A Disquisition on "The" Use ...

My friends over at Butterflies and Wheels have made a considerable point (two or three posts and extended commentary over there devoted to the issue) of what they regard as my imprecise use of language in the following sentence:"When something is ubiquitous, the interesting question isn't ‘how could it have been tolerated?' because it was commonly and widely accepted." The context was a reference to the ubiquity of slavery in the early modern world.

Thinking that the objection was to my sense of what is historic, I answered the criticism with "On Ubiquity and Social Change". I argued that it is certainly important to understand received institutions and frameworks, but that the drama of history lies in subversive challenges to and engagements with them. It turns out that B & W's proprietor found my statement"silly" because he took my use of the article"the" to be exclusive, as in"the only interesting question". Apparently, it would not have been"silly" had I said"a more interesting question".

I submit, without going all encyclopedic about it, that"the" has much more ambiguous usage than B & W allows. You meet a fellow historian who you haven't seen in years and she asks:"How's the book coming along?" Aside from it being the one question you'd rather not be asked, you wouldn't ordinarily reply:"You mean to ask: ‘How's that book coming along?" Or"You mean to ask: ‘How's a book coming along?'" Or, even,"You mean: ‘How's another book coming along?'" If you've got two dozen books in the pipeline, you might reply:"Which book?" Or, if you're not doing anything, you might reply:"What book?" But there's nothing wrong with her syntax. You go to a doctor. He says:"How's the arm?" You don't berate the imprecision of his language. You've got two of them, after all. He says:"How's the finger." You've got 8 or 10 of those. You go to the dentist. She says"How's the tooth?" Well, you see what I mean."The" isn't exclusively used to mean"the only". End of disquisition.