syntopicalreading
relationship of synoptical and syntopical
Did the idea of syntopicality exist prior to Adler? Did it spring from the work of German religious scholars of XIX C who began doing synoptical readings and comparisons of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke in the Bible?
link to the "great conversation" quote of Whitehead about Plato: https://hypothes.is/a/qb2T7l9nEe6uVVOdez8mKw
That is to make notes about the shape of the discussion-the discussion that is engaged in by all of the authors,even if unbeknownst to them. For reasons that will becomeclear in Part Four, we prefer to call such notes dialectical.
Dialectical notes are made at the level of syntopical reading and entail creating a conversation not only between the reader and the author, but create a conversation of questions and answers between and among many texts and the reader.
https://infiniteconversation.com/
an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. Everything you hear is fully generated by a machine. The opinions and beliefs expressed do not represent anyone. They are the hallucinations of a slab of silicon.
certainly surrounding oneself with acircle of people who will listen and t a l k - - a n d at times theyhave to be imaginary characters--is one of them
Intellectual work requires "surfaces" to work against, almost as an exact analogy to substrates in chemistry which help to catalyze reactions. The surfaces may include: - articles, books, or other writing against which one can think and write - colleagues, friends, family, other thinkers, or even imaginary characters (as suggested by C. Wright Mills) - one's past self as instantiated by their (imperfect) memory or by their notes about excerpted ideas or their own thoughts
Are there any other surfaces we're missing?
Third, sharing our ideas with others introduces a major element ofserendipity. When you present an idea to another person, theirreaction is inherently unpredictable. They will often be completelyuninterested in an aspect you think is utterly fascinating; they aren’tnecessarily right or wrong, but you can use that information eitherway. The reverse can also happen. You might think something isobvious, while they find it mind-blowing. That is also usefulinformation. Others might point out aspects of an idea you neverconsidered, suggest looking at sources you never knew existed, orcontribute their own ideas to make it better. All these forms offeedback are ways of drawing on not only your first and SecondBrains, but the brains of others as well.
I like that he touches on one of the important parts of the gardens and streams portion of online digital gardens here, though he doesn't tacitly frame it this way.