The History of Research Papers

A History of Research Papers

“Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.”

-Charles F. Kettering (Prochnow 362)

Ah, the research paper, that delight of professors, bane of students. The stuff of magazines, books, encyclopedias, and doctoral theses. And today, the topic of my research paper.

For all its simple layout and generally unimposing length, the research paper has a remarkable history, inextricably intertwined with the history of academic societies and of science itself. From shady origins with authors loath to be recognized, fearing ridicule or, even worse, popularity, to arguments over intellectual rights that almost led to wars, the history of research papers has been interesting if somewhat turbulent.

In America, it has had a much more quiet and organized history than in the Old World. Here, we can trace the origin of the true American research paper back to one person (or near-enough father of the American research paper). Here, no almost-wars over them happened. Here, a standardized body of rules that would bring uniformity to the research paper would emerge. The research paper has taken an important place in American society, a regular facet of school, college, magazines, and science, a part of daily life.

The World before Research Papers

In the beginning, chaos ruled. Or at least, intellectual chaos. The Greeks, for example, murdered people over ideas (such as Socrates, who was deemed to have dangerous ideas which “corrupted the youth” and therefore killed in 399 BCE), and they were not the only ones (Suicide of Socrates). Change was not always thought of as good, and those who sought it were often persecuted. This is one of the reasons the inventors of many ancient contraptions, such as the wheel or the arch, remain unknown.

On the other hand, research papers flourished in Rome, Han China, and other such places, where learning was glorified and intelligence was praised. The discovery of the number 0 in India (and simultaneously, the Mayan Empire) was widely published and explained, and research papers helped the idea spread to Europe and beyond.

However, with the collapse of these empires (Han China fell in 222 CE, Rome fell in 476, and Persia was viciously attacked in 484), learning, science, and research papers faded into near-nothingness (Chisholm 22-23). In fact, so few papers survive from this era that historians call the period the Dark Ages due to a lack of written history and knowledge (Darkness Defined).

Although Europe, Asia, and many other places had fallen into a state of ‘intellectual stagnation’ (Webster’s), the Islamic Abbasid caliphate of the Middle East (founded in the 600’s under Muhammad’s leadership) flourished, especially under the caliphs al-Rashid and al-Mamun. Through their conquests, they had acquired many facets of Greek culture, including knowledge. Peter Cromwell explained that to the latter of these caliphs, Greek scientific papers were “so highly prized that al-Mamun obtained them as part of peace treaties” (103). These great works were translated and amplified by the Muslims, especially by Thabit ibn Qurra, who wrote several research papers of his own, such as Kitab al-Mafrudat (Book of Data) (Cromwell 103).

The Birth of Research Papers

Europe slowly recovered from Rome’s collapse and it wanted its research papers back. Through the Crusades (1096-1291 CE), the fight for the Iberian Peninsula (711-1031 CE), and trading, Europeans came into contact with Muslim peoples (Chisholm). They became aware of the existence of Greek and Roman scientific papers and bought them, translating and expanding them as the Muslims had done before them. This influx of data and knowledge ‘led scholars to examine the physical world around them’ and gave them the tools and time to do more research, hence producing more research papers. Most people know this period in European history as the Renaissance (Cromwell 104-105).

The invention of the printing press in 1436 allowed for research papers to be even more easily published and distributed. As more and more scientists wrote papers, they became aware of the need to claim intellectual rights to their work. The use of anagrams became popular, for, as Merton says in Sociology of Science, “the double purpose of establishing priority of conception and yet of not putting rivals on to one’s original ideas, until they had been worked out further” (364). Anagrams were also used for the protection of sensitive intellectual material.

In the early 1700s, a great intellectual war was to be fought in Europe, and anagrams were used as a weapon. At first, papers by the opposing parties (Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz) used anagrams for each of them, and when Leibniz begged Newton for information regarding calculus, the Briton primly replied with “6accdae13eff7i3l9n404qrr4s8t12ux”, an anagram (if one counts 6 a’s, 13 e’s, etc., and takes u to mean u’s and v’s) for “Given in an equation the fluents of any number of quantities, to find the fluxions and vice versa” (Bardi 98).

The Calculus War in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was a time of crisis for research papers. Doubts emerged over the true authors of papers as anagrams failed to do their jobs. Both Newton and Leibniz took credit for the invention of calculus. Technically, Newton invented it first, in 1666, but he didn’t publish a research paper until 1693, and that paper did not even fully explain his system of ‘fluxions’. Leibniz, by contrast, had begun work in 1674 and published a paper in 1684. However, he had seen sketches by Newton in 1676, raising the question of whether or not it was an original idea. The furious mathematicians published dozens of papers denouncing each other, citing evidence, witnesses, and sources, though often falsely. They gathered allies who published papers on their behalves; the research paper became a weapon and its reputability was tarnished. The mathematicians took their cases to the people, to scientists, and even to kings, and the issue only died when Leibniz did, in 1716 (Bardi).

