The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton

Review by: Lorraine Daston

Isis, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 571-572
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237239 .
Accessed: 21/06/2014 04:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.145 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 04:51:39 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 BOOKREVIEWS-ISIS,90: 3 (1999)
Science in Public admirablymanagesto be both.
This volume makes a valuablereferenceworkor
textbook for any science studies scholar or
teacher who examines historical or contempo-
raryrelationshipsbetweenprofessionalscientists
and that protean, omnipresent constituency
known as The Public. Jane Gregory and Steve
Miller have focused primarily on the Anglo-
American world, mentioning European PUS
projects and scholarshiponly briefly and Latin
America, Asia, and Africa hardly of all (partly
because these regions arenot well representedin
the PUS literature).But the peculiaritiesof news-
paperscience reporting,popularbooks by celeb-
rity scientists,television shows, and science mu-
seums are all duly covered.
Of note to historians of science, the book
sketches the evolution of the popularizationof
science from the Enlightenmentto the present.
Gregoryand Miller single out several mileposts
in this evolution: Buffon's Natural History, for
its literaryliberties;MichaelFaraday's1848 lec-
tures, "The Chemical History of a Candle,"for
their down-to-earth appeal; and the London
quality newspapers' active role in making Ein-
stein's theoryof relativitya householdword.Al-
though the descriptionsof these historicalcases
are brief and derived from secondary sources,
they show how scientists have always shared
their knowledge with lay audiences. Technical
knowledge, then, is not as timeless as scientists
believe it to be; the form, content, and motiva-
tions behindpopularizationhave always adapted
to shifting wider culturalvalues.
Using contemporarycase studies-the scare
over the use of the pesticide Alar on American
apples andthe dangers,real or perceived,of mad
cow disease in Great Britain-Gregory and
Miller point out that many popular representa-
tions of science portray active controversy.
Whethercreated by scientists or by journalists,
these accounts are not simply the watered-down
remnants of certain knowledge but the rough-
and-readyportraitsof what Bruno Latourcalls
"science in the making." This dynamic is re-
sponsible for much of the conflict between sci-
entists and media outlets over the quality of sci-
ence coverage. Scientists worried about their
image would ratherthe public saw only ready-
made science such as the Nobel Prize awards.
The public, althoughinclined to trust scientists,
is still often confused by conflicting claims of-
fered with few cues abouthow to interpretthem.
The familiar social forces of credibility and re-
spect have more to do with the public assessment
of scientificcontroversiesthandoes criticaleval-
uation of the empirical data. This insight could
This content downloaded from 194.29.185.145 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 04:51:39 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
571
nicely inform analysis of earlier controversies
and instances of popularization.
Science in Public also charts the growth of
scholarshipabout science popularization.After
frequent surveys measuring the ignorance of
most nonscientists about matters scientific, the
field continues to emphasize (in close alliance
with the scientific establishment)increasingsci-
entific literacy.Gregoryand Miller make a com-
pelling, measured case for moving PUS schol-
arship beyond the promotion of science to a
more critical, if still sympathetic,programthat
accountsfor the situatednatureof public interest
in and use of scientific information.
The science wars between the champions of
socially grounded,contextualanalysisof science
and membersof the scientificestablishmentwho
label such work as dangerouslyantisciencehave
only recently simmered down. Although Greg-
ory andMiller advocatethe contextualapproach,
the evenhandedness of Science in Public pro-
vides a welcome calm amid the maelstromof ad
hominem attacks. Their express goal is to sug-
gest an approachto PUS acceptableto all parties,
and given the broadscope of theirbook, they are
able to tie together many loose threadswithout
glibness, surely an importantstep toward a uni-
fication of the field.
STEVENALLISON-BUNNELL
Anthony Grafton. The Footnote: A Curious
History. xiv + 242 pp., index. Cambridge,
Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1998. $22.95.
In this witty and eruditestudy Anthony Grafton
describes how that historian's craft par excel-
lence, the footnote, came to be an indispensable
feature of the scholarly text. Grafton distin-
guishes the genuine historicalfootnote from the
annotation,commentary,and gloss: only when
the footnote is evidentiaryratherthanexpository
does it come of age, disclosing sources rather
than clarifying texts or acknowledging authori-
ties. While pursuing his bottom-of-the-page
quarryGraftonprovidesa historyin miniatureof
the ideals and above all the practices of critical
history-history that aspiresto honesty and so-
lidity, if not to sempiternaltruth.The book is of
interestto historiansof science on at least three
counts: first, as the story of a knowledge-pro-
ducing practicenow as entrenchedas laboratory
notebooks; second, as a record of an important
episode in the developmentof disciplinarystan-
dardsof proof; and third,as a meditationon the
means and ends of writing history.
