read [[Dan Allosso]] in Actual Books

Sometimes a physical copy of a book gives one information not contained in digital scans. Allosso provides the example of Charles Knowlton's book The Fruits of Philosophy which touched on abortion and was published as a tiny hand-held book which would have made it easy to pass from person to person more discretely for its time period.

Adler & Hutchinson's Great Books of the Western World was an encyclopedia-based attempt to focus society on a shared history as their common ground. H. G. Wells in his World Encyclopedia thesis attempts to forge a new "moving" common ground based on newly evolving knowledge based on distilling truth out of science. Shared history is obviously much easier to dispense and spread about compared to constantly keeping a growing population up to date with the forefront of science.

How could one carefully compose and juxtapose the two to have a stronger combined effect?

How could one distribute the effects evenly?

What does the statistical mechanics for knowledge management look like at the level of societies and nations?

link to https://hypothes.is/a/abTT1KPDEe6nqxPx4fXggw

Interesting to contemplate the evolution of the idea of evolution through the Darwin family.

Charles would obviously have read his grandfather's book, but it also bears noting that he also had access to his grandfather's commonplace book (and likely his other papers).

See also: https://hypothes.is/a/FmVxQuqJEey33Uu0UTcMlg

Moller, Violet. The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2019. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546484/the-map-of-knowledge-by-violet-moller/.

https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:33585/

See also Wiki created in combination with this course: https://digitalbookhistory.com/culturesofthebook/Main_Page

https://digitalbookhistory.com/culturesofthebook/Main_Page

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'> whitney trettien </span> in whitney trettien on Twitter: "Curious about the development of different book technologies? The students in my "Cultures of the Book" seminar last semester made a wiki for you! Each entry is a short essay that uses examples from @upennlib. Open & free to use/remix: https://t.co/XN0C51MLrv" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>06/20/2022 01:10:21</time>)</cite></small>

https://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/birthday-book/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_book

Found looking for information about the tradition of birthday books.

Prior to the flourishing of reference materials, Peter Abelard (1079-1142) had articulated the idea of "the multitude and diversity of authoritative opinion" to be found in available material. How was one to decide which authority to believe in a time before the scientific method?

link to https://hypothes.is/a/oMSaKLb2EeyXOE_0Yh1Chw

https://pennmaterialtexts.org/homepage

How awesome looking is this? Note the regular online meetings/presentations and the backlog of videos on their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ng6px3fgc4Yjw-en1GcsA

catalog, until a successor card catalog comes along in 1848. Only the<br /> absence of a bound repertory allows the paper slip aggregate to answer all inquiries about a book ’ s whereabouts after 1781. Thus, a failed undertaking tacitly turns into a success story.

The Josephinian card index was created, in part on the ideas of Konrad Gessner's slip method, by accumulating slips which could be rearranged and then copied down permanently. While there was the chance that the original cards could be disordered, the fact that the approximately 300,000 cards in 205 small boxes were estimated to fill 50 to 60 folio volumes with time and expense to print it dissuaded the creation of a long desired compiled book of books. These problems along with the fact that new books being added later was sure to only compound problems of having a single reference. This failure to have a bound catalog of books unwittingly resulted in the success of the index card catalog.

This looks interesting with respect to the flows of the history of commonplace books.

Making the Miscellany: Poetry, Print, and the History of the Book in Early Modern England by Megan Heffernan

Matthew Daniel Eddy https://www.dur.ac.uk/directory/profile/?id=1715

https://hackaday.com/2019/06/18/before-computers-notched-card-databases/

Originally suggested by Alan Levine. Some interesting specific examples here, but I've been aware of the concept for a while.

Libri deflorationum

This has to be one of the baddest-ass things I've seen in months. I wish more people had public-facing commonplace books like this!

Bonus points that Whitney calls it a Whiki! :)

Foucault probably offers the most helpful theoretical approach. His “archaeology of knowledge” suggests a way to study texts as sites that bear the marks of epistemological activity, and it has the advantage of doing justice to the social dimension of thought.