Hi everyone, I'm having a hard time finding where to ask this, but I figure it is an historical question. Does anyone know the proper name (if there is one) for the style of description/argumentation that follows numbered paragraphs? I see this in 19th century scientific texts, and I also know that it occurs in philosophy texts. I do wonder where this comes about, too, but I'm having trouble even describing the style of writing, and if I knew the term I am sure I'd be able to get to its various origins/deployments. Anyone know?
I am also interested in WHY this was used, but that's a different problem altogether. I do know one answer, which accounts for the numbered paragraph in present-day use: different editions have different page numbers, so reference by paragraph is more useful to scholars and students. So, for instance, the copy of Plato's Republic you read in college had numbered paragraphs because there have been thousands of different versions (and translations), so reference must be made to the paragraph rather than page.
My question is rather about the numbered-paragraph mode of writing before their were many different editions. Scientific journals sometimes used this format, and these were not expected to ever see a second edition, so I am almost sure that the reference by edition argument doesn't fit here. Of course, reference by paragraph can still be an useful tool in the case of single-edition texts.
tldr - what do you call the style of writing that uses numbered paragraphs?
There's no name for it, and you're actually describing different things. Most classical texts are divided according to book and chapter, and then within that by line. This system generally derives from the medeival manuscript tradition, and from there to late antiquity. So, for example, the first line of Book One of Appian's Bellum Civile is B.C. 1.1.1--Book One, chapter (generally synonmous to paragraph) one, line one. The famous quotation "hoc voluerunt" in Suetonius' Caesar is Caesar 30.4, as it is at chapter 30, line 4 within the Caesar (which is itself the book). Plato and Aristotle are not divided the same way, they're divided according to Bekker numbers and Stephanus pages. These divisions are unlike those of the medieval manuscripts, and originally the texts of both philosophers used a similar structure, which is still very occasionally used (e.g. by the Vatican). Stephanus numbers were introduced in the first printed edition of Plato, by Henricus Stephanus in the late 16th Century. Stephanus numbered the text by dividing each of his volumes (not dialogues, which is why Stephanus pages carry over from one dialogue to the next) into pages, all necessarily of the same length. He then divided each page into five sections of equal length--because of this Stephanus numbers do not always divide the text according to logical divisions, sometimes numbering in the middle of a speech or right before the end of a passage, when the expected thing (following normal textual convention) would be to simply carry the chapter over. Bekker numbers were introduced later, by August Immanuel Bekker at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the late 18th or early 19th Centuries. Bekker drew up an edition of Aristotle that had two columns on each page, lettered "a" and "b." Like the Stephanus edition of Plato, Bekker numbers work by citing the page of the original Bekker edition, then the column, and then the line. Certain elements of these citation methods are actually later, namely the addition of line numbers to the Platonic Stephanus pages. Stephanus line numbers do not derive from Stephanus' edition, but from the original edition of the OCT
Just as a point of clarification (I don't think I'm familiar enough with the topic to answer), but are you referring to paragraph numbering in the style of Bekker numbering for Aristotelian texts?