McKerrow really meant "analytical bibliographer," since his (and Greg's) conception of bibliography stressed its relation to texts. But the possibility of interpreting "textual critic" to mean something roughly equivalent to "editor" may distract some readers from the main point of the argument. The issue McKerrow is discussing is not the scientific nature of the editorial process but rather—what had been repeatedly claimed—the scientific nature of the processes of analysis which form a foundation for the editorial process.
A Student's Manual of Bibliography (1931), p. 13. His discussion of analytical bibliography begins, "In all sciences laboratory work on the specimen precedes classification" (p. 18); under "Historical Bibliography" he speaks of "anatomy" and the "natural history method"—which he calls "Darwinism applied by analogy to a human activity" (pp. 20-21).
"The Aims of Bibliography," Library, 4th ser., 13 (1932-33), 228. Gaselee continued to use the analogy in describing Bradshaw's contribution as "a change of direction almost comparable to the work of Darwin or Mendel."
The same could be said of Allan Stevenson's use of beta-radiography for reproducing watermarks, as illustrated by The Problem of the "Missale speciale" (1967). Even if this technique becomes standard in bibliographical investigation of paper—as there is reason to believe it should—it is still a technique from outside the field of bibliography which has become useful in bibliographical work.
For example, Randolph G. Adams, in some "Remarks" before the Bibliographical Society of America in 1942, used the scientific analogy in recognizing the intrinsic interest of analytical bibliography, whether or not applied to a literary problem: "I often think of bibliography as akin to, or analogous to, pure science. The findings of pure scientists are not always applied in the lifetime of the discoverer" (PBSA, 36 [1942], 59). In the same year Rollo Silver, reviewing G. L. McKay's directory of the New York book-trade to 1820, declared, "In approach and method, bibliography is one more science," and compared McKay's accomplishment to that of "a chemist listing the components of a single compound" (PBSA, 36 [1942], 78-79). F. C. Francis, after surveying "Recent Bibliographical Work," concluded that it was characterized by the "careful amassing of all possible data before attempting to draw conclusions"; he had demonstrated, he believed, "that there is really scientific bibliographical work being done at the present time" (Library, 4th ser., 23 [1942-43], 126).
A similar analogy was drawn by Henry Thomas, who maintained that "bibliography on its physical side is (or should be) at least as scientific as Scotland Yard" ("Watermarks," Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, 2 [1940-46], 450). This analogy has reappeared a number of times since then, as in Stevenson's The Problem of the "Missale speciale," p. 69.
Her use of the word "textual" here as a virtual synonym for "bibliographical" shows that she (like Greg) was thinking of analytical bibliography in terms of its application to textual matters.
Greg, in his essay "Bibliography—A Retrospect," noted the movement of bibliography "from the dilettante stage to the technical. And it was the work of the incunabulists," he continued, "and of those who followed their lead, that transformed bibliography from a study the main interest of which was artistic to one governed by the methods of scientific inquiry" (p. 27). Victor Scholderer said that the study of incunabula was put on "a truly scientific basis" (p. 32) during the early years of the Society and that Robert Proctor "found the history of early printing guesswork and left it a science" (p. 34). F. P. Wilson, in his remarkable chapter on "Shakespeare and the 'New Bibliography,'" wrote of Greg, "As do men of science, he has worked by analysis and synthesis" (p. 135). And Michael Sadleir referred to "the science of bibliography" (p. 146).
A glance at the writings of others during the 1950s and 1960s shows that the same variety of uses of the word "science" continues. Stanley Morison called bibliography "essentially the same discipline as Palaeography," which he defined, in turn, as a "science . . . pursued primarily for the benefit of the efficient criticism of the physical means of the transmission of thought" ("The Bibliography of Newspapers and the Writing of History," Library, 5th ser., 9 [1954], 154). James G. McManaway asserted, "Pure bibliographical research may be defended in the same terms as pure scientific research. In fact, Bibliography is sometimes referred to as a science. Certainly its methods are scientific, and its purposes" ("Bibliography," in Literature and Science [1955], p. 27). F. N. L. Poynter believed that bibliography "is neither an art nor a science but may contain both," though the analytical methods developed by Pollard, McKerrow, and Greg "may justly be called 'scientific'" (Bibliography: Some Achievements and Prospects [1961], pp. 5, 6). Allan Stevenson considered bibliography "an art and a science, mixing the critical and creative with cool precision and method" (Hunt Library Catalogue, 2 [1961], cxlii) and later asked that watermarks be studied "as scientifically as we have studied types" (The Problem of the "Missale speciale," p. 69). William A. Jackson, on the other hand, avoided "science" in defining bibliography as "the art of looking at a book objectively, as a physical object" (Bibliography and Literary Studies [1962], p. 1); and Charlton Hinman did not use the word in distinguishing analytical bibliography from editing: "Bibliographical analysis can establish many facts about the printing-house history of a book. . . . It can provide all manner of general enlightenment. . . . Yet the final resolution of particular textual problems is ordinarily an editorial responsibility" (The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare [1963], 1: vii).
