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in the realm of chronology, especially in efforts to correlate European and non-European
historiographical traditions. Ancient records of comets and other astronomical phenom-
ena that posed interpretive problems for histories based on scripture provide other
examples. And it is notable that chronology is one of the fields in which the English
word “ data ” flourished earliest.
In seventeenth-century philosophy and natural philosophy, just as in mathematics and
theology, the term “data” functioned to identify that category of facts and principles that
were, by agreement, beyond argument. In different contexts, such agreement might be
based on a concept of self-evident truth, as in the case of biblical data, or on simple
argumentative convenience as in the case of algebra, given
X
= 3, and so forth. The
term “data” itself implied no ontological claim. In mathematics, theology, and every
other realm in which the term was used, “data” was something given by the conventions
of argument. Whether these conventions were factual, counter-factual, or arbitrary had
no bearing on the status of givens as data.
When used in English, “data” had a much narrower meaning than did either
data
in
Latin or “given” in English. Whether in mathematics, theology, or another field, use of
the term “data” emphasized the argumentative context as well as the idea of problem-
solving by bringing into relationship things known and things unknown. The “heap of
data” that the
OED
unearthed in Henry Hammond's 1646 theological tract,
A Brief
Vindication of Three Passages in the Practical Catechisme
, is not a pile of numbers but a list
of theological propositions accepted as true for the sake of argument—that priests
should be called to prayer, that liturgy should be rigorously followed, and so forth.
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It is also the case that the Latin word
data
, as a conjugation of the verb
dare
, was in
constant use during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In early modern Latin,
as in classical Latin,
data
is everywhere. But
data
in Latin rarely translates to “data” in
English. A 1733 translation of Bacon's
Novum Organum
gives a good example of the
dynamic. Aphorism 105 of Book 1 of the
Novum Organum
reads as follows:
Inductioenim quae procedit per enumerationem simplicem res puerilis est, et precario concludit,
et periculo exponitur ab instantia contradictoria, et plerumque secundum pauciora quam par est,
et ex his tantummodo quae praesto sunt, pronunciat.
For that Induction which proceeds by simple Enumeration, is a childish thing;
concludes with Uncertainty; stands exposed to Danger from contradictory Instances;
and generally pronounces upon scanty Data; and such only as are ready at hand.
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