reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6dhx2t/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

It's relatively easy since it's all hiding in my notes. lt may become a book one of these days, I'm just not sure how to approach it quite yet, though I'm getting close to the philosophy I think is missing from the bigger space. I find it somewhat useful to use my notes to create longer responses in spaces like this that I expect I'll reuse in a book.

One can find utility in asking questions of their own note box, but why not also leverage the utility of a broader audience asking questions of it as well?!

I've seen that same copy of Webb's book floating around in various places. In fact, it's the exact same fingerprinted version of the .pdf that I originally read, which can be seen by appending https://via.hypothes.is/ to the URL like this https://via.hypothes.is/http://digamoo.free.fr/webb1926.pdf which will quickly reveal my own notes in the margins. (It may help some to find the small portions outside of Appendix C which relate to note making. 😀)

If you want to follow me down the rabbit hole on some of the intellectual history and examples, try: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/ which I try to keep updated with new pieces as they arrive.

reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6bdgma/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I've used data from my own cards to create timelines before using the Knightlab's TimelineJS tool: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=18QD2-Kx0WdFBzqDv1sTkQWOJLGHGXsvr4NBLYNiX9FA&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650%27%20width=%27100%%27%20height=%27650%27%20webkitallowfullscreen%20mozallowfullscreen%20allowfullscreen%20frameborder=%270%27

You'll note that it's got a fun card-like flavor to its design. 🤩

Historically, while they had certainly done so much earlier, historians began doubling down on slip-based research work flows in the late 1800's. Many in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were heavily influenced by the idea of "historical method" or the German "Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens". Primary sources going back over a century have included:

• Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie : mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittelzum Studium der Geschichte ... völlig neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 1889. Reprint, Leipzig : Duncker, 1903. http://archive.org/details/lehrbuchderhisto00bernuoft.
• Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
• Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
• Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.
• Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.

A few prime examples of historians practicing this sort of card index method (though not necessarily in the same form as Niklas Luhmann) include:

• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394.
• Aldrich, Chris. “S.D. Goitein’s Card Index (or Zettelkasten).” BoffoSocko (blog), January 15, 2023. https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.
• Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695119830900.
• Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
• Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.

Margolin's short video is particularly lovely for its incredible depth despite its brevity.

Beyond this there is also a very rich history of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, and others in the humanities using similar methods.

Beatrice Webb has a fairly good description of how she created her "scientific notes" in the late 1880/1890s in a database-like fashion in the appendix to her memoir My Apprenticeship and expanded on some of the ideas in a more specific text a few years later.

• Webb, Beatrice. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926.
• Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.

A good description from Bob Doto.

reply to u/jackbaty at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10mjwq9/ive_decided_i_dont_care_too_much_where_new_notes/

u/jackbaty, If it doesn't make sense for you (yet, or for your specific needs), you can always follow in the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands who used a topical subject heading method of the commonplace book before Luhmann's example shifted the space over the last decade. If it worked for Francis Bacon, you'll probably be alright too... (See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/)

I find that sometimes, it is useful to bank up a few dozen cards before filing/linking them together. Other times I'll file them by category in a commonplace book like system to ruminate a bit only later to move them to a separate Luhmann-esque zettelkasten area where they're more tightly linked with the ideas around them. After you've been doing it a while, it will be easier to more tightly integrate the three-way conversation or argument you're having between yourself, your card index, and the sources you're thinking about (or reading, watching, listening to). You mention that "my brain needs at least some level of structure", and I totally get it, as most of us (myself included) are programmed to work that way. I've written some thoughts on this recently which may help provide some motivation to get you around it: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/

It helps to have a pointed reason for why you're doing all this in the first place and that reason will dramatically help to shape your practice and its ultimate structure.

reply to u/pipepistolnoscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10lqfsn/comment/j62dp7o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

These are slightly easier to find in a variety of styles, colors, and materials if you're using European A5 or A6 slip sizes. Search for 6 ring binders which usually come in A5 or A6 sizes for a variety of planners, calendars, and general notes with accessories. Franklin Covey has a variety of binders for their 4.25" x 6.75" note pages and planners which will likely work with index cards, but I haven't tried that.

If you use US standard index cards 4 x 6" or 3 x 5", you'll want an appropriate 6 ring hole punch to pre-punch your cards as appropriate, but keep in mind the two standard sizes can be slightly off with respect to the binder you find but they're probably close enough it shouldn't be a big issue as most of the binders are slightly larger in both directions to protect the paper inside.

I recently posted about note taking on the go, so you might find some interesting ideas, methods, modifications or even DIY options there or in the comments: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/

If you really want to go crazy you can get 6-hole punches to make your own cards.

And if you like you can co-opt those holes in your notebox by using them for taxonomy terms and removing/or not the connective pieces to indicate membership of a group. Then by putting a knitting needle through large groups of cards, you can sort through your collection to find related items the way they used to in early computing with edge-notched cards. 😉🗃️

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2483/tablet-for-zettelkasten#latest

https://supernote.com/pages/note-system-everything-you-need-to-stay-organized

The Ratta Supernote e-reader/e-note device indicates that you can link notes "in a zettelkasten-like" way.

Interesting that they say this rather than "wiki-like"...

Not so much origin myth here, but popularization myth…

The index is the place for categorization. Now the questions is how deep is good enough to categorize.

This idea is quite interesting in the sense that categorization is limiting. Defining is limitation

https://wildrye.com/let-your-notes-dictate-the-purpose-of-your-pkm-system/

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10h23fm/wildly_aspirational/

On the Jokerzettel

9/8j Im Zettelkasten ist ein Zettel, der das Argument enthält, das die Behauptungen auf allen anderen Zetteln widerlegt.

Aber dieser Zettel verschwindet, sobald man den Zettelkasten aufzieht.

D.h. er nimmt eine andere Nummer an, verstellt sich und ist dann nicht zu finden.

Ein Joker.

—Niklas Luhmann, ZK II: Zettel 9/8j

Translation:

9/8j In the slip box is a slip containing the argument that refutes the claims on all the other slips. But this slip disappears as soon as you open the slip box. That is, he assumes a different number, disguises himself and then cannot be found. A joker.

Many have asked about the meaning of this jokerzettel over the past several years. Here's my slightly extended interpretation, based on my own practice with thousands of cards, about what Luhmann meant:

Imagine you've spent your life making and collecting notes and ideas and placing them lovingly on index cards. You've made tens of thousands and they're a major part of your daily workflow and support your life's work. They define you and how you think. You agree with Friedrich Nietzsche's concession to Heinrich Köselitz that “You are right — our writing tools take part in the forming of our thoughts.” Your time is alive with McLuhan's idea that "The medium is the message." or in which his friend John Culkin said, "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us."