SB, 3 (1950-51), 37-62. An earlier remark on the "scientific" nature of descriptive bibliography occurs in Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949): "I do not see how one can escape the conviction that the 'scientific' is basic in true descriptive bibliography, and that no amount of other inquiry, no matter how valuable, can itself substitute for the analytical description of the book as a material object" (p. 34). But he adds that descriptive bibliographies need not be limited to "scientific description only": "I feel that strictly scientific bibliographers often unduly limit the more general value of their work to too few classes of readers."
He goes on to say that what this produces, rather than "high probability," is "practical demonstration on physical evidence of a mechanical nature, demonstrable by a mechanical process." Actually, of course, such "demonstration" is simply a higher level of probability, resulting from agreements within a body of inductive evidence which common sense tells one cannot be explained as mere coincidence.
Cf. his later comment, "I should prefer the taste and judgement of a Kittredge (wrong as he sometimes was), and of an Alexander, to the unskilled and therefore unscientific operation of a scientific method as if it were the whole answer" —in Textual and Literary Criticism (1959), p. 116. (And note the similarity to McKerrow's remark quoted in footnote 23 above.)
For example, in The Bibliographical Way (1959), he calls it the "scientific analysis of the physical evidence of the books themselves" (p. 8). Generally, however, he speaks of "laws of evidence" (p. 10) or "a logical method of analysis" (p. 34) without direct reference to science. Describing analytical bibliography in "The Function of Bibliography," he said, "The evidence utilized is circumstantial and physical, and the method, it may be said, is inductive" (Library Trends, 7 [1959], 498). And in the current Encyclopaedia Britannica article his analogy is not with science but with law: "The evidence utilized is circumstantial and physical, and would often be legally valid."
The situation is not unlike that in which McKerrow found himself when he wished to counteract what he regarded as overly subjective and eclectic procedures in the editing of Shakespeare: in order to make his point, he went farther in the direction of rigidity than he would probably have gone if he had not been reacting against what seemed to him a lack of discipline. As Bowers sums up the matter, "it often appears that in his general editorial theory McKerrow's thinking was affected more by reaction to that of others than by positive theory of his own"; see "McKerrow's Editorial Principles for Shakespeare Reconsidered," SQ, 6 (1955), 309-24, which stresses McKerrow's reaction against Dover Wilson's use of supposedly "scientific" bibliographical methods. In this context Bowers sees a "pettishness" in McKerrow's comments on scientific method (quoted above)—though what "pettishness" there is may also reflect a more general impatience with the scientific analogy.
It is not surprising that recent efforts to introduce French-speaking scholars to analytical and descriptive bibliography should utilize the scientific analogy. See, for example, Roger Laufer, "Pour une description scientifique du livre en tant qu'objet matériel," Australian Journal of French Studies, 3 (1966), 252-72, and "La bibliographie matérielle dans ses rapports avec la critique textuelle, l'histoire littéraire et la formalisation," Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 70 (1970), 776-83—which speaks of analytical bibliography as "une discipline archéologique annexe de l'histoire" (p. 781), with problems similar to those posed by "la description des objets archéologiques" (p. 782). See also Wallace Kirsop's articles, such as "Vers une collaboration de la bibliographie matérielle et de la critique textuelle," Australian Journal of French Studies, 3 (1966), 227-51.
See footnote 3 above. McKenzie had made some of the same points earlier in the introductory remarks to An Early Printing House at Work: Some Notes for Bibliographers (1965).
A convenient summary of points of view appears in Peter Caws's article on "Scientific Method" in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 7: 339-43.
