Preliminary Remarks 71 



most valuable of all in their own field. Nothing is more instructive than 

 a good biography, and when a good biography is not available, the 

 scholar should be ready to use one which is less good yet will answer his 

 need. It was impossible to mention biographies, because a sufficient list 

 of them would require considerable labor and space. Moreover, that 

 is not necessary. It must suffice to warn the reader, that when he is 

 exploring any field ( defined by topic, place and time ) , he should make 

 for himself a list of the great men dominating it and then try to find 

 biographies of them. Some of those biographies might be his best tools. 

 A general bibliography like this one, a first guide, cannot do more 

 than facilitate for every scholar the preparation of his own. Every 

 investigation must begin with a bibliography, and it must end with a 

 better bibliography. 



6) Even within its modest scope, this first guide cannot be as good 

 as it might be, because in spite of every effort the author is bound to 

 overlook some items or ( and this is equally bad if not worse ) to include 

 items which it would have been better to leave out. Every bibliography 

 contains errors by omission or commission and at best it is bound to be 

 vitiated by an irreducible minimum of accidental arbitrariness. Critics 

 should bear in mind that they are subject to similar accidents. A man 

 had spent many years in France and travelled considerably about the 

 country. He thought that he knew it pretty well, but a friend said to 

 him "Have you been to Rocamadour? " The man admitted that he had 

 not. His friend exclaimed "What a shame! If you have not seen 

 Rocamadour, you have missed the essential, you do not really know 

 France ..." I can only hope that my own critics will not reproach me 

 for having forgotten Rocamadour and condemn my book on that basis. 



I remember with pain that a colleague of mine became unfriendly 

 to me, because I had forgotten to mention a book of his, and he assumed 

 that my omission of it was deliberate. What a mean and unjust suppo- 

 sition! If I had an enemy and he wrote a good book, I would be anxious 

 to mention it; I would mention it with special emphasis, and nothing 

 could please me more than the opportunity of praising it. 



7) Many chapters of this bibliography, especially chapter 20, deal- 

 ing with Journals and Serials on the History (and Philosophy) of 

 Science, were much enriched thanks to the collaboration of Dr. 

 Claudius F. Mayer of Washington, D.C. My gratitude is expressed to 

 him here and again with more precision, in the preface to that particular 

 chapter. 



Various additions to the Bibliography have been kindly suggested by 

 Prof. I. Bernard Cohen, who is my colleague in Harvard University. 



[;- : LIBRARY 



