What Obsidian gurus get wrong about Zettelkasten by [[Tony Ramella]]

generally meh... nothing I don't already know

I do like his focus on simplicity.

00:26 Zettelkasten wasn't conceived by Niklas Luhmann; this is a myth (which the person in the video puts forward). Zettelkasten has a long history, and, Niklas Luhmann had a specific taste and version of it.

The simplest and most direct way of bringing home to the reader the truth of this dogmatic assertion of the scientific value of note-taking in sociological investigation...

Beatrice Webb indicates that it is an incontrovertible truth that sociologists should use a card index (zettelkasten) as a primary tool in their research.

We ought to closely notice that she wrote this truism about the field of sociology in a book published in 1926, the year prior to Niklas Luhmann's <s>death</s> birth.

How popular was her book with respect to the remainder of the field of sociology subsequently? What other sociology texts may have had similar ideas? Webb obviously quotes some of this technique in the late 1800s as being popular within the area of history. How evenly was it spread across the humanities in general?

Is Beatrice Webb's card index amongst her papers? Where might they be stored today?

It's a method that was first developed by Nicholas Luhmann. —Dr. Maddy 00:00:42

Seems like he's saying he developed the Zettelkasten Method... perhaps his version of the method based on Luhmann's? Commodifying the version "created" by Luhmann?

Credit here for native German speaker writing in English....

At least they don't say he invented it...

So nice to see a blog post specifically talk about "Luhmann's Zettelkasten method" rather than a more generic zettelkasten method as being Luhmann's. Notice the 2015 date before the "fame" had caught on in the blogosphere's productivity porn space closer to 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zY7l2tzoQ

Ugh... another short mediocre introduction. Repeats the origin myth.

Seems to take a very Ahrens' based framing, but screws up a few pieces. More focus on "hub notes" and completely misses the idea of an index somehow?!?

The last section of 2+ minutes really goes off the rails and recommends converting notes from other places and muddles about "Favorite problems" (ostensibly a reference to Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems, but isn't direct about it?).

Also encourages the "Feynman technique"...

Not so much origin myth here, but popularization myth…

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.

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.

https://meso.tzyl.nl/2022/12/05/the-history-of-zettelkasten/

If generated, it almost perfect reflects the public consensus, but does a miserable job of reflecting deeper realities.

reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/y2pzuu/does_anyone_else_work_in_projectbased_systems/

Historically, many had zettelkasten which were commonplace books kept on note cards, usually categorized by subject (read: "folders" or "tags"), so you're not far from that original tradition.

Similar to your work pattern, you may find the idea of a "Pile of Index Cards" (PoIC) interesting. See https://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-efficiently-organizes-ta-1599093089 and https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122 (read the descriptions of the photos for more details; there was also a related, but now defunct wiki, which you can find copies of on Archive.org with more detail). This pattern was often seen implemented in the TiddlyWiki space, but can now be implemented in many note taking apps that have to do functionality along with search and tags. Similarly you may find those under Tiago Forte's banner "Building a Second Brain" to be closer to your project-based/productivity framing if you need additional examples or like-minded community. You may find that some of Nick Milo's Linking Your Thinking (LYT) is in this productivity spectrum as well. (Caveat emptor: these last two are selling products/services, but there's a lot of their material freely available online.)

Luhmann changed the internal structure of his particular zettelkasten that created a new variation on the older traditions. It is this Luhmann-based tradition that many in r/Zettelkasten follow. Since many who used the prior (commonplace-based) tradition were also highly productive, attributing output to a particular practice is wrongly placed. Each user approaches these traditions idiosyncratically to get them to work for themselves, so ignore naysayers and those with purist tendencies, particularly when they're new to these practices or aren't aware of their richer history. As the sub-reddit rules indicate: "There is no [universal or orthodox] 'right' way", but you'll find a way that is right for you.

https://youtu.be/ILuSxUYYjMs

Luhmann zettelkasten origin myth at 165 second mark

A short outline of several numbering schemes (essentially all decimal in nature) for zettelkasten including: - Luhmann's numbering - Bob Doto - Scott Scheper - Dan Allosso - Forrest Perry

A little light on the "why", though it does get location as a primary focus. Misses the idea of density and branching. Touches on but broadly misses the arbitrariness of using the comma, period, or slash which functions primarily for readability.

Earlier he uses the phrase "old school" to describe the zettelkasten (presumably Luhmann's version), and not the much older old school ones from Gessner on....

Pioneered is a dreadful word instead of something having a connotation of putting a cherry on top of a pre-existing practice.

