Instead of jotting down every note, thought, observation, excerpt, andreading on a single slip of paper and leaving them there, Placcius recom-mends grouping them, by dint of appropriate libros excerptorum (see figure2.5),39 excerpt books that follow the pattern that had guided the design ofregisters and bound library catalogs since Konrad Gessner; Placcius citesthe entire section “ De Indicibus Librorum ” from the Pandectae .40 Perhapshis strong vote for the bound form of this storage technology and againstJungius’s method is a way of warning against lifelong knowledge accumula-tions that merely gather treasures without being recombined and pub-lished as new books. Jungius, keen on including new resources, delays hisown publications time and again, leaving them unfinished or simply asraw paper slip potential in storage, on call. 4

If you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first.

“Don’t feel guilty if you spend the first 90 minutes of your day drinking coffee and reading blogs,” Nate Silver once advised young journalists. “It’s your job. Your ratio of reading to writing should be high.”

“What is your definition of success?” I hemmed and hawed a bit, until I finally said, “I suppose success is your days looking the way you want them to look.”

The warrant for claims generally includes: (1) the research design – was the research in a credible tradition? did the researcher position themselves explicitly so that readers could see the situatedness of the study? did the methods allow the question to be answered? was the sample sufficient? (note that the emphases in these questions and their weighting will vary by discipline.) (2) the conduct of the research – was the data generated in an appropriate manner? was the analysis thorough and defensible? was the research conducted according to current ethical standards? (3) the logic between the claims and the research – do the claims made follow from the actual results? have the results and analysis been presented in a logical sequence so that the steps in the argument are clear? (4) an awareness of what the research can and cannot do – has the researcher considered the limitations of their research? has the researcher demonstrated reflexivity?

A ‘research warrant’ thus refers to the ways in which our data supports the claims that we make.

If an action is warranted then there is a sound rationale, cause or basis for it. An action that is warranted is one which has good grounds.

was considering

5 simple metrics

Hupomnemata, in the technical sense, could be account books, public registers, or individual notebooks serving as memory aids. Their use as books of life, as guides for conduct, seems to have become a common thing for a whole cultivated public. One wrote down quotes in them, extracts from books, examples, and actions that one had witnessed or read about, reflections or reasonings that one had heard or that had come to mind. They constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent rereading and meditation. They also formed a raw material for the drafting of more systematic treatises, in which one presented arguments and means for struggling against some weakness (such as anger, envy, gossip, flattery) or for overcoming some difficult circumstance (a grief, an exile, ruin, disgrace). Thus, when Fundamus requests advice for struggling against the agitations of the soul, Plutarch at that moment does not really have the time to compose a treatise in the proper form, so he will send him, in their present state, the