Eventually you're going to worry about accidentally throwing your cards away, people stealing or copying them, fires (oh! the fires), floods, or other natural disasters. You don't have the ability to do digital back ups yet. You ask yourself, can I truly trust my spouse not to destroy them?,What about accidents like dropping them all over the floor and needing to reorganize them or worse, the ghost in the machine should rear its head?

You'll fear the worst, but the worst only grows logarithmically in proportion to your collection.

Eventually you pass on opportunities elsewhere because you're worried about moving your ever-growing collection. What if the war should obliterate your work? Maybe you should take them into the war with you, because you can't bear to be apart?

If you grow up at a time when Schrodinger's cat is in the zeitgeist, you're definitely going to have nightmares that what's written on your cards could horrifyingly change every time you look at them. Worse, knowing about the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, you're deathly afraid that there might be cards, like electrons, which are always changing position in ways you'll never be able to know or predict.

As a systems theorist, you view your own note taking system as a input/output machine. Then you see Claude Shannon's "useless machine" (based on an idea of Marvin Minsky) whose only function is to switch itself off. You become horrified with the idea that the knowledge machine you've painstakingly built and have documented the ways it acts as an independent thought partner may somehow become self-aware and shut itself off!?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa9v8Z7Rac

And worst of all, on top of all this, all your hard work, effort, and untold hours of sweat creating thousands of cards will be wiped away by a potential unknowable single bit of information on a lone, malicious card and your only recourse is suicide, the unfortunate victim of dataism.

Of course, if you somehow manage to overcome the hurdle of suicidal thoughts, and your collection keeps growing without bound, then you're sure to die in a torrential whirlwind avalanche of information and cards, literally done in by information overload.

But, not wishing to admit any of this, much less all of this, you imagine a simple trickster, a joker, something silly. You write it down on yet another card and you file it away into the box, linked only to the card in front of it, the end of a short line of cards with nothing following it, because what could follow it? Put it out of your mind and hope your fears disappear away with it, lost in your box like the jokerzettel you imagined. You do this with a self-assured confidence that this way of making sense of the world works well for you, and you settle back into the methodical work of reading and writing, intent on making your next thousands of cards.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10gnh3u/box_update/

Example of a zettelkasten maintainer (u/A_Dull_Significance) who has shown a photo of their zettelkasten box with the superimposed words "My Baby!" over the box label as a means of indicating how valuable it is to them.

This is a great euphemism for the fun "work" of maintaining a zettelkasten.

via u/A_Dull_Significance at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10gnh3u/box_update/

This sounds somewhat similar to Mark Robertson's method of "live Roaming" (using Roam Research during his history classes) as a teaching tool on top of other prior methods.

link to: Roland Barthes' card collection for teaching: https://hypothes.is/a/wELPGLhaEeywRnsyCfVmXQ

http://richardcarter.com/sidelines/converting-my-notes-into-a-chapter/

Summary of Richard Carter's writing process from notes to product.

I've not seen this explicitly laid out as advice before though in most contexts people's note taking spaces have historically been divorced from their writing spaces for publication because slips and notes are usually kept physically separate from the working spaces or finished parts, but Richard Carter specifically separates the digital spaces in which he takes his notes and then uses them for creating end products. While he could both take notes in Obsidian, his tool of choice for notes, as well as write his finished pieces there, he actively changes contexts to use a different digital app to compose his notes into final pieces.

What affordances does this context shift provide? <br /> - blank slate may encourage reworking and expansion of original notes - is there a blank slate effect and what would it entail? - potentially moves the piece into a longer format space or tool which provides additional writing, formatting or other affordances (which? there don't seem to be any in this case aside from a potential "distraction free mode" which may tend to force one to focus only on the piece at hand rather than the thousands of other pieces (notes) hiding within the app)

What affordances does this remove?<br /> - He's forced to repeat himself (cut & paste / DRY violation)

Is it easier or harder (from a time/effort perspective) to provide citations with such a workflow? Carter does indicate that for him:

Having links to original sources in my outline makes the compilation of references for the chapter far easier than it used to be.

To test out some potential ideas and flow of a particular chapter for which he already had a corpus of notes, Richard Carter created a mindmap outline of some of his ideas. This in combination with testing out further ideas in his writing journal "three weeks later" caused him to make some significant changes in the structure of his chapter.

Richard Carter uses his writing journal practice to "think out loud" to himself. Often, laying out extended arguments helps people to refine and reshape their thinking as they're better able to see potential holes or missing pieces of arguments. It's the same sort of mechanism which is at work in rubber duck debugging of computer code: by explaining a process one is more easily able to see the missing pieces, errors, or problems with the process at hand.

Carter's separate note taking and writing journal practice being used as a thought space or writing workshop of sorts is very similar to the process seen in my preliminary studies of Henry David Thoreau's work in which he kept commonplace books and separate (writing) journals which show evidence of his trying ideas on for size and working them before committing them to his published works.

reply to IvanFerrero at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1740/anybody-using-this-approach-to-manage-contacts-how#latest

Many of the digital note taking tools that run off of text allow you to add metadata to your basic text files (as YAML headers, inline with a key:: value pair, or via #tags). Many of them have search functionality or use other programmatic means like query blocks, DataView, DataViewJS, etc. for doing queries on your files to get back lists, tables, charts, etc. of the data you're looking for.

The DataView repository has some good examples of how this works with something like Obsidian. Fortunately if you're using simple text files you can usually put them into one or more platforms to get the data and affordances you want out of them individually.

