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Preparing the
index for The Logic of Analogy, nearly fifty years
ago, was a mindless but highly enjoyable task. Page proofs
and separate sheets of paper for each letter of the
alphabet were spread all over the table as I pored over the
text and entered words, then page numbers on the sheets. After
the long effort of writing the book, indexing it was a kind
of reward, somewhat on an analogy with the way Hemingway counted
the words after he finished a page, entering the total in
an upper corner.
Computer programs
have robbed us of those mindless tasks. Now the indexer uses
the Adobe Reader program, enters a word, hits a key, and in
a trice the various occurrences of the word in the text are
found. There were many mindless tasks like indexing when I
was young. I sat for hours in the Medieval Institute at Notre
Dame, copying out columns from Migne's Patrology, a reference
work one could not take home. From printing I turned the text
into the kind of manuscript from which it had come. The preparation
of critical editions of medieval texts was once a task so
laborious it made indexing seem simple. Now there are computer
programs to do the mindless work. And for just about everything
else.
Recently I read
an excellent book on negative theology and the divine names
by a young Dominican named Humbrecht. Of a certain Latin phrase
he wrote that it occurred only three times in the Summa
theologiae. Marvelous. I thought of my mentors who had
the opera omnia at their fingertips from years of wallowing
in it. And then I realized that the word count had doubtless
been the result of a computer search. Now in the case of Humbrecht
that computer search obviously went hand in hand with a close
and extensive knowledge of the text of St. Thomas. But anyone
could perform such a search. Such easy access creates the
illusion of familiarity, much as making photocopies creates
the illusion that we have read and digested the text copied.
I suppose the
danger is worth the risk. All those labor-saving devices that
freed housewives from drudgery were doubtless a gain, but
they produced a new problem: what to do with all the leisure
they afforded. The mechanization of the lower level tasks
of study and research can free us for the essential work of
thought. The danger is that they can become a substitute for
it. Any nostalgic appeal in these reflections is negated by
the realization that I am writing them on my computer. I do
not miss the mechanical typewriter of yore. But there is a
new generation of scholars who never experienced the laborious
infrastructure of study. Perhaps without the contrast, the
dangers of facility are lessened. Speriamo.
Ralph
McInerny |