Perhaps better to indicate that he made some modifications to a pre-existing method as it's disingenuous historically to say he developed the broader idea which goes back at least as early as Konrad Gessner in 1548.

Academics, writers, and thinkers have been using variations on the general ideas of note taking, commonplacing, and slip boxing for centuries, which may also help to motivate students.

Sadly I think we're talking past each other somehow; I broadly agree with all of your original thread. Perhaps there's also some context collapse amidst our conversations across multiple platforms which doesn't help.

Maybe my error was in placing my comment on your original thread rather than a sub branch on one of the top several comments? I didn't want to target anyone in particular as the "invented by Luhmann myth" is incredibly wide spread and is unlikely to ever go away. It's obvious by some of the responses I've seen from your thread here in r/antinet that folks without the explicit context of the history default to the misconception that Luhmann invented it. This misconception tends to reinforce the idea that there's "one true way" (the often canonically presented "perfect" Luhmann zettelkasten, rather than the messier method that he obviously practiced in reality) when, instead, there are lots of methods, many of which share some general principles or building blocks, but which can have dramatically different uses and outcomes. My hope in highlighting the history was specifically to give your point more power, not take the opposite stance. Not having the direct evidence to the contrary, you'll noticed I hedged my statement with the word "seems" in the opening sentence. I apologize to you that I apparently wasn't more clear.

I love your comparison of LYT and zettelkasten by the way. It's reminiscent of the sort of comparison I'm hoping to bring forth in an upcoming review of Tiago Forte's recent book. His method—ostensibly a folder based digital commonplace book, which is similar to Milo's LYT—can be useful, but he doesn't seem to have the broader experience of history or the various use cases to be able to advise a general audience which method(s) they may want to try or for which ends. I worry that while he's got a useful method for potentially many people, too many may see it and his platform as a recipe they need to follow rather than having a set of choices for various outcomes they may wish to have. Too many "thought leaders" are trying to "own" portions of the space rather than presenting choices or comparisons the way you have. Elizabeth Butler is one of the few others I've seen taking a broader approach. A lot of these explorations also means there are multiple different words to describe each system's functionality, which I think only serves to muddy things up for potential users rather than make them clearer. (And doing this across multiple languages across time is even more confusing: is it zettelkasten, card index, or fichier boîte? Already the idea of zettelkasten (in English speaking areas) has taken on the semantic meaning "Luhmann's specific method of keeping a zettelkasten" rather than just a box with slips.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/b566a4/what_is_a_zettelkasten/

Wow. Even in the pinned post on r/Zettelkasten, they propagate the myth by implication that Luhmann invented the Zettelkasten.

They also suggest that Nabokov and Pirsig independently developed similar techniques rather than that it was a commonplace (excuse the pun) pattern in the broader culture.

Even the long running (2013) zettelkasten.de website credits Niklas Luhmann as being the "original creator" of the zettelkasten.

sigh

We really need to track down the origin of linking one idea to another. Obviously writers, and especially novelists, would have had some sort of at least linear order in their writing due to narrative needs in using such a system. What does this tradition look like on the non-fiction side?

Certainly some of the puzzle stems from the commonplace book tradition, but this is more likely to have relied on natural memory as well as searching and finding via index methods.

Perhaps looking more closely at Hans Blumenberg's instantiation would be more helpful. Similarly looking at the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and his predecessors like Marcel Mauss may provide at least an attack on this problem.

My working hypothesis is that given the history of the Viennese numbering system, it may have stemmed from the late 1700s and this certainly wasn't an innovation by Luhmann.

link to: https://hyp.is/hLy7NNtqEeuWQIP1UDkM6g/web.archive.org/web/20130916081433/https://christiantietze.de/posts/2013/06/zettelkasten-improves-thinking-writing/ for evidence of start of zettelkasten.de

Another example of an unsourced reference to Niklas Luhmann creating the zettelkasten.

Example of an article that incorrectly credits Niklas Luhmann with creation of the Zettelkasten.

Another example of someone misattributing the invention of the zettelkasten to Niklas Luhmann. At least Soren Bjornstad modifies the attribution to say modern form, but I suspect that this is more of a verbal hedge more than being backed up with actual evidence, though perhaps the video will bear out more detail?

The availability heuristic is so strong in Luhmann's case, that he is attributed the invention. I find that few people can point to or ever mention any others who used the method.

Here Ahrens doesn't say that Luhmann invented the zettelkasten, but he comes pretty close and is heavily implying it rather than delving into the ways which Luhmann may have been taught this practice.