As an example, I have a script block in my daily note in Obsidian for birthdays in my notes that fall on today's date:

```dataview LIST birthday FROM "Lists/People" WHERE birthday.day = date(2023-01-18).day ```

If I put the text birthday:: 1927-12-08 into a note about Niklas Luhmann, his name and birthday would appear in my daily note on his birthday. One can use similar functionality to create tables of books they read with titles, authors, ratings, dates read, etc. or a variety of other data input which parses through your plaintext files. Services like Obsidian, Logseq, et al. are getting better about allowing these types of programmatic searches for users without backgrounds in programming and various communities usually provide help for pre-made little snippets like the one above that one can cut and paste into their notes to get the outputs that they need. Another Obsidian based example that uses text files for tracking academic journal articles can be found at https://nataliekraneiss.com/your-academic-reading-list-in-obsidian/; I'm sure there are similar versions for other text-based platforms.

In pre-digital times, for a manual version of a rolodex like this in paper, one could use different color cards as pseudo-tags (doctors are on yellow cards, family members on blue cards, friends on green cards, etc.) or adding edge notches or even tabs to represent different types of metadata. See for example the edge colored cards in Hawkexpress' Pile of Index Cards: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122

As humans we're good at separating things based on categories. The Dewey Decimal System systematically separates mathematics and history into disparate locations, but your zettelkasten shouldn't force this by overthinking categories. Perhaps the overlap of math and history is exactly the interdisciplinary topic you're working toward? If this is the case, just put cards into the slip box closest to their nearest related intellectual neighbor—and by this I mean nearest related to you, not to Melvil Dewey or anyone else. Over time, through growth and branching, ideas will fill in the interstitial spaces and neighboring ideas will slowly percolate and intermix. Your interests will slowly emerge into various bunches of cards in your box. Things you may have thought were important can separate away and end up on sparse branches while other areas flourish.

If you make the (false) choice to separate math and history into different "sections" it will be much harder for them to grow and intertwine in an organic and truly disciplinary way. Universities have done this sort of separation for hundreds of years and as a result, their engineering faculty can be buildings or even entire campuses away from their medical faculty who now want to work together in new interdisciplinary ways. This creates a physical barrier to more efficient and productive innovation and creativity. It's your zettelkasten, so put those ideas right next to each other from the start so they can do the work of serendipity and surprise for you. Do not artificially separate your favorite ideas. Let them mix and mingle and see what comes out of them.

If you feel the need to categorize and separate them in such a surgical fashion, then let your index be the place where this happens. This is what indices are for! Put the locations into the index to create the semantic separation. Math related material gets indexed under "M" and history under "H". Now those ideas can be mixed up in your box, but they're still findable. DO NOT USE OR CONSIDER YOUR NUMBERS AS TOPICAL HEADINGS!!! Don't make the fatal mistake of thinking this. The numbers are just that, numbers. They are there solely for you to be able to easily find the geographic location of individual cards quickly or perhaps recreate an order if you remove and mix a bunch for fun or (heaven forfend) accidentally tip your box out onto the floor. Each part has of the system has its job: the numbers allow you to find things where you expect them to be and the index does the work of tracking and separating topics if you need that.

The broader zettelkasten, tools for thought, and creativity community does a terrible job of explaining the "why" portion of what is going on here with respect to Luhmann's set up. Your zettelkasten is a crucible of ideas placed in juxtaposition with each other. Traversing through them and allowing them to collide in interesting and random ways is part of what will create a pre-programmed serendipity, surprise, and combinatorial creativity for your ideas. They help you to become more fruitful, inventive, and creative.

Broadly the same thing is happening with respect to the structure of commonplace books. There one needs to do more work of randomly reading through and revisiting portions to cause the work or serendipity and admixture, but the end results are roughly the same. With the zettelkasten, it's a bit easier for your favorite ideas to accumulate into one place (or neighborhood) for easier growth because you can move them around and juxtapose them as you add them rather than traversing from page 57 in one notebook to page 532 in another.

If you use your numbers as topical or category headings you'll artificially create dreadful neighborhoods for your ideas to live in. You want a diversity of ideas mixing together to create new ideas. To get a sense of this visually, play the game Parable of the Polygons in which one categorizes and separates (or doesn't) triangles and squares. The game created by Vi Hart and Nicky Case based on the research of Thomas Schelling provides a solid example of the sort of statistical mechanics going on with ideas in your zettelkasten when they're categorized rigidly. If you rigidly categorize ideas and separate them, you'll drastically minimize the chance of creating the sort of useful serendipity of intermixed and innovative ideas.

It's much harder to know what happens when you mix anthropology with complexity theory if they're in separate parts of your mental library, but if those are the things that get you going, then definitely put them right next to each other in your slip box. See what happens. If they're interesting and useful, they've got explicit numerical locators and are cross referenced in your index, so they're unlikely to get lost. Be experimental occasionally. Don't put that card on Henry David Thoreau in the section on writers, nature, or Concord, Massachusetts if those aren't interesting to you. Besides everyone has already done that. Instead put him next to your work on innovation and pencils because it's much easier to become a writer, philosopher, and intellectual when your family's successful pencil manufacturing business can pay for you to attend Harvard and your house is always full of writing instruments from a young age. Now you've got something interesting and creative. (And if you must, you can always link the card numerically to the other transcendentalists across the way.)

In case they didn't hear it in the back, I'll shout it again: ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST YOUR NATURAL URGE TO USE YOUR ZETTELKASTEN NUMBERS AS TOPICAL HEADINGS!!!

Giannakis, Georgios K., Christoforo Charalambakis, Franco Montanari, and Antonios Rengakos, eds. Studies in Greek Lexicography. Studies in Greek Lexicography. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes 72. De Gruyter, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110622744.

Skimmed for portions relating to the Bauer zettelkasten

repetition of what appears on their primary web page in early 2023. the .pdf document doesn't appear to exist anymore (it redirects to https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/ddglc/index.html

A digitized version of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten has been available online since 2015.

Katsikadeli, Christina. “Language Contact and Contact Induced Change in the Light of the (Digital) Lexicography of Greek Loanwords in the Non-Indo-European Languages of the Greco-Roman Worlds (Coptic, Hebrew/Aramaic, Syriac).” In Studies in Greek Lexicography, 21–40. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes 72. Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110622744-003.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpvEY-2dSdU

In this episode, I explain the memory system I created in order to expand my memory to new heights. I call it the Sirianni Method and with it, you can learn how to create an intentional photographic memory.

Who the hell is the Sirianni this is named for, himself? (In the comments he mentions that "it's my italian grandpa's last name, I always liked it and a while back started naming things after it)

