Assignment 3: Due 5pm on Monday, February 9, 2009. 
The assignment asked people to respond to Option A or B.

Option A: Does Eisenstein strike you as a determinist? Suggest what kind of evidence or argument would support or challenge her thesis that print culture has particular features.

Eisenstein is a determinist:

Eisenstein’s writings label her as a determinist.  She directly links changes in society from the 14th to 16th centuries to effects of standardization brought about by print culture.  One effect, she notes, is that a “new alertness to both the individual and the typical” was started within those who compiled books that collected and categorized various items.  When these books were disseminated, the readers also gained a more concrete awareness of their own time, place, and culture in comparison with anything that was not similar to them.  Additionally, “typography arrested linguistic drift, enriched as well as standardized vernaculars.”  An arguable consequence of this is that dynasties and nationalities were made less ambiguous.  Language was a unifying force for consolidation, and print was the vehicle that expedited the process. Eisenstein also attributes the effects of fixity to the preservative powers of print.  She states that “as edicts became more visible, they also became more irrevocable.”  Rather than have laws be warped or simply forgotten, print instead cemented them by widely spreading knowledge of them to the people.  An authority will be less likely to abuse a power if others had a better understanding of what privileges the person really holds.
-PATRICK MONSALUD

After reading Eisenstein's paper, I can only conclude that she is a technological determinist. The very nature of her paper, from the outset, is to point out how the presence of print changed culture. Furthermore, while her arguments address various topics empirically and methodically, they are all based on the assumption that the presence of print is the primary catalyst that motivated these changes in culture. Consider her section titles, such as “Considering some effects produced by standardization”, “The new process of data collection” and “Considering the powers of print”; these all suggest that print is the motive fore, rather than a force behind print. Finally, her writing is riddled with phrases that indicate how print led society to new standards (such as error correction and standardization), implicating that without print these principles would not have come about.  A simple undermining argument to Eisenstein's thesis would be a counter-example. Namely, a specific culture in which all these phenomena occurred (or did not occur) in the absence (or presence) of print. Consider, for example, the Far East, where print was developed hundreds of years before, but clearly did not follow the same progression in terms of cultural relevance.
-MARK DERDZINSKI

Eisenstein presents her argument as subtly determinist. She attributes drastic changes in culture and history to the rise of print. The effect of print's standardization on society is already a strong argument that print culture is determinist. Eisenstein further focuses on how print changed cultural diffusion. Referring to Montaigne's development of the informal essay, she pointed out how print changed the exchange of ideas due to its ease of distribution across space and time. Because of this, drastic changes in religion, culture, and even architecture resulted. For example, print changed how protestant and catholic text were transmitted, ultimately changing each sect's structure.   However, Eisenstein consciously notes that practices that are usually associated with the rise of print culture are not necessarily caused by print culture. For example, she writes the organization of works into references and indexes was a practice started by scribes, long before print. In addition, the increased importance of alphabet in society was not determined by print technology. Scribal culture already used it as an organizational tool. Rather, it capitalized upon this existing structure and encouraged a greater use. Thus, print culture was responsible for significant cultural changes but mainly built upon already existing practices and structures.
-LILY CHAN CHENG

Elizabeth Einstein’s assessment of the advent of the printing press plainly takes a technologically deterministic standpoint.  She describes how the press changed the nature of intellectual pursuit, European culture, and even the character of thought.  However, she ignores the fact that the press was born and took root in a particular socio-cultural context.  By acting as if the press emerged in a vacuum, Einstein portrays the technology itself as sole-determining factor.  First, Einstein describes how the printing press, by disseminating a wider variety of information, much of which was conflicting, thereby cultivated the ability to root out contradictions, compare, contrast, and combine ideas – the seeds of modern  intellectual activity.  She basically implies that the press not only facilitated this intellectual behavior, but originated the very notion of it.  This is, of course, questionable. Later, she discusses a “new kind of brainwork fostered by the silent scanning of maps, tables, charts, diagrams, dictionaries, and grammars.”  Her argument is that printing led to new degrees of indexing, cataloguing, and categorization, which in turn fostered corresponding cognitive changes.  This sort of trajectory is characteristic of deterministic thought, assuming that the technology set a trajectory in motion independent of outside social forces.
- Alex Bigman

Eisenstein's logic makes her a determinist. She explains a multitude of features that are unique to print culture that are significantly better than scribe culture. First of all, print allowed for data to not only be organized, but to be copied a lot faster than by scribe work. As a result, even though errors were repeated faster, they were also caught faster. Printing texts allowed there to be repetition of the same ideas and pictures to be spread out to the intellectual and commercial communities in the comforts of their own homes instead of in a public square. Since everyone was virtually able to acquire the information, there was a knowledge "explosion" among communities. Rare and valuable data was able to be preserved through the public spread of information. There became a standardization for everything printed which allowed feedback from various people to be received and implemented in newer editions of printed text. The advancement of knowledge was furthered by this feedback from the community. Obviously print culture leading to a knowledge explosion fits the definition of a determinist view.
-ANDREW SY

Eisenstein takes a determinist stance in her discussion of print culture. She addresses the way that the invention of printing influenced different domains, focusing on the influence of print culture and related work, rather on concurrent cultural shifts that also influenced societal change. Rather than giving sole responsibility to technology, she explains how the workers involved in printing and circulation of printed works affected society. She attributes many sociopolitical changes to printing, including the spread and codification of vernacular languages, and the spread of stereotypical images of different cultures. She argues that print culture had many cognitive effects, in the type of work entailed by using new charts and maps, and by emphasizing logical organization. She claims that the preoccupation with organization observed in printing served as the roots of later rational thought: through the adoption of the Ramist idea that the best exploration of a subject consisted in analysis by various printers and editors. Eisenstein also argues that the greater availability of old ideas in print allowed innovators to consult and determine errors in previous theories. Eisenstein contends that print changed relationships between men of learning and systems of ideas, by creating a new social and intellectual combined activity.
-JESSICA MOLLICK