This is all too correct. Sadly the older methods for writing, note taking, thinking, and memory have fallen by the wayside, so most literate moderns don't have the tradition most of (elite educated) Western culture has had for the past 2000+ years. The long tradition of commonplace books and their related versions including waste books, florilegium, sudelbücher, scholia, glossae, notebooks, anthologies, sylvae, table books, vade mecum, memoranda books, diaries, miscellanies, pocket books, thesauruses, etc. underlines your thesis well. The Zettelkasten, exactly like almost all of these others, is simply an iteration of the commonplace book instantiated into index card form. One of the reasons that Umberto Eco's advice on writing seems so similar to the zettelkasten method is that he was a medievalist scholar who was aware of these long traditions of writing, note taking, and memory and leveraged these for himself, though likely in a slightly different manner. Would anyone suggest that he didn't have a voluminous output or an outsized impact on society and culture? If one really wants to go crazy on the idea of backlinks and the ideas of creativity and invention, perhaps they ought to brush up on their Catalan and read some Ramon Llull? He was an 11th century philosopher and polymath who spent a lot of time not only memorizing much of his personal knowledge, but who invented combinatorial creative methods for juxtaposing his volumes of information to actively create new ideas. I guarantee no backlinking system held a match to his associative methods. Now if someone wanted to mix some mysticism into the fray, then perhaps there might be a competition... Many who are now writing so positively about Zettelkasten or backlinks are doing so in much the same way that humanist scholars like Desiderius Erasmus, Rodolphus Agricola, and Philip Melanchthon did when writing about and re-popularizing commonplace books in the 1500s. The primary difference being that the chance that they leave as lasting a legacy is much smaller. Worse many of them are crediting Luhmann for the actual invention of the Zettelkasten when his is but one instantiation on a long evolution of many note taking devices over literal millennia. I'm still waiting for folks to spend more time talking about Carl Linnaeus' revolutionary invention and use of the index card. Or John Locke's system for creating a new indexing system for commonplace books. Generally we don't talk about these innovations because their users spent more of their time using their systems to get other more important things done for their legacies. In the end, the message seems clear, anyone can be incredibly productive; most of it boils down to having some sort of system of reading, thinking, note taking, and new production and sticking with it for a while. Have a system; use your system; evolve it slowly to work well for you and the way you think and work.

This is fun marketing, but Niklas Luhmann did not invent the idea of the zettelkasten

Zettelkasten existed prior to Niklas Luhmann, who neither invented them nor coined their name.

The earliest concept of a digital garden stems from Mark Bernstein's essay Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas in 1998.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff's first mention of "digital garden" was on April 21, 2020

Progress on my digital garden / evergreen notebook inspired by @andy_matuschak🌱<br><br>Super grateful for @alyssaxuu who's been literally handholding me through the whole thing — thank you! pic.twitter.com/ErzvEsdAUj

— Anne-Laure Le Cunff (@anthilemoon) April 22, 2020

Which occurred after Maggie Appleton's mention on 2020-04-15 https://twitter.com/Mappletons/status/1250532315459194880

Nerding hard on digital gardens, personal wikis, and experimental knowledge systems with @_jonesian today.<br><br>We have an epic collection going, check these out...<br><br>1. @tomcritchlow's Wikifolders: https://t.co/QnXw0vzbMG pic.twitter.com/9ri6g9hD93

— Maggie Appleton 🧭 (@Mappletons) April 15, 2020

And several days after Justin Tadlock on 2020-04-17 https://wptavern.com/on- digital-gardens-blogs-personal-spaces-and-the-future

Before this there was Joel Hooks by at least 2020-02-04 https://web.archive.org/web/20200204180025/https://joelhooks.com/digital-garden, though he had been thinking about it in late 2019: https://github.com/joelhooks/joelhooks-com/blob/36c21b34f02ade14d4e67915ff412462030282cd/content/blog/2019-12-08--on-writing-more~~qG38AKqxq/index.mdx

He was predated by Tom Critchlow on 2018-10-18 https://tomcritchlow.com/blogchains/digital-gardens/ who quotes Mike Caulfield's article from 2015-10-17 as an influence https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/amp/

Archive.org has versions going back into the early 2000's: https://web.archive.org/web/*/%22digital%20garden%22

ugh...

Even Sönke Ahrens has indirectly attributed the idea of the zettelkasten directly to Niklas Luhmann.

2022-03-24

They don't say outright that Luhmann invented the zettelkasten, but it's implied with the words "originally used".

Another example of how much we've forgotten of our commonplacing and note taking traditions in rhetoric, and this from someone who's actively used note cards in the past.

Luhmann did not invent the zettelkasten. (I should make bumper stickers...)

Oops: https://www.zazzle.com/niklas_luhmann_bumper_sticker-128462770354241554