tl;dr: He's reinvented the wheel, but certainly not the best version of it.

What he's describing isn't remotely related to the idea of a photographic memory, so he's over-hyping the results, which is dreadful. If it were a photographic memory, he wouldn't need the spaced-repetition portion of his practice. While he mentions how he's regularly reviewing his cards he doesn't mention any of the last century+ of research and work on spaced repetition. https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm is a good place to start for some of this.

A lot of what he's doing is based on associative memory, particularly by drawing connections/links to other things he already knows. He's also taking advantage of visual memory by associating his knowledge with a specific picture.

He highlights emotion and memory, but isn't drawing clear connections between his knowledge and any specific emotions that he's tying or associating them to.

"Intentional" seems to be one of the few honest portions of the piece.

Overview of his Sirianni method: pseudo-zettelkasten notes with written links to things he already knows (but without any Luhmann-esque numbering system or explicit links between cards, unless they're hiding in his connections section, which isn't well supported by the video) as well as a mnemonic image and lots of ad hoc spaced repetition.

One would be better off mixing their note taking practice with associative mnemonic methods (method of loci, songlines, memory palaces, sketchnotes, major system, orality, etc.) all well described by Lynne Kelly (amongst hundreds before her who got smaller portions of these practices) in combination with state of the art spaced repetition.

The description of Luhmann's note taking system here is barely passable at best. He certainly didn't invent the system which was based on several hundred years of commonplace book methodology before him. Luhmann also didn't popularize it in any sense (he actually lamented how people were unimpressed by it when he showed them). Popularization was done post-2013 generally by internet hype based on his prolific academic output.

There is nothing new here other than that he thinks he's discovered something new and is repackaging it for the masses with a new name in a flashy video package. There's a long history of hucksters doing this sort of fabulist tale including Kevin Trudeau with Mega Memory in the 1990s and going back to at least the late 1800s with "Professor" Alphonse Loisette and the system he sold for inordinate amounts to the masses including Mark Twain.

Most of these methods have been around for millennia and are all generally useful and well documented though the cultural West has just chosen to forget most of them. A week's worth of research and reading on these topics would have resulted in a much stronger "system" more quickly.

Beyond this, providing a fuller range of specific options and sub-options in these areas so that individuals could pick and choose the specifics which work best for them might have been a better way to go.

Content research: D- Production value: A+

{syndication link](https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10ehrbd/comment/j4u495q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

he [Luhmann] popularized method of expanding your memory called the zettelkasten method (04:49)

At least he doesn't go with the invention myth, but it's also false that he was the one who popularized it... others online popularized it.

Andy is Adapting the approach of zettelkasten writer Christian Tietze

Aschheim, Steven E., and Vivian Liska, eds. The German-Jewish Experience Revisited. Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts 3. De Gruyter, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110367195.

Skimmed for references with respect to Aby Warburg and his zettelkasten.

Apparently Aby Warburg "obsessively kept" notes on antisemitic incidents on the Eastern front in his zettelkasten.

This piece looks at Warburg's Jewish identity as supported or not by the contents of his zettelkasten, thus placing it in the use of zettelkasten or card index as autobiography.

Might one's notes reflect who they were as a means of creating both their identity while alive as well as revealing it once they've passed on? Might the use of historical method provide its own historical method to be taken up on a meta basis after one's death?

https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/24570

Some interesting programming and structured data with relationship to the Gertrud Bauer Zettelkasten Online.

Richter, Tonio Sebastian. “Whatever in the Coptic Language Is Not Greek, Can Wholly Be Considered Ancient Egyptian”: Recent Approaches towards an Integrated View of the Egyptian-Coptic Lexicon.” Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies. Journal de La Société Canadienne Pour Les Études Coptes 9 (2017): 9–32. https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeumdok.00004673.

Skimmed for the specifics I was looking for with respect to Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten.

This repeats chunks of prior notes from https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/ddglc/bauer-db/index.html, but is a better published/referenceable verion of it than just the web page.

Link to : - https://hypothes.is/a/nrqq3JXqEe2i5TOTRdgmQg - https://hypothes.is/a/uCcDTJXnEe2nZFtz8Aa_LQ

61 Available online at http://research.uni-leipzig.de/ddglc/bauerindex.html. The Work on this parergon to the lexicographical labors of the DDGLC project was funded by the Gertrud-und Alexander Böhlig-Stiftung. The digitization of the original card index was conducted by temporary collaborators and volunteers in the DDGLC project: Jenny Böttinger, Claudia Gamma, Tami Gottschalk, Josephine Hensel, Katrin John, Mariana Jung, Christina Katsikadeli, and Elen Saif. The IT concept and programming were carried out by Katrin John and Maximilian Moller.

Digitization of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten was underway in 2017 to put the data into a MySQL database with the intention of offering it as an online user interface sometime in 2017.

https://petersmith.org/blog/2022/12/10/zettelkasten/

reply to u/phil98f at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10dbza7/equations_and_formulas_in_mathematics_physics_and/

Perhaps you've not gotten far enough in your studies to see the pattern yet, but most advanced mathematics texts (Hungerford's Algebra or Rudin's Real Analysis for example) and many physics texts are written as if they were pre-numbered zettelkasten. Generally every definition, theorem, corollary, proposition, and lemma in the text will be written out succinctly with its own unique number and arranged in some sort of branching order. Most of these texts you could generally cut up and paste onto cards and have something zettelkasten-like without any additional work.

I generally follow this same pattern and usually separate proofs on cards behind their associated theorems (typically only for those I've written out myself). Individual equations can be numbered, but I rarely give an equation its own card and instead reference them by card number with a particular equation line in parenthesis when necessary. I can then cross reference definitions, theorems, etc. easily as I continue building things up. Over time you can eventually cross reference various branches of math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. For example I've got a dozen different proofs and uses of Schwartz' inequality in six different branches of mathematics which goes toward showing how closely knit various disparate branches of math can be.

In most cases I might also suggest against too heavy a focus on the equations, but on what they may say/mean, and what you can use it for. Alternately drawing diagrams or pictures of the relationships can be valuable. Understand it first then write it down. As an example you can look at Boyle's Law, Charles' law, Avogadro's Law and Gay-Lussac's law, but if you know and understand them properly then you should be able to write down and understand the more generic Ideal Gas Law, which shows how they're interlinked. Later in your studies you might also then be able to derive it from microscopic kinetic theory with statistical mechanics as well, then you'll be able to link up those concepts at that time.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/9357/#Comment_9357

I just love this perspective! They've gotten so many parts "correct"!

slip box vs zettelkasten vs card file index (or card catalog)

