When reading a book, article, journal, or other scholarly or academic writing, we might notice the small superscript numbers attached to certain words or phrases, which lead us to the fine print at the bottom of the page, i.e. the footnotes. For a moment, we glance at what the short citation says, and then, proceed to read the rest of the article or journal.
It has become such a mundane or trivial aside that we often might not even take notice of the footnotes at all, especially when we merely want to extract the main idea of the text, or to skim through the salient points of each section in the article or paper. But, for anyone working in academe or doing scientific research, or for those in the publishing industry, footnotes are an integral part of their work. It is the standard practice for any scholarly work. After all, readers would want to assess and investigate for themselves the credibility of the sources which the authors used to make their conclusions, and to try and understand the framework which the authors used to interpret those sources.
The question is, "When did the practice of adding footnotes to publications begin?" In general, the person cited to have established source-based history and thus, the use of footnotes, was Leopold von Ranke, a German historian who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, despite championing modern source-based history and influencing Western historiography, Ranke's footnoting was subpar. Moreover, the practice of citing sources had already been used by historians and theologians in late antiquity, albeit in varying forms.
The structure of modern-day footnotes may be traced back to the 17th century with Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697). Initially written to comment on errors and omissions in Louis Moreri's Grand Dictionaire historique (1674), Bayle also used the dictionary to critique the religious authorities of his time who persecuted him to exile, and thus, promote his anti-authoritarian view of faith. Most entries included in the dictionary described people with some section devoted to religious beliefs and philosophies. Where the footnotes proved to be useful was as a means of hiding away the more controversial ideas he wanted to promote, often slipping them into articles on seemingly uncontroversial topics.
From that point, scholars had emulated Bayle's model and started using them in their own works. Historian Anthony Grafton even cites a footnote which may very well be the longest one in history: a 165-page long citation found in John Hodgson's 1840 History of Northumberland. Meanwhile, Edward Gibbon's footnotes on his work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, may be considered the most ironic with Gibbon adding snarky comments on the footnotes, perhaps to add his own personal flavor, humor, or opinion on the events being described in the text.
Critical analysis of texts these days has become easier with footnotes. They give us the source from which the author takes certain ideas, concepts, or passages and expounds from them. At the same time, they give us an idea of the interpretative framework by which the author asserts their own point. So, if you're reading a book, article, journal, or research paper, take time to look at those footnotes. You might just learn something new or even look at the sources from your own lens, because there might be something there that you notice which others may not. - via Strange Company
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