Index, A History of the
Where would we be without alphabetical order, page numbers and indexes—and as Dennis Duncan reminds us, Google is an index (and indexes are inevitably selective). The University College of London lecturer writes entertainingly, with great wit, about Western Civilization’s efforts to organize knowledge. As usual, the ancient Greeks led the way by cataloging the great library at Alexandria and the ancient writers of the Hebrew Bible were cognizant of alphabetical order. The index and concordance were developed in medieval Europe as an aid to scholars.
Duncan is delighted to write that early critics charged indexing as a downward step in standards, a dumbing down enabling readers to look things up as they please rather than be forced to read the whole book, page by page. In earlier times indexes (not indices, Duncan insists) were found often as not at the beginning, not the end of books. Index is informative and fun as it awakens us to the importance of devices taken for granted.