Something along these lines is what is sometimes known as the "linguistic" approach to the problem of induction; I quote again from Max Black, an advocate of this point of view: "The inductive concepts that we acquire by example and formal education and modify through our own experiences are not exempt even from drastic revision. . . . What is clearly impossible, however, is the sort of wholesale revolution that would be involved in wiping the inductive slate clean and trying to revert to the condition of some hypothetical Adam setting out to learn from experience without previous indoctrination in relevant rules of inductive procedure. This would be tantamount to attempting to destroy the language we now use to talk about the world and about ourselves and thereby to destroy the concepts embodied in that language. The idea of ceasing to be an inductive reasoner is a monstrosity. The task is not impossibly difficult; rather, its very formulation fails to make sense" (Encyclopedia, p. 179). The common-sense defense of induction does not of course answer the philosophical objections. As Black, in "The Raison d'Etre of Inductive Argument"—included in his Margins of Precision (1970)—says, "There is no way to cope with the 'problem' that, in my opinion, offers any prospect of satisfying those to whom its solution seems necessary except by patiently exposing the underlying confusions until the alleged problem withers away" (p. 177). He sees "no stultifying circularity" in holding that "there is indeed good inductive evidence for thinking that our universe is of such a character that continued trust in the inductive practice is reasonable."
"I am not happy," he says, "about my need to use these terms ['inductive' and 'deductive'], and I hope they will be accepted in just the rough-and-ready, practical sense intended by Bacon" (p. 36). Bowers has made some comments on McKenzie's article in "Seven or More Years?", Shakespeare 1971, ed. C. Leech and J. M. R. Margeson (1972), pp. 50-51.
Elsewhere Bowers describes the search for extant copies of a book in such a way as to emphasize the open-ended quality of inductive procedure: ". . . although no way exists to protect oneself against the unique copy of a variant in a private collection, or in some out-of-the-way small library which one would not ordinarily consult, one's coverage should be so wide as materially to reduce the odds that an unknown variant will turn up later to dim one's hopes for completeness. (The number of variants I have already seen in unique copies does not give me any great confidence, however, that an equal number still does not lie in wait, unknown and unsung, waiting for my book to be printed.)" See "Bibliography and Restoration Drama," in Bibliography (Clark Library, 1966), p. 4.
Indeed, he doubts that the concept of "normality" is meaningful "in any serious and extended sense" (see pp. 4-6).
See footnote 3 above; the essay is republished, in revised form, as a chapter in his book Principles of Textual Criticism (1972), pp. 50-79. The sentence from this paper quoted below is the same in both versions, and the citation is to the 1972 publication.
In the third chapter of Principles of Textual Criticism, pp. 80-104. It is his thesis in this chapter that bibliographers have attempted to "make textual criticism a branch of bibliography" (p. 101), and he provides a historical survey to exhibit "the process by which bibliography has taken over textual criticism" (p. 89). Although he says, "This development very closely parallels the twentieth-century association of science and bibliography," the survey of the scientific analogy which I presented earlier suggests that his view is somewhat overstated. He concludes that "textual criticism cannot properly have a single methodology" (p. 104), but it does not seem that the leading bibliographers ever suggested that it should. The issue is really whether or not the "bibliographical orientation" of textual criticism is excessive—a matter which cannot be decided on theoretical grounds. If analytical bibliographers can accept being plumbers rather than scientists, they would no doubt agree with Thorpe's final assessment: "The tools of one trade will not repair every breakdown, and the special expertise that the textual critic ought to possess is that of a skilled and knowledgeable handyman. He is not a plumber or an electrician, but he must know how to deal with pipes and wiring" (p. 104).
See footnote 3 above; Davison also offers in this essay a criticism of Thorpe's method of selecting quotations (pp. 5-6). He had presented some of the same points about McKenzie's paper earlier in "Marry, Sweet Wag," in The Elizabethan Theatre II, ed. David Galloway (1970), pp. 134-43.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Davison is aware of, and comments on, the fact that he is introducing another scientific analogy by referring to this concept.
See footnote 3 above. I do not propose here to go into this part of Peckham's paper; I believe it does no injustice to his argument to consider the first section (pp. 127-36) separately from the rest.
"Aestheticism to Modernism: Fulfillment or Revolution?" in The Triumph of Romanticism (1970), p. 204; the essay was originally published in 1967.
For a summary of some of the arguments, with a checklist for further reading, see Patrick Gardiner's "The Philosophy of History," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (1968), 6: 428-34, and his anthology Theories of History (1959); see also the chapters on the social sciences and history in Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (1961), pp. 447-606. A few theories of historiography are summarized in a bibliographical context by William H. Goetzmann in his contribution to a symposium on "The Interdependence of Rare Books and Manuscripts: The Scholar's View," published in Serif, 9 (Spring 1972), 10-18.
McKenzie's point is specifically applied to history—theatrical history—by J. A. Lavin in "The Elizabethan Theatre and the Inductive Method," in The Elizabethan Theatre II, pp. 74-86.