Sometimes having examples of others' work can be helpful. In your case, perhaps perusing some zettelkasten work by previous users within the art/image space? In this respect some of the work by Aby Warburg may be interesting to you. I might suggest starting with his archive here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verknüpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials

After browsing through a variety of the cards in Gertrud Bauer's Zettelkasten Online it becomes obvious that the collection was created specifically as a paper-based database for search, retrieval, and research. The examples and data within it are much more narrowly circumscribed for a specific use than those of other researchers like Niklas Luhmann whose collection spanned a much broader variety of topics and areas of knowledge.

This particular use case makes the database nature of zettelkasten more apparent than some others, particularly in modern (post-2013 zettelkasten of a more personal nature).

I'm reminded here of the use case(s) described by Beatrice Webb in My Apprenticeship for scientific note taking, by which she more broadly meant database creation and use.

https://userpage.fu-berlin.de/johnkatrin/bauer1/index.html

The digitized and online version of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten.

Search fields: - simple search - ID - Lemma - card type - Dialect - Use

In the 1990s Professor Alexander Böhlig of the University of Tuebingen gave Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten to Professor Peter Nagel of Bonn. He in turn forwardd the seven cardboard boxes of slips to the Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC) office for their use.

What was the nature of the hierarchical structure of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten?

Some of the structure may be understandable by the nature of the digital database.

The Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC) has scanned and placed the original slips from Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten into a database for scholarly use. The database allows the replication of the hierarchical structure of Bauer's original compilation.

Gertrud Bauer produced her zettelkasten as part of a loanword project overseen by professor Alexander Böhlig at the University of Tuebingen.

Gertrud Bauer used her zettelkasten on Coptic and Greek to write Konkordanz der nichtflektierten griechischen Wörter im bohairischen Neuen Testament, Göttinger Orientforschungen VI/6, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1975, a work on borrowed function words.

Gertrud Bauer maintained a zettelkasten in the 1970s and 1980s in which she compiled "about 15,000 attestations (tokens) of almost 150 types of reek prepositions, conjunctions and particles in Coptic, from virtually all Coptic dialects and types of texts, arranged on the basis of a detailed analysis of their semantic and syntactic properties."

https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/tired-librarian-gm183377577-15073069

Hilarious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYj1jneBUQo

Forrest Perry shows part of his note taking and idea development process in his hybrid digital-analog zettelkasten practice. He's read a book and written down some brief fleeting notes on an index card. He then chooses a few key ideas he wants to expand upon, finds the physical index card he's going to link his new idea to, then reviews the relevant portion of the book and writes a draft of a card in his notebook. Once satisfied with it, he transfers his draft from his notebook into Obsidian (ostensibly for search and as a digital back up) where he may also be refining the note further. Finally he writes a final draft of his "permanent" (my framing, not his) note on a physical index card, numbers it with respect to his earlier card, and then (presumably) installs it into his card collection.

In comparison to my own practice, it seems like he's spending a lot of time after-the-fact in reviewing over the original material to write and rewrite an awful lot of material for what seems (at least to me—and perhaps some of it is as a result of lack of interest in the proximal topic), not much substance. For things like this that I've got more direct interest in, I'll usually have a more direct (written) conversation with the text and work out more of the details while reading directly. This saves me from re-contextualizing the author's original words and arguments while I'm making my arguments and writing against the substrate of the author's thoughts. Putting this work in up front is often more productive at least for areas of direct interest. I would suspect that in Perry's case, he was generally interested in the book, but it doesn't impinge on his immediate areas of research and he only got three or four solid ideas out of it as opposed to a dozen or so.

The level of one's conversation with the text will obviously depend on their interest and goals, a topic which is relatively well laid out by Adler & Van Doren (1940).

Forrest Perry shows an example of one of his zettels which has evidence of his having renumbered at least one card.

The image of the card has a strip of white out tape in the upper right hand corner with about 6 characters' worth of text covered over and the identifier "4b" written in black ink over it.

Robert Attal's revised bibliography (2000) of Goitein's output lists 737 titles.

https://ias.academia.edu/ShelomoDovGoitein/Articles-&-Reviews

Not sure who compiled this academia.edu profile of Goitein, but it lists a reasonable sounding 800 articles/reviews and 68 books which tracks with the revised edition of Robert Atta's bibliography.

https://genizalab.princeton.edu/pgp-database/technical-history

Overview of the technical portions of the Princeton Geniza Lab operatioins.

https://genizalab.princeton.edu/about/history-princeton-geniza-lab/text-searchable-database

Mark R. Cohen and A. L. Udovitch made the arrangements for copies of S.D. Goitein's card index, transcriptions and photocopies of fragments to be made and kept at Princeton before the originals were sent to the National Library of Israel. This repository was the birth of the Princeton Geniza Lab.

Zinger, Oded. “Finding a Fragment in a Pile of Geniza: A Practical Guide to Collections, Editions, and Resources.” Jewish History 32, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 279–309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-019-09314-6.

Read on 2023-01-09

An overview of sources and repositories for fragments from the Cairo Geniza with useful bibliographies for the start of Geniza studies. Of particular interest to me here is the general work of Shelomo Dov Goitein and his 27,000+ card zettelkasten containing his research work on it. There's some great basic description of his collection in general as well as some small specifics on what it entails and some reasonable guide as to how to search it and digital versions at the Princeton Geniza Lab.

Oded Zinger provides a two page chart breakdown overview of the smaller portion of Goitein's 7,000 cards relating to his study of the Geniza with a list of the subjects, subdivisions, microfilm rolls and slide numbers, and the actual card drawer numbers and card numbers. These cards were in drawers 1-15, 17, and 20-22.

Cards from the topically arranged index cards in Goitein's sub-collection of 20,000 served as the skeleton of his magnum opus Mediterranean Society.

Goitein, “Involvement in Geniza Research,” 144.

Goitein's cards are segmented into two sets: one for subjects and one related to the India Book.

Goitein's zettelkasten is comprised of about 20,000 3 x 5" index cards and 7,000 5 x 8" index cards.

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/TEiQ5H1rEe2_Amfzi4XXmg

While not directly confirmed (yet), due to the seeming correspondence of the number of cards and their corpus descriptions, it's likely that the 20,000 3 x 5" cards were his notes covering individual topics while the 7,000 5 x 8" cards were his notes and descriptions of a single fragment from the Cairo Geniza.

circulating among scholars of the documentary Geniza.

Prior to being shipped to the National Library of Israel, Goitein's index card collection was photographed in Princeton and transferred to thirty microfilm rolls from which digital copies in .pdf format have been circulating among scholars of the documentary Geniza.

Link to other examples of digitized note collections: - Niklas Luhmann - W. Ross Ashby - Jonathan Edwards

Are there collections by Charles Darwin and Linnaeus as well?

Goitein's zettelkasten consisted of twenty-six drawers of material.

