- Nov 2023
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thatsthenorm.com thatsthenorm.com
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Live-Roaming: Using Roam to teach students in college
I'd listened to this whole episode sometime since 2022-04-05, but didn't put it in my notes.
Mark Robertson delineates how he actively models the use of his note taking practice (using Roam Research) while teaching/lecturing in the classroom. This sort of modeling can be useful for showing students how academics read, gather, and actively use their knowledge. It does miss the portion about using the knowledge to create papers, articles, books, etc., but the use of this mode of reading and notes within a discussion setting isn't terribly different.
Use of the system for conversation/discussion with the authors of various texts as you read, with your (past) self as you consult your own notes, or your students in classroom lectures/discussion sections is close to creating your own discussion for new audiences (by way of the work your write yourself.)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1194506/4875515-mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue-live-roaming.mp3
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www.loc.gov www.loc.gov
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Arendt studied with Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University
Did Karl Jaspers have a zettelkasten practice? Did he specifically pass it along to students, like Arendt?
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- Sep 2023
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Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776
In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.
Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.
It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.
Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.
Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?
Tags
- waste books
- Sönke Ahrens
- numbering systems
- intellectual history
- idea links
- quotes
- open questions
- accounting influence on note taking
- zettelkasten transmission
- fleeting notes
- Dewey Decimal System
- note taking advice
- academic writing
- John Locke
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- zettelkasten numbering
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- Konrad Gessner
Annotators
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- Feb 2023
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spectator.org spectator.org
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WHILE REAGAN was governor, I will never forget his taking time out of his schedule after a television taping to show me—a 15-year-old high school student—how he could instantly arrange his packs of anecdote-filled index cards into a speech tailor-made for almost any audience. I still use a variation of Reagan’s system to construct my own speeches.
John H. Fund wrote that while he was a a 15-year old high school student, Reagan taught him how he arranged his index card-based notes to tailor-make a speech for almost any audience. In 2011, Fund said he still used a variation of Reagan's system for his own speeches.
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Local file Local file
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As a graduate student, hemaintained a card index of his own. When Marcus’s friends wrote of his travels abroad,they declared that ‘When we think of that card index by now we shudder. What propor-tions it must have assumed’. 18
Example of a student who saw/learned/new a zettelkasten note taking method from a teacher.
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- Dec 2022
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edward-slingerland.medium.com edward-slingerland.medium.com
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I no longer remember the name of the 7th grade English teacher (Toms River Intermediate School West, c. 1980–1981) who taught me this method, but if she is out there: thanks!
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https://edward-slingerland.medium.com/there-is-only-one-way-to-write-a-book-637535ef5bde
Example of someone's research, note taking, and writing process using index cards.
Broadly, this is very similar to the process used by Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, and Victor Margolin.
While he can't recall the name of the teacher, he credits his 7th grade English teacher (1980-1981) for teaching him the method.
Edward Slingerland is represented by Brockman Inc.
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I have a very specific method for organizing my research and thoughts whenever I’m writing anything longer than a short article. I learned this method from a teacher in middle school, and I cannot imagine how a human being could write a book any other way.
Example of someone who learned an index card based commonplace book method for note taking and writing.
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- Oct 2022
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Local file Local file
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he file wascomplex enough, and the task it represented was large enough, sothat few of his sixty-five doctors, who watched the file grow in theseminar as part of the historical laboratory process, have main-tained full files of their own.
Owing to the size and complex nature of Paxson's note collection which he used and demonstrated to his students in his teaching and historical laboratory process, few of the sixty-five doctors who studied under him maintained files of their own.
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When I did, though, I was reassured to see that, in a slipshod sort of way, I had arrived at something vaguely approximating to their prescriptions. En route I had made all the obvious beginner’s mistakes.
Keith Thomas wasn't taught, nor did he read (until much too late), methods on note taking, but still managed to puzzle out most of the specifics for his note taking practice in his historical work, or at least everything but taking notes on note cards instead of on sheets of paper.
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