Excursus

Stability is a precondition for the possibility of citation.

Consider direct quotation—no easy phenomena. Part of the point of citation, here, is so that the reader can read the quotation in context, to decide for themselves whether the quoted author has been misrepresented. The usual case is to quote from a dead tree source—a printed book or journal. Imagine if books were quite different than from the way they actually are. Suppose that every time a book is closed the text would change, sometimes subtlely, sometimes less so. When your intrepid reader tracks down your citation, the quote may or may not be there. What would be the point? There would be very little, if any, point at all. The requisite stability would be missing from texts that spontaneously morph.

One good thing about dead tree sources is that they don’t change in this way. But now consider delivering text online. It is easy to change HTML or upload a new version of a PDF. The nature of the medium does not guarantee the stability guaranteed by ink on a page. Instead of natural law, we have the moral law. We must rely—God help us—on trust. This is manifest in bloggers’ convention of striking through changed text in a post. Leaving a trace of a misspelled word, a hasty judgment, or mal mot is a sign of good faith, and bloggers who depart from this convention are subject to (verbal) sanction in comments or in pingback posts.

As the delivery of academic journals is moving increasingly online, editors face a corresponding moral challenge. The Aristotelian Society publishes papers online before the print volume hits the stands. Once an author asked to change his article after the online version went live but before the print volume was typeset. What was the problem? Things change online all the time!—he implored. The problem was simple. It would violate a precondition for the possibility of citation.