Following his death in 1985, S.D. Goitein's papers, including his zettelkasten, were sent to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem where they can still be accessed.

In addition to writing on cards, Goitein also wrote notes on pieces of paper that he happened to have lying around.

Goitein broke the frequent admonishment of many note takers to "write only on one side" of his cards.

Oded Zinger doesn't mention how many of his 27,000 index cards are double-sided, but one might presume that it is a large proportion.

How many were written on both sides?

Goitein's index cards provided a database not only for his own work, but for those who studied documentary Geniza after him.

S.D. Goitein's index cards have been imaged and transcribed and added to the Princeton Geniza Lab as of May 2018. Digital search and an index are also available.

https://genizaprojects.princeton.edu/indexcards/index.php?a=card&id=28921

Goitein's index card collection was microfilmed in November 1985 following his death on February 6, 1985.

https://genizaprojects.princeton.edu/indexcards/index.php

https://genizaprojects.princeton.edu/indexcards/index.php?a=themes

A digitized web-based version of S.D. Goitein's commonplace book using index cards.

Wowzers!

reply to u/theinvertedform at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zkguan/is_zettelkasten_gamification_of_notetaking/

Social media and "influencers" have certainly grabbed onto the idea and squeezed with both hands. Broadly while talking about their own versions of rules, tips, tricks, and tools, they've missed a massive history of the broader techniques which pervade the humanities for over 500 years. When one looks more deeply at the broader cross section of writers, educators, philosophers, and academics who have used variations on the idea of maintaining notebooks or commonplace books, it becomes a relative no-brainer that it is a useful tool. I touch on some of the history as well as some of the recent commercialization here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.

Evidence of the influencer culture of social media meeting the zettelkasten/note taking space.

Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.

compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w

also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene

https://wiki.rel8.dev/co-write_a_neobook

A playlist of related index cards from a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten could be considered a playlist that comprises an article or a longer work like a book.

Just as one can create a list of all the paths through a Choose Your Own Adventure book, one could do something similar with linked notes. Ward Cunningham has done something similar to this programmatically with the idea of a Markov monkey.

reply to u/BlackSwan8043 on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/102gt6i/what_are_the_technicalities_of_the_antinet/

I'm not sure anyone has written "the" book on these things (yet), but Dan has certainly written a very good and concise one (and particularly the first half with respect to your question): https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/02/how-to-make-notes-and-write-a-handbook-by-dan-allosso-and-s-f-allosso/. His definitions of source notes and point notes along with examples are in chapter 4 if I recall: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/highlighting-and-note-taking/

Another good source for the sorts of reading practices and thinking/writing involved can be found in:<br /> Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

It sounds like you're almost there, if not already, so I would recommend spending more time actually reading and writing and you'll refine things for yourself as you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHz0BrS7RWk

Klaus Kusanowsky indicates without reference that zettelkasten started in the 17th or 18th centuries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAwNAJkCIy8

reply to u/shibbywiggy on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zzlje4/what_makes_this_special_for_me/

In his book Sönke Ahrens mentions the Zeigarnik effect and that it works for the slip box method in much the same way that Zeigarnik works for David Allen's GTD, but to my knowledge he wasn't making any sort of attempt to integrate GTD with the slipbox there. Where are you drawing this inference with respect to his work?

I've noticed the "frankenbaby" phenomenon too and have called it zettelkasten overreach in the past. HawkExpress' original Pile of Index Cards is the closest I've seen to pure GTD with index cards.

Example of someone who's also noticed the idea of "zettelkasten overreach" though they call it "frankenbaby".

hashtag for a self-help zettelkasten group

https://borretti.me/article/unbundling-tools-for-thought

He covers much of what I observe in the zettelkasten overreach article.

Missing is any discussion of exactly what problem he's trying to solve other than perhaps, I want to solve them all and have a personal log of everything I've ever done.

Perhaps worth reviewing again to pull out specifics, but I just don't have the bandwidth today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPuqBdPULx4

Mostly this is a lot of yammering about what is to come and the trials and tribulations it's taken him to get set up for making the video tutorials. Just skip to the later videos in the series.

He did mention that he would be giving a sort of "peep show" of his note taking method, though he didn't indicate whether or not we might be satisfied with it. This calls to mind Luhmann's quote about showing his own zettelkasten being like a pornfilm, but somehow people were left disappointed.

cross reference: https://hyp.is/GFj15IcbEe21OIMwT2TOJA/niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V

I've read and referenced this several times, but never bothered to log it into my notes.

Sasha Fast's translation:

Ghost in the box? Spectators visit. They get to see everything, and nothing but that - like in a porn movie. And the disappointment is correspondingly high.

Bendat, Julius S. Principles and Applications of Random Noise Theory. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1958.

My copy of this book from 1958 has a table of contents with numberings for chapter, section, and subsections.

Eg: 1.2-1 Constant Parameter Linear Systems

Humphreys, James E. Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory. Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 9.0. Springer, 1972. is one of the first Springer texts in my collection which has a Luhmann-esque sort of numbering system in its table of contents. Surely there must be earlier others though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFs3_COOMp8

He opens up saying that he uses some small plastic containers for mushrooms that he got from the supermarket for storing his notes/slips! This is definitely a unique form of zettelkasten box!

He talks about the benefits and some of the joys of using analog practices, particularly in analogy to music and arts.

"meine kleine zettelkasten show" sounds like it ought to be a Mozart compisition like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/

via u/The_Bee_Sneeze

Example of someone using Obsidian with a zettelkasten focus to write screenplays.

Thought the example appears in r/Zettelkasten, one must wonder at how Luhmann-esque such a practice really appears?

reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)

ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.

Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:

• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
• Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
• Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)

For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zo96qs/sharing_the_works_of_frank_bisse/

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zo96qs/sharing_the_works_of_frank_bisse/

I'm curious where you found the surname Bisse? Frank gives his name as Frank Antonson in his first video and uses it in places throughout some of the videos and references I've found. It's also the name used in this relatively good overview of his work: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/nation/2017/08/18/z-youtube-retired-humanities-teacher/553192001/. I know he used the pen name Wedge in the past, so perhaps Bisse is just another of his pen names?

