A Description of a System of Biography – Joseph Priestley

Overview

A Description of a System of Biography is not a collection of lives but a explanatory companion to a graphic method for displaying biographical and chronological information. Its subject is an apparatus: a large chart on which the span of recorded history is laid out to scale, and on which individual lives are drawn as lines, so that the reader can see at a glance who was contemporary with whom, how long each person lived, and where each falls within the long sequence of ages. The book explains the design of that chart, defends its usefulness, sets out the principles on which names were chosen and arranged, and then supplies a catalogue of the persons included, with the dates attached to them, so that the chart itself can be read, checked and used.

The central idea the book describes is simple in conception but demanding in execution: time is measured along one dimension of the sheet, and the persons represented are distributed along the other, grouped by the department of activity in which they were most eminent, so that the lines representing their lives do not obscure one another. Each individual is shown by a line whose length corresponds to the duration of life, or to the period during which the person flourished, in those cases where the dates are uncertain. Because the lines are placed in ranks according to class, the reader can compare contemporaries across different fields — the statesman, the divine, the philosopher, the mathematician, the poet, the artist — and can see how the generations of one discipline succeeded one another. The whole is intended to convert chronology, which is otherwise a mere list of numbers, into something that can be taken in visually.

The description explains the scale of the chart and the range of time it covers, going back to the earliest periods for which names are recorded and forward towards the modern age. It discusses the divisions of time into convenient periods, the horizontal bands assigned to different classes of eminent persons, and the manner in which the lines are disposed so as to remain legible where lives overlap. It also explains the conventions by which the chart is read: how the beginning and end of each line correspond to the dates given in the catalogue, and how the relative positions of lines indicate priority and contemporaneity.

A substantial part of the book is given over to discussion of the difficulties of the undertaking. The selection of names requires judgement, since only a limited number can appear on a chart without destroying its clarity, and the author states the grounds on which persons are admitted or omitted. The fixing of dates raises further problems: for many ancient figures the evidence is conflicting, and only approximate dates can be given; for others, the year of birth or death is unknown and only the period of flourishing can be marked. The book acknowledges these uncertainties rather than concealing them, and explains how the chart and catalogue accommodate them.

The book also argues for the utility of the scheme. Its case is that chronology is the foundation of historical study, that dates and successions are difficult to retain when presented as lists or tables of numbers, and that a well-constructed chart impresses the order of events and the relations between persons upon the memory far more effectively. The system is presented as an instrument of instruction and reference: students can be directed to it to see how lives overlapped and how the state of learning in one age stood in relation to the state of politics, while more advanced readers can use it to check the sequence of particular disciplines. Directions are given for the practical use of the chart, including the order in which its parts may be studied and the ways in which the catalogue and the chart supplement each other.

The catalogue that accompanies the description is an alphabetical list of all the names inserted in the chart, with the dates annexed to them. It functions as a key to the plates: it identifies each person, records the dates so far as they are known or can be reasonably assigned, and thus enables a reader to turn from a line on the chart to the name and dates, or from a name to its place on the chart. Because the catalogue is alphabetical while the chart is chronological and classified, the two together form a complete reference apparatus.

The volume itself is issued with the charts on folded leaves, and the text is written to accompany and explain them rather than to stand alone as a narrative account of the persons represented. Its character is therefore descriptive, methodological and pedagogical: it is a treatise on how biography may be arranged and displayed so that the relations of time, duration and contemporaneity become visible, together with the index of names and dates that makes the display usable.

Underlying the description is a conception of biography as a comparative chronology rather than a collection of separate lives. The chart turns each life into an interval, so that duration, succession, and contemporaneity can be compared at a glance; the catalogue supplies the verbal identity and dating that a graphical line cannot carry by itself. The book is therefore concerned with the division of labour between visual notation and textual record: the chart affords synoptic comparison, while the catalogue provides names, dates, and look-up. This relationship is one of the system’s central methodological ideas.

The book also makes explicit that the chart is not a neutral container but an arrangement with intellectual consequences. Assigning persons to classes and placing them in horizontal bands amounts to a scheme of historical comparison, in which the state of one discipline or kind of eminence can be seen against another. The catalogue’s completeness supports the claim that the chart is a system rather than a sample, while the description explains how the parts are meant to be consulted together. The volume’s significance is thus methodological and pedagogical: it treats biography as a subject that can be ordered, displayed, and taught through a coordinated apparatus of chart and index, and it makes the assumptions of that ordering open to inspection rather than leaving them implicit in the plates.