Krajewski’s recent chapter “Intellectual Furniture: Elements of a Deep History of Artificial Intelligence.” sets Leibniz’s endeavours in the context of an intellectual history that stretches from the specialised furniture Leibniz acquired to arrange his notes, via the dawn of the computer age, all the way to the recent rise of artificial intelligence.
I love the idea of "intellectual furniture" though I've seen it in negative contexts before. Compare also with "books as wallpaper".
Please feel free to poke around my Commonplace.
Example of someone calling their website a commonplace.
Great Book of Western World 10 Years Reading Plan<br /> by [[zhex.dev]]<br /> accessed on 2025-08-09T10:50:17
E referred me to this as a fellow 'list maker' example. My current list is about 1600, mostly because I lost a 2k delicious library list. Not all read though. [[Boekenlijst is bibliotheek 20210507092034]] #blogdit
TextIndex<br /> by [[Matt Gemmell]]<br /> accessed on 2025-07-29T23:58:24
found via u/Shot-Consequence-57 at https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/1mafa6t/comment/n5q778g/
Gutting Book Basics by [[Thomas Vander Wal]]
Pacioli’s Summa proved to be one of the most consequential books of alltime.
In short: Book ix of the Summawas the nearest thing to an MBA textbook that the fifteenth century had tooffer. And one of the first lessons that its aspirational readers digested wasthat every business needed at least four blank books – the memoriale, orday book, the giornale, or journal, the quaderno, or general ledger, and abook for correspondence – and maybe even a fifth, the squartofoglia, or
waste book.
It’s telling that the first recorded useof the word ‘commonplacer’ in the Oxford English Dictionary isDonne’s.
https://fieldnotesbrand.com/from-seed
Some interesting history of notebooks in America.
How to Stop A Bully So He Regrets It | Russian Mafia Advice
A clever video fronting for for a book advertisement.
liberation often arrives not by fighting harder, but by thinking sideways
for - adjacency - Euler's Identity - book - Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense - to - Google Books - Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense - https://hyp.is/62BFDGCrEfCrMjc4k92e5g/books.google.com/books/about/Why_the_World_Doesn_t_Seem_to_Make_Sense.html?id=tMDvKl8anacC - This book takes a similar approach and makes use of duality represented by real numbers on the real number line, embedded within the complex plane
History Books of Note, should read
The Typewriter: A Graphic History of the Beloved Machine by [[Janine Vangool]]
https://medium.com/@jerrilevenson/list/6a8fa81e058a
A collection of Medium.com articles about commonplace books.
I avoid contact with fans. Occasionally, I watch trash TV because I think the poet shouldn’t avert his eyes. I want to know what others aspire to. I’m a good but limited cook. My steaks are excellent, but they’ll never touch what you can get on any street corner in Argentina. Tree huggers are suspicious to me. Yoga classes for five-year-olds—which in California are a thing—are suspicious to me. I don’t use social media. If you see my profile anywhere there, you can be sure it’s a fake. I don’t use a smartphone. I never quite trust the media, so I get a truer picture of the political situation by going to multiple sources—the Western media, Al Jazeera, Russian TV, and occasionally by downloading the whole of a politician’s speech. I trust the Oxford English Dictionary, which is one of mankind’s greatest cultural achievements. I mean the one in twenty massive volumes with six hundred thousand entries and more than three million quotations culled from all over the English-speaking world and over a thousand years. I reckon thousands of researchers and amateur helpers spent 150 years combing through everything recorded. For me, it is the book of books, the one I would take to a desert island. It is inexhaustible, a miracle. The first time I visited Oliver Sacks on Wards Island north of Manhattan, I had mislaid the house number but knew the name of the little street. It was evening, winter-time; the slightly sloping street was icy. I parked and tiptoed along the icy pavement looking into every lit-up home. None of the windows had curtains. Through one window I saw a man sprawled on a sofa with one of the hefty volumes of the OED propped on his chest. I knew that had to be him, and so it was. Our first subject was the dictionary; for him as well, it was the book of books.
The book of books.
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46
Original version (or owned copy) at: https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel)?
This was mentioned to me at an IndieWebCamp event today.
Seems interesting with respect to the meta portions of books.
Looks like the sort of thing that @remikalir and @anterobot may be interested in.
I long for a book made of only endnotes.
At hour of death, in putting off the flesh, He goes to what he looked for, Kunti’s Son!
This section of the text describes how someone's last thoughts when dying affect the future they will have. It implies that their final thoughts have an impact on how they live in the future, suggesting an idea of the afterlife. The Gita reinforces concepts of karma and rebirth by highlighting the value of dedication and focus. Krishna makes this point in the lesson by referring to Arjuna as "Kunti’s Son," encouraging him to keep his attention on the divine as a way to attain ultimate freedom.
[[Cory Doctorow]] explaining the issue with Amazon in terms of racketeering and market dominance. Am in process of writing a post on moving my reading out of Amazon [[Amazon aankopen vermijden]]
Graeber left us, but as Jose Luis Borges said: “When writers die, they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”
for - quote - when writers die, they become books - Jose Luis Borge - source - post - LinkedIn - Jesus Martin Gonzalez, 2025, Jan 8
[[Moral Progress by Philip Kitcher]] reads, based on both their blurbs, like a continuation of [[The Ethical Project by Philip Kitcher]], exploring how actual ethical changes have occurred in time. Moves towards method rather than big-T truth (in line w social evolution perspective of the Ethical Project) and strengthens the pragmatism in pragmatic naturalism. 10yrs between the 2 books. Blurb mentions progressing away from something rather than to something, which chimes neatly with the evolutionary perspective of moving away from being hindered by a selective pressure. The attention to moral progress as method brings it closer to my notion of [[Ethics As A Practice (EaaP) 20200819161530]]
[[The Ethical Project by Philip Kitcher]] 2011/2012/2014?
DownLOEBables<br /> http://www.edonnelly.com/loebs.html
I haven't researched where the color-coding thing started, though I suspect content creators/influencers online in the last decades as a means of making their content "pretty" rather than necessarily functional.
Historically commonplaces were based on huge varieties of topics/subject headings, so colors and symbols were not frequently used. Most who needed greater organization or search capabilities indexed their commonplaces. One of the most popular means was detailed by philosopher John Locke in 1685. Here's some pointers to his work in this area in my own digital commonplace using Hypothesis: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22commonplace+books%22+tag%3A%22John+Locke%22
reply to u/_cold_one at https://old.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/1hhavye/20_topics_colour_coding/
Utopian Civic-Mindedness: RobertMaynard Hutchins, MortimerAdler, and the Great BooksEnterprise
Born, Daniel. “Utopian Civic-Mindedness: Robert Maynard Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and the Great Books Enterprise.” In Reading Communities from Salons to Cyberspace, edited by DeNel Rehberg Sedo, 81–100. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230308848_5.
Adler’s start-up of the Paideia group led to hisousting from the Great Books Foundation’s board of directors in 1987,on grounds of conflict of interest.
Many intellectuals of that generation were deeply influenced by thatprogram – Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, and Joseph Epstein, just to namea few.
University of Chicago's great books program
Only at St John’s College, where Adler’s friend Scott Buchananbecame president, was there instituted what Harry Ashmore calls a‘hundred-proof Great Books curriculum’.
St. John's College had a solid great books program in large part because of Buchanan and his relationship with Adler.
in the very early 1930s, academic news;their Great Books seminar was enough of a novelty both in substanceand method that celebrities on transcontinental train trips began tostop off in Chicago to take a look. Among these were Hollywood starsLillian Gish and Orson Welles, and Eugene Meyer, publisher of theWashington Post (and father of Katherine Graham, a student enrolled inthe seminar).18 The most famous visitor of all was Gertrude Stein.
visitors of Adler & Hutchins' great books seminars
what mightbe taken as the symbolic passing of the torch from Mortimer Adler toOprah Winfrey, a number of the Penguin classics chosen by Oprah forher Book Club have carried on their covers the seal with the words,‘Recommended for Discussion by the Great Books Foundation’.
Daniel Born places Oprah and her book club into the tradition of Adler & Hutchins' The Great Books of the Western World.
reframing a crucial question: is commitmentto the Great Books the enemy of progressive education (the scholarlyconsensus that has