I'm also curious where you've pulled the idea that "All videos have the numbering of the cards as the prefix in the video title." In 7.106.1 of 5 State of the School 2019, at the opening of the video he describes his numbering system: 7.106.1 is shorthand for 7th year, 106th day, video number 1. This seems to be a chronological numbering for tracking things and not a relational sort of numbering often seen in zettelkasten contexts. When describing his index cards he indicates that he hasn't opened or looked through them in decades. If someone finds more evidence of his use of cards, I'd love pointers to those videos.

Reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 on https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zvvuke/are_hyperlinks_needed_for_a_zettelkasten/

Eminem would indicate it's a clear no.

By direct translation zettelkasten = slips + box. There is no word in the name to indicate links of any sort. 😁🗃️🤣

Joan Rivers had an index card catalog with 52 drawers of 4-by-6-inch index cards containing jokes she'd accumulated over her lifetime of work. She had 18 2 drawer stackable steel files that were common during the mid-1900s. Rather than using paper inserts with the label frames on the card catalogs, she used a tape-based label maker to designate her drawers.

Scott Currie, who worked with Melissa Rivers on a book about her mother, Joan Rivers, at the comedian’s former Manhattan office. Many of her papers are stored there.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Note carefully that the article says 52 drawers, but the image in the article shows a portion of what can be surmised to be 18 2-drawer cabinets for a total of 36 drawers. (14 2-drawer cabinets are pictured, but based on size and perspective, there's one row of 4 2-drawer boxes not shown.)

https://www.target.com/p/6qt-clear-storage-box-white-room-essentials-8482/-/A-80162146

6qt Clear Storage Box White - Room Essentials™<br /> Outside Dimensions: 13 1/2" x 8 1/8" x 4 5/8"<br /> Interior Dimensions at bottom: 11 1/2" x 6 3/8" x 4 3/8"<br /> Ideal for a variety of basic and lightweight storage needs, for use throughout the home<br /> Opaque lid snaps firmly onto the base and provides a grip for easy lifting<br /> Clear base allows contents to easily be viewed and located<br /> Indexed lids allow same size storage boxes to neatly stack upon each other<br /> BPA-free and phthalate-free<br /> Proudly made in the USA

Specifications<br /> Closure Type: Snap<br /> Used For: Organizing<br /> Capacity (Volume): 6 Quart<br /> Features: Portable, Lidded, Nesting, Stackable<br /> Assembly Details: No Assembly Required<br /> Primary item stored: Universal Storage<br /> Material: Plastic<br /> Care & Cleaning: Spot or Wipe Clean<br /> TCIN: 80162146<br /> UPC: 073149215284<br /> Item Number (DPCI): 002-02-9534<br /> Origin: Made in the USA<br /> Description<br /> Organize, sort and contain! The Room Essentials 6 Quart Storage Box is ideal for a variety of basic and lightweight household storage needs, helping to keep your living spaces neat. The clear base allows contents to be easily identified at a glance, while the opaque lid snaps firmly onto the base to keep contents contained and secure. Stack same size containers on top of each other for efficient use of vertical storage space. When storing items away, use good judgment and don’t overload them or stack them too high; be mindful of the weight in each box and place the heaviest box on the bottom. This storage box is ideal for sorting and storing shoes, accessories, crafts and other small items around the home and fits conveniently on 16" wire closet shelving, bringing order to closets. The overall assembled dimensions of this item are 13 1/2" L x 8 1/8" W x 4 5/8" H.

Examples of this and similar products in use as a box for zettelkasten: - https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipN5GmVoIhCwma1czj27bXlVDKIUfbOU3a91dYuPBNZaGsEhcZYllmotxup6OxUHhA?pli=1&key=RlhXMTM0WUpuQ2hlQkdDNzA0S1BmNzVQblo4Ti1n - https://imgur.com/a/rW8TZKt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp818Ml3C2w&list=PLuJbg6eLC7Y2nU_KhrWZX8zGg-yl_L-_T

At the opening of the video he describes his numbering system: 7.106.1 is shorthand for 7th year, 106th day, video number 1. This is a chronological numbering for tracking things and not a relational sort of numbering often seen in zettelkasten contexts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD_kDcepCK4

A few boxes of index cards at the start of the video.

I gave some examples of uses in arts/media a while back that you might find interesting for your use case: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xdrb0k/comment/iofo5vv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

In particular, a more commonplace book approach or something along the lines of Chapter 6 of Twyla Tharpe's book may be more useful or productive for your use case.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fGMOEWudc1PhmLIDfj6MtRdmOVITynsHNxG-XW89Mxw/edit

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/FastSascha</span> in Beta Reading: Communication with Zettelkastens : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>12/23/2022 12:02:16</time>)</cite></small>

https://pkm.social/@bobdoto/109558009858082429

quote by Bob Doto. :)

Thus far, Scheper has only been making the argument to do as I say because I know best. He's not laying out the reasons or affordances that justify this approach.

In this second principle it's ostensibly just "the possibility of linking", but this was broadly done previously using subject headings or keywords along with indices and page numbers which are logically equivalent to these note card addresses.

why keep harping on this framing?

I'll have to look into this argument as it feels dramatically false to me.

The only way I can see this is if one only uses their commonplace for excerpts and no other notes, a pattern which may have been the case for some, but certainly not all.

Why though? The slight difference in form doesn't account for any differences claimed here.

sigh

This is untrue in practice. They can evolve, they just do so in different ways. Prior to Luhmann's example, they have done so for centuries.

belief is a charged word when attempting to build systems for uncovering truths...

There's some flawed logic here in that Ward Cunningham outlined his version of a wiki and others who created versions thereafter modified and potentially expanded on that original "definition". We now have a general consensus of a wiki, but it's not necessarily the same for everyone. Scheper doesn't leave any fungible room in the semantics of his argument here and thereby forces one into a practicing the "one true way", which doesn't exist as even Luhmann's own practice varied over time.

I'm not a fan of the magic framing here and I'm not really sure that Luhmann consciously designed or built his system to do this. Prior systems had these "magical" features before Luhmann's.

Harnessing the dictionary into fronting for his zettelkasten religion?

What really supports this distinction? The closest historical American English translation is probably "card index" from the early 1900s while the broader academic historical translation is "slip box".

source:

60 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 11.

I rather like the phrase "note cabinet" which isn't used often enough in the zettelkasten space. Something more interesting than filing cabinet which feels like where things are stored to never be seen again versus a note cabinet which is temporary and directed location storage specifically meant for things to actively be reused.

This could be clearer and "growth state" and "contribution state" feel like jargon which muddles:

two of the broad benefits/affordances of having a zettelkasten: - learning and scaffolding knowledge (writing for understanding) - collecting and arranging material for general output

see also: https://boffosocko.com/2022/04/01/the-zettelkasten-method-of-note-taking-mirrors-most-of-the-levels-of-blooms-taxonomy/

note the pathos along with a bit of religious zeal here about the "true way".

from Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.

He highlights this here because it seems convenient to his thesis about a "true way", but Scheper has also mentioned in other venues that it was Luhmann's tenacity of working at his project that was largely responsible for his output.

I believe he made that statement in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgMh6iuFbT4

Goitein accumulated more than 27,000 index cards in his research work over the span of 35 years. (Approximately 2.1 cards per day.)