Anagrams quickly dropped in popularity after the war, but controversies did not simply die away. When Darwin discovered evolution (that in itself is the subject of many a research paper), he worked the idea for a few years, then simply stored his notes away, much as Newton did not publish any of his work on calculus for many years. Meanwhile, one of his correspondents, Alfred Russel Wallace, independently came up with the idea, and Darwin, shocked into action by the publication of a research paper by Wallace, published On the Origin of Species, one of the most well-known research papers in history. Fortunately, there was no war this time, with Wallace quite willing, even honored, to share the limelight with Darwin (Bryson 386-388).

Regrettably, Wallace was not the only man who had simultaneously discovered evolution. A Scottish gardener by the name of Patrick Matthew loudly protested that evolution was his idea. He had, in fact, published this idea before Darwin even came up with it. Bill Bryson notes that Darwin did little more than raise an eyebrow:

Unfortunately, Matthew had published these views in a book called Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which had been missed not just by Darwin, but by the entire world. Matthew kicked up in a lively manner... when he saw Darwin gaining credit everywhere for an idea that really was his. Darwin apologized without hesitation, though he did note for the record: “I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, has heard of Mr. Matthew’s views, considering how briefly they are given, and they appeared in the Appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture. (388)

Need for and Rise of Order (Not the New World one)

The notion of attaching one’s name to a research paper has only grown in importance, as the possibility of simultaneous discoveries (called ‘multiples’ as opposed to ‘singletons’ by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton) only increases with a larger population. In fact, of 264 multiples Professor Merton and his friend Dr. Elinor Barber studied, 51 were triplets, 17 were quadruplets, 6 were quintuplets, and 8 were sextuplets (Merton2 364). This can cause problems when naming theories and ascribing credit to innovators, especially as the sciences are prone to name fathers of certain sciences, such as Mendel, the father of genetics, or Morgagni, father of pathology (Merton1 101).

Robert Frost, in his poem “Kitty Hawk”, aptly describes the situation:

Of all crimes the worst
Is the theft of glory,
Even more accursed
than to rob the grave?

Scholarly societies and academic journals arose to tame the research paper and ascribe credit appropriately, gathering a few here and there into cohesive herds, progressively larger, more organized, and more numerous, until the cowboy societies and journals dominated the land of research. The following graph shows the growth of scholarly societies around the world during the period 1323-1849 (data gathered from http://scholarly-societies.org/history). Notable societies include the Academie Française, founded in 1635, the British Royal Society, founded in 1660, and the American Philosophical Society, founded in 1744.



These societies not only spurred people to write more research papers by giving them both the information required and the tools to gather and analyze it, but they founded academic journals for these papers to be published in. The Royal Society of London, for example, has its highly-noted Transactions and has published works by the afore-mentioned Newton, Darwin, and the renowned Americans Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among others (Bowen 63).

Speaking of Ol’ Ben...
The history of research papers in America has been considerably less of a conundrum than their contorted history in the old countries, though considering it is conspicuously shorter, that is none too confounding, and also gives me less to construe. (My congratulations to Webster’s for making me content while contextualizing these words.) Now, to continue....

From the 1607 foundation of Jamestown until the mid-18th century arrival of Ben Franklin, the world of research papers was none too exciting in the British American Colonies. Many noted artists and scientists, especially botanists and biologists (although the Native American population attracted a handful of sociologists as well), came to the New World and studied its fauna and flora, giddy at the very notion of new specimens and information just waiting to be discovered (Kennedy, Cohen, Bailey). However, very few of these scientists were actually American, rather born in Europe and studying the New World.

Then, in the 1700’s, the first great American scientist came into the scene: Benjamin Franklin, one of the beloved Founding Fathers. He corresponded regularly with scholars in the Old World and, as was previously mentioned, had research papers published in the Royal Society’s Transactions. He published numerous newspapers (including the Pennsylvania Gazette), research papers (including Water-spouts and Whirlwinds), almanacs (most famously Poor Richard’s Almanack), and books (such as his renowned autobiography, from which the information in this paragraph is gathered).

In 1744, Ben Franklin founded one of the most auspicious societies in today’s world, the American Philosophical Society (Franklin 182). This institution, one of America’s first and finest scholarly societies inciting the writing and publication of research papers, has had one hundred and thirty Nobel Prize winners across the years (Bowen 86).

Thomas Jefferson would also (when he was not off fighting revolution, overthrowing countries, and otherwise helping the masses) become one of America’s first scientists. Unfortunately, he could not prevent the period immediately after the Revolution from becoming something of a Dark Age in itself. The instability of the Articles of Confederation, the first American government, meant few individuals were taking the time to study the flight patterns of butterflies, understandably more concerned with the twin threats of foreign invasion and civil war, and that’s not even counting impending trade and financial catastrophes. On-and-off periods of scientific activity would follow in the next several decades, interrupted variously by the War of 1812, vicious presidential elections, and various financial panics. Learning and science advanced greatly during these spurts, with the continued formation of universities and the birth of public education under Horace Mann. American science stopped being a joke and became second-rate (yes, that’s an improvement). The research paper, however, did not much advance (Kennedy).

