Textual Scholarship and Science

I realize that I am a bit behind in the readings, but several of the topics we are reading about are new to me. Take for example, L. S. Marcus’s piece on textual scholarship. I find this quite interesting that through textual scholarship, the modern concept of a bibliography was born. Needless to say, the bibliography has become a major part of academic writing. Yet, it is the uses of the bibliography that many young students have not quite grasped.

Bibliographies provide a wealth of information that allows readers/researchers the ability to trace the ideas of the author. While Marcus applies most of her discussion to fictional writing, there is just as much reason to study bibliographies in the sciences. I have seen several cases of my own students missing valuable sources within an article’s cited references. It has been my experience that many students do not realize that the articles they are pulling together for a research paper represent a timeline of a particular topic they are studying. Within this timeline a conversation about the research unfolds.

Just as Marcus discusses the importance of scholars representing the most accurate interpretations of past texts, so it is that scientific research needs to represent the phenomena or population it is studying to the best of its ability. Acknowledged by Marcus in her essay Textual Scholarship, studying texts is not without subjectivity. While science strives to be objective, there are choices that are made by researchers that are inherently subjective. As much as textual scholarship sounds primarily like a literary studies sub-field, it is an important part of the sciences, helping to drive the various fields of study towards different questions to be answered.