Graftonbegins where disciplinarymythology
572 BOOKREVIEWS-ISIS,90: 3 (1999)
locates the origins of critical history, with Leo-
pold Ranke and the nineteenth-centuryschool of
earnestarchive-houndshe founded.But Grafton
quickly demolishes Ranke's claims to prece-
dence in the matterof the footnote (and, for that
matter,archivalresearch),while at the same time
portrayingRanke in vivid, sympatheticcolors.
Far from being the bloodless positivist of recent
caricature,Ranke worried that footnotes would
cramphis literarystyle and distractreadersfrom
the headlongpace of the historicalnarrative.No
historiancan readRanke's descriptionof the de-
lights of the Roman archives (one of Grafton's
many splendidly chosen quotations) without
sighing in deepest collegial empathy.
But if Ranke is not the hero of the footnote
saga, then who is? Grafton leads us steadily
backward:firstto EdwardGibbon'scopious, sar-
donic, and sometimesribaldfootnotes to the De-
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, then to
Jacques-Auguste de Thou's brave and fair-
minded attempt to document the rights and
wrongs of the French wars of religion, then to
the ecclesiastical historiansand antiquariessuch
as Athanasius Kircher, and finally to Pierre
Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique
(1696), which Bayle himself had originallycon-
ceived as a dictionaryof otherhistorians'errors
until wiser heads (including Leibniz) persuaded
him to undertakesomething more positive. It is
one of the sly charms of this book that Grafton
tells his story not forward,in the mannerof al-
most all historicalnarrative,butratherbackward,
from nineteenthcenturyto seventeenthcentury,
in the manner of actual historical research, in
which we are always tugged furtherand further
back into the past in searchof origins.
Although part of Grafton's point is to show
thatthe history of the footnote is a "palimpsest,"
layering "researchtechniquesframedin the Re-
naissance, critical rules first stated during the
Scientific Revolution, the irony of Gibbon, the
empathy of Ranke, and the savagery of [Hein-
rich] Leo" (p. 229), he does single out Bayle's
thick substratumof notes to the Dictionnaire as
a turning point. Bayle insisted on full and ac-
curatecitations,checked sources againstone an-
other, weighed argumentson all sides of schol-
arly controversies, carefully distinguished
among multiple editions of the same work, and
in shortestablishedstandardsof historicalproof,
despite his latter-dayreputationas a pyrrhonist.
His medium of proof was the footnote, and
sometimes even footnotes to footnotes (foot-
notettes, perhaps, on the analogy of epicy-
clettes?). Grafton suggests that Bayle and the
historians who followed in his footnote-steps
This content downloaded from 194.29.185.145 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 04:51:39 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
were responding to the Cartesiancontempt for
historyand otherforms of eruditionexpressedin
the Discours de la methode (1637) with a page
borrowedfrom Descartes's own book: enlist ex-
treme skepticism in the service of granite-firm
proof. More generally, Bayle's fortress of foot-
notes was part of the seventeenth-centurypre-
occupation with new foundationsand standards
of evidence and proof in a wide range of sci-
ences.
Graftonbelieves that evidence and eloquence
in history need not be immiscible, and his book
epitomizes this lesson: exemplary footnotes
combined with a lively, colorful narrative.He
makes a very serious point with humor and
verve, namely, that there is a vast historicalter-
ritory between the nihilism of those who meld
fact and fiction and the dourpositivism of those
who want only facts-and that the view from
the middle groundis delightful.
LORRAINE DASTON
Amy R. W. Meyers (Editor).Art and Science in
America: Issues of Representation. viii +
208 pp., frontis., illus. San Marino, Calif.:
HuntingtonLibrary,1998. $15 (paper).
Naturalhistory as a scientific discipline is mak-
ing a comeback after having been in eclipse for
a good part of this century. Concern over the
decline of biodiversityandthe degradationof the
environmentis responsible for much of the re-
newed interest, but so is a nostalgia for a time
when life scientists consideredmore thananimal
parts (usually in solution). Contemporarynatu-
ralists, such as E. 0. Wilson, proudlyaffirmtheir
affiliation with a traditionthat has its modem
origins in the monumental works of Linnaeus
and Buffon, and so it should be no surprisethat
scholarsareturningtheirgaze to the dusty annals
of naturalhistoryand discoveringits rich legacy.
Symposia are good barometersof intellectualac-
tivity, and "Artand Science in America:Issues
of Representation,"held at the HuntingtonLi-
brary in March 1994 and now incarnatedin a
book of the same title (edited by the curatorof
Americanartat the HuntingtonLibrary,Art Col-
lections, and Botanical Gardens),reflects the re-
vival of interestin the history of naturalhistory
as well as one facet of its diverse range of sub-
jects.
The organizers of the symposium wanted to
highlight the relationship of the Huntington's
impressivecollection to the historyof science by
focusing on ways in which two-dimensionalrep-
resentationsof the naturalworld contributedto