Anyone familiar with French legal education will know that what a common lawyer would call the contents page to be found at the beginning (often in summary form) or at the end (often in detail) of a French textbook or monograph on law is more than a mere guide for browsers and readers. It forms le plan, that is to say the epistemological framework the intellectual importance of which is equal to the substance of the work. It is what endows the book with its scientific credibility and any thesis or textbook lacking a coherent Cartesian plan will by definition lack intellectual credibility. But what of the other guide provided in many academic books, namely the index? Is this guide nothing but a guide, never to be al/owed to aspire to an epistemological status like that accorded to le plan? Or is an index, with its strictly alphabetical ordering, capable of having an epistemological role?