The earlier part of this sentence reads, "Consequently the Bowers claim that analytical bibliography is a science is justifiable . . . ." I hope it is clear by this point that such a statement is an oversimplification and is characteristic of the kind of statements which have caused misunderstandings throughout the history of the scientific analogy.
See, for example, footnote 11 above; Library Journal, 1 (1876-77), 69; Library Association Record, 2 (1900), 174—these last two in almost identical wording.
J. D. Cowley, in Bibliographical Description and Cataloguing (1939), defined historical bibliography in such a way as to bring together the questions about its scientific and its independent status: historical bibliography (as opposed to subject bibliography and textual criticism), he said, is "a science, if that term is used to mean any field of knowledge or knowing which is worth while approaching for its own sake" (p. 7).
See, among other places, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 1 (1892-93), 34; Library, 4th ser., 13 (1932-33), 113.
In the "Early Americana" section of Standards of Bibliographical Description (1949), Lawrence Wroth says that "bibliography is not an end but a means, a process in the study of the transmission of texts" (p. 105), and that unless it is regarded in this spirit it becomes "a species of research which closely approaches sterility" (p. 107). Curt Bühler, in the same volume, calls it "an ancillary investigation to the study of the text" (p. 8). E. E. Willoughby makes a similar comment in The Uses of Bibliography to the Students of Literature and History (1957): "Bibliography, in my opinion, is an ancillary science. It serves its true function when it is an efficient tool to solve problems in history, literature or some like subject" (p. 17).
"Purposes of Descriptive Bibliography, with Some Remarks on Methods," Library, 5th ser., 8 (1953), 22; though his article is specifically on descriptive bibliography, the comment quoted here refers to bibliography "in its several essential forms." This is only one of several similar statements Bowers has made; another was quoted above (and referred to in footnote 41). It is true that earlier, in the opening chapter of his Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949), he was more concerned with presenting descriptive bibliography as the "history of an author's book," not a mere guide to "points"; and in this context he quoted Wroth's comments as support (p. 9), called bibliography a "bridge" to textual criticism (pp. 9, 11), and said that "bibliography would be a limited science indeed if collection of external facts were its sole reason for existence" (p. 8). Some later writers have persisted in expressing doubt about the independent status of bibliography. Roy Stokes, for example, in The Function of Bibliography (1969), claims, "Although bibliography is concerned with the physical problems and aspects of such material, there is little to be gained, apart from purely anitquarian pleasure, in unravelling such problems for their own sake. The major interest will always lie in some relationship to the text which is being transmitted" (p. 17). And E. W. Padwick, in the opening chapter of Bibliographical Method (1969), reports, as if it were a novel idea, that "contemporary leading exponents such as Professor Fredson Bowers wish to see it [bibliographical scholarship] accepted as an independent discipline no longer to be regarded solely as a handmaid of literature" (p. 12).
Theory and History of Bibliography, trans. Ralph R. Shaw (1934), p. 24; other comments about science and bibliography appear on pp. 20-24.
I have touched on this question in more detail in "Tolerances in Bibliographical Description," Library, 5th ser., 23 (1968), 1-12.
As opposed to what may be called "creative editing"; I have made further comments on this distinction in PBSA, 65 (1971), 113-14.
The case is not altered, it seems to me, even when the text under consideration is one that would not conventionally be regarded as "literary"; obviously a knowledge of the subject matter taken up in the text is essential, but something beyond that is required.
The pointlessness of many of the discussions about whether one or another of the social sciences is really "scientific" is suggested by Ernest Nagel when he says that "the requirements for being a genuine science tacitly assumed in most of the challenges lead to the unenlightening result that apparently none but a few branches of physical inquiry merit the honorific designation" (The Structure of Science, p. 449).
"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism," in Selected Prose, ed. John Carter (1961), p. 149.
David Shaw, in an extremely interesting article ("A Sampling Theory for Bibliographical Research," Library, 5th ser., 27 [1972], 310-19) published after the present article was written, comes to a similar conclusion. He works out a way of applying the sampling theory developed by statisticians to the bibliographical problem of determining how many copies of a book provide a significant body of evidence. At the end he recognizes that a "preoccupation with scientific method . . . is generally to be welcomed, provided that it leads to practical results and not solely to doctrinal disputes about the methodologies. My suggestion of a greater application of probability theory in fact favours a continuation of business as before, rather than a great upheaval in bibliographical method." Instead of arguing the advantages of induction or deduction, as he says earlier, his concern "is more simply cautionary. Whatever system of reasoning one uses or thinks one is using, due caution is a most scholarly virtue" (p. 316).
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