His collection can broadly be broken up into two broad categories: 1. Approximately 20,000 cards are notes covering individual topics generally making of the form of a commonplace book using index cards rather than books or notebooks. 2. Over 7,000 cards which contain descriptions of a single fragment from the Cairo Geniza.

A large number of cards in the commonplace book section were used in the production of his magnum opus, a six volume series about aspects of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, which were published as A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–1993).

https://genizalab.princeton.edu/resources/goiteins-index-cards

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/Didactico</span> in Goitein's Index Cards : antinet (<time class='dt-published'>12/15/2022 23:12:33</time>)</cite></small>

Example of Brian Eno using ITunes as a digital music zettelkasten. He's got 2,800 pieces of unreleased music which he plays on random shuffle for serendipity, memory, and potential creativity. The experience seems to be a musical one which parallels Luhmann's ideas of serendipity and discovery with the ghost in the machine or the conversation partner he describes in his zettelkasten practice.

"process not product"

Zettelkasten-based note taking methods, and particularly that followed by Luhmann, seem to focus on process and not product.

Reply to:

Who is Zettelkasten note-taking system for? <br /> u/Beens__<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/who_is_zettelkasten_notetaking_system_for/

Perhaps your use case may benefit from knowing the longer term outcomes of such processes, particularly as they relate to idea generation and innovation within your areas of interest? Keeping notes which you review over periodically and between which you create potential links will help to foster more productive long term combinatorial creativity, which will help you create new and potentially useful ideas much more quickly than blank page-based brainstorming.

Her method was much more ad hoc than the more highly refined methods of Luhmann which allowed him to write, but perhaps there's something you might appreciate from the example of the character Tess McGill in the movie Working Girl. Even more base in practice is that of Eminem, which shows far less structure, but could still have interesting long term creativity effects, though again, it bears repeating that one should occasionally revisit their notes (even if they're only in "headline form") in attempts to refresh their memory and link old ideas to new to generate completely new ideas.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/304735865527?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l1120&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=9d7415d17d33436c80675948f2a15173&bu=45618614899&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20221212041023&segname=11021

This is about as close to the form factor of Niklas Luhmann's own zettelkasten box as I've seen.

https://members.scottscheper.com/

reply to u/I_saw_the_Aleph<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zgx3pv/i_published_an_article_about_the_zettelkasten/

Thanks for adding to the tradition in another language. This is great.

I'm obviously not a fan of the commonly held Luhmann "zettelkasten origin myth", but since you don't cite a source for "otros métodos de tomar notas similares se originan en el siglo XVII" (translation: other similar note taking methods in the 17th century), I'm curious what and potentially who you're referring to here? I've seen a handful of online sources nebulously mention this same 17th century time period without any specific evidence, so I'm curious if you're following that crowd, or if there's something more specific you have in mind or could point to from a historical standpoint?

https://facundomaciasescritor.wordpress.com/2022/12/09/el-metodo-zettelkasten-usos-historia-y-funcionamento/

A nice overview of Zettelkasten space written in Spanish. A few quirks to be found, but generally sound.

New Spanish to me, but ostensibly, the brain, cerebrum, or perhaps the slang I saw of "brainbox".

Perhaps "brainbox" could be an interesting alternate English translation of zettelkasten?

Facundo Macías notices, as have I, a semblance of internecine almost religious/fanatical war between various note taking camps.

To get away from these we should instead on specific processes, their affordances, and their potential emergent outcomes in individual use. Most people begin these entrenched thoughts based on complete lack of knowledge. Few have practiced some of the broader methods for long enough to get to potential emergent properties.

People focused more on the shine than the substance.

This is an excellent summary of the space since broadly 2018ish, especially from my observations of those online.

I've now seen a handful of (all online) sources quote a 17th Century origin for similar note taking methods. What exactly are they referring to specifically? What are these sources? None seem to be footnoted.

Though to a great extent, his work ethic was really key to his output, something which was facilitated by his method.

Another example of building the myth of the method while sidelining the ethic which could be paired with it.

Translation:

Although the systematic administration of knowledge does not have recent origins, the most common referent on the subject is the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, creator of the Zettelkasten.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zgvcqh/happy_publication_day/

I already have an advanced digital copy, but honestly can't wait for the analog (and therefore "true copy") to be available for order and on my doorstep.

When are we going to see the link to order it?!? Don't think I'm just sitting around here holding my breath waiting to order this... sometimes I turn blue and fall off my chair 😰

Seriously though. Congratulations Scott!

Hopefully I'll see everyone at the start of the book club tomorrow: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zbibue/book_club_reading_scotts_book/

reply to https://www.reddit.com/user/thomasteepe/

Luhmann's method is certainly an evolution on prior methods, but only has a few differences. Sadly there aren't a broader array of other options that are open in the solution space to create an actual Cambrian explosion here. At the end of the day, one still has to do actual reading, note taking, thinking, and work to make the system go. It this hurdle of work that most often dampens people's spirits and despite it's ability to be more easily sustainable, it's really not very sexy, so people move on to the next shiny, new thing.

I'm aware of that series of videos and a few others, though my German is almost non-existent which makes them a slow slog. I suppose I should use Google's auto-transcription/translation, but that often muddies things further. I've had a few people translate pieces of things like that for me, but it becomes cost prohibitive after a while.

I wish Manfred Kuehn had left his site up, but I understand why he did it. I still delve back into Archive.org every now and then to find new things. If I had some extra time, I'd contact him to see if he'd be willing to publish archived versions of his blog as a book and do the collation/editing to get it out, but it's a lot of work, even with large portions automated.

One of these days I'll find a copy of the Marbach catalog to read...

Based on Luhmann's ZKII 9,8.3 (aka The Ghost in the Machine) and various other video and anecdotal sources, his colleagues saw his system and generally didn't care. His influence has primarily only been influential after-the-fact beginning online with mentions by Manfred Kuehn after 2007 with more interest following the Marbach zettelkasten exhibition in 2013 and the launch of zettelkasten.de. You're living amidst his greatest influence on the space, particularly asking this question just two days before Scott Scheper's book Antinet Zettelkasten, focusing on the specifics of Luhmann's method, is set to be released.

With respect to zettelkasten, I would posit that it was Luhmann himself who was actually standing on the shoulders of other giants which preceded him in these broader traditions including Desiderius Erasmus, Rudolph Agricola, Phillip Melanchthon, Konrad Gessner, John Locke, Ernst Bernheim, Charles Langlois, Charles Seignobos, Antoine Sertillanges, Beatrice Webb, Johannes Heyde, and C. Wright Mills, etc. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/ for more on the history here.

While I'm thinking about influence, has anyone named their children after the method yet? Is there a baby named Slip, Zeke, or Luhmann in honor yet? Perhaps this is the week that may have happened? 😉