Eisenstein starts the excerpt with very strong determinist wording: "how did this [communications revolution] affect other historical developments?" (42). She goes on to talk about how printers were unfairly presented simply as "press agents" when they did much more than that, like "providing the clerk with a richer, more varied literary diet than had been provided by the scribe" (43). A determinist sentiment is further expressed in her summary of Montaigne's contributions to history and the effect that the printed word had on his worldview; and that the first "cross-cultural interchange" was between people who had proliferated printed literature. However, as much as she makes the case that the technological development of printing fueled historical change, she does not say that scribal culture did not do the same in its time (just that it was incapable of furthering history to the degree that print did). The features of print are evolved from scribal features; they are not a separate situation. Print was able to do things that script couldn't because it was more advanced, but script laid the foundation for that to be possible. In this way, she positions scribal culture as determining the course of events in its time.
-NAMITA BHASIN


B: Some scholars have accused Eisenstein of "trashing" scribal culture to make her case about print culture. Based on what you know of scribal culture, does that strike you as fair?

Eisenstein trashes scribal culture
Eisenstein does not unfairly “trash” scribal culture as she argues for the developments brought on by print culture.  She asserts, through early examples following the invention of the printing press, that these developments were preconceived in manuscript. Eisenstein cites Medieval library catalogues as the first example of rationalizing and organizing texts. Although these initial systems were too idiosyncratic and diverse to efficiently achieve the goal of order, she states that the reorganizing (alphabetic catalogues, table of contexts, etc.) of texts brought on by print culture is a combination of the typographic culture and “new opportunities for clergymen…to realize old goals.” So while Eisenstein elevate new features caused by print culture, she does historically contextualize argument as “new combinations of old ideas” which then led to “new systems of thought.” She gives reasonable credit to scribal culture, but holds printing technology as superior to the former based on its ability to realize intended goals, and ultimately go on to produce additional ingenuity.
- Andrea Brizuela

Whenever one targets a specific feature of a more general subject for analysis, related things are necessarily de-emphasized for the sake of coherence. Eisenstein’s work may de-emphasize scribal culture, but not to excess. What might prompt charges of scribal-culture-bashing? Eisenstein, when talking about the transition to print culture, speaks of "faithful replicas of 'barbarous' scribal compendia" which reveal a "disorder previously concealed by oral presentation and piecemeal copying." All of this, she says, was "offensive to publishers who valued systematic routines." The language used does seem to have a negative valence, however, Eisenstein was really only reusing the language of her primary sources as evidenced in the quotations around the word "barbarous" above. In Eisenstein’s defense, I offer the following passage where she says: "One must be wary...of overstating the novelties introduced by printing or of overlooking how previous developments helped to channel the uses to which the new tool was put." She goes on to say how cataloging, cross-referencing and indexing are not direct consequence of typographic culture but rather reflect "new opportunities among clergymen and clerks to realize old goals.” This clearly demonstrates sensitivity to the complexities of the culture that preceded printing, and is an indication that the charges made may be unfair.
-ROY MALOON

Scribal culture deserves to be trashed, if that's what this was. Eisenstein lays out a clear and compelling case for the eventual superiority of print culture, while acknowledging some advantages of the pre-Gutenberg era. Her choice of language is at times brash (medieval authors as "minstrels and mummers," e.g.) but there is no obvious counterpoint to her arguments: that print technology allowed the accumulation and "unscrambling" of previously far-flung and rare texts; that it made text much more readily available than before; that changes in the format of texts led to useful "changes in thought patterns" (such as the adherence to standard arabic page numbers); that print and literacy in some sense allowed for "a wholesale assault on all received opinion." Most damning of all is the unstated argument that print culture drove scribes out of business. If Trithemius was right that the primary function of scribes was the diligent copying of worthwhile texts, that function was made obsolete by the mechanical copying and distribution of which Jefferson speaks.  Still, Eisenstein gives scribal culture its due in a few spots. She acknowledges the nearly error-free nature of transcription, and seems to mourn the separation of aesthetics (once necessary for memorization) from technical content.
-SAMUEL RYAN

Eisenstein does not trash scribal culture
Einstein has not been trashing scribal culture to make her point about print culture. In fact, she takes pains in each section to point out that print culture does not always create what did not exist in scribal culture. “Medieval scribes also turned out compact summulae… but there is simply no equivalent for the “avalanche” of “how-to” books which poured off the new presses…” (61-2).  Print culture improved on scribal culture. Print culture allowed for cross-referencing to take place, as well as the ability to compare and contrast different philosophical views and historical perspectives in many fields. The advent of print culture also standardized the alphabetical index, as commercial competition encouraged clear, concise display of a printer’s wares in a list. Moreover, print culture played a social role in both laying out stereotypes and championing individual uniqueness.  However, in some ways, print culture also magnified the errors made in scribal culture. “Comparisons of scribal reference works with early print editions often show that an age-old process of corruption was aggravated and accelerated after print.” (74) The fact that Einstein makes no effort to hide this dark side illustrates her willingness to see both sides of the issue.
-Diane Moh