Then, in 1846, after a lengthy period of haggling and debating (as governments are prone to do), President James K. Polk established the Smithsonian Institute under a grant from an obscure, and illegitimate, British scientist named James Smithson. The Smithsonian’s mission, as Mr. Smithson himself said, was to be “...an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge...,” a task the institution has taken to heart. It not only houses the world’s largest museum complex, but many extraordinarily advanced research facilities. These facilities let their scientists churn out research papers like socks at a sock factory. And that’s not even counting their six magazines, where more research papers are published. Or the dozens of scientific books they publish every year (which are really just LOOONG research papers). Or their copious archives. The Smithsonian is big on research papers, and the institution has helped them become a bastion of American society (Smithsonian). The only problem: each scientist went about writing their papers their own way. Someone had to come up with a uniform system to write them.

In 1883, a foundation was started with the standardization of research papers specifically in mind: the Modern Language Association, also known as the MLA (it sounds like some sort of secret police, but they only lay down the rules; teachers and professors are the crack troops who enforce them). This New York City-based association is specifically designed to “provide opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings,” in plain English, to boot people to write those danged research papers. They also publish many magazines, books, and articles to help them along, including “one of the finest publishing programs in the humanities”, and have a defined set of guidelines by which to write research papers. I should know. I’m using them right now (MLA).

All this was great, but now there were millions of papers fluttering about the nation. They needed to be put somewhere, and it could not be a vault, as they needed to be open to public access to reciprocate themselves. Thus, libraries became commonplace in the United States, eventually including the biggest library in the world: the Library of Congress established in 1800 by President John Adams and finished in 1897. With 130 million items, it is a research paper writer’s dream. If one is curious about the habits of the giant monkey-eating rat of Eastern Timor, odds are he will find information about it (Library). Libraries have flourished in every state, every county, every city, every town and most every school has one, be it elementary, middle, high, college, or reform.

Research Papers Today

Libraries are one great example of the importance of research papers today, with vast amounts of nonfiction books prime for research. An entire system for organizing these books, a great deal of which are lengthy research papers, was invented by the American Melvil Dewey in 1876 to make it easier for people to access information (Patschke).

Independent academic journals, each issue filled with research papers, have become popular within the scientific communities of America and even with the masses. Discover is in the waiting room, Scientific American in the coffee shop, and Popular Science in the bathroom (for the serious reader).

They have become commonplace assignments at schools and colleges, and many universities require candidates to write a long one, known as the dreaded thesis, to receive a degree. Or to get into the college/university in the first place. Most of the increasingly popular AP tests have an essay section, and in many cases, the essay is essentially a research paper based on the subject studied that year or semester.

The plethora of academic journals and scholarly societies has made it possible for scientists to publish their findings with relative ease. This is especially the case in the United States, which has become a pioneer in the field of knowledge. (Let’s see, there’s this Armstrong guy, a certain Mr. Mandelbrot, hmmm, we had an Einstein character here for a good while....)

Let’s face it, the research paper is here to stay, and it is an important part of society, especially so in the United States. It has had an astonishing history and through thick and thin has kept knowledge moving through our country and the world. So why not enjoy it while we’re here?

Works Cited

“About the MLA.” Modern Language Association. Feb. 2007. American Modern Language Association. 16 Dec. 2007 <http://www.mla.org/about>.

Bardi, Jason Socrates [What a coincidence!]. The Calculus Wars. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2006.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. The Most Dangerous Man in America. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974.

Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. New York: Broadway Books, 2003.

Chisholm, Jane. The Usborne Book of World History Dates. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1998.

Cromwell, Peter R. Polyhedra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

“Dark Ages.” Webster’s New World College Dictionary. 2001 ed.

“The Dark Ages – Darkness Defined.” All About History. 2002-2007. All About History.org. 6 Jan. 2008 <http://www.allabouthistory.org/the-dark-ages.htm>.

Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography. 1791. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

Frost, Robert. “Kitty Hawk.”

“Historical Area of the Scholarly Societies Project.” Scholarly Societies Project. December 2007. Repertorium Veterrimarum Societatum Litterariarum. 6 Jan. 2008 <http://www.scholarly-societies.org/history/>.

“History of the Library of Congress.” Library of Congress. 2007. Library of Congress. 16 Dec. 2007 <http://www.loc.gov/about/history/>.

Kennedy, David M., Lizabeth Cohen, and Thomas A. Bailey. The American Pageant. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

Merton1, Robert K. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

---. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Patschke, Kristen. Melvil Dewey: Father of Librarianship. 2000. Booktalking.net. 16 Dec. 2007 <http://www.booktalking.net/books/dewey/>.

Prochnow, Herbert V. The New Speaker’s Treasury of Wit and Wisdom. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1958.

“Smithsonian: History.” Smithsonian. 2007. Smithsonian Institution. 16 Dec. 2007 <http://www.si.edu/about/history.htm>.

“The Suicide of Socrates, 399 BC.” Eyewitness to History. 2003. Ibis Communications, Inc. 6 Jan. 2008 <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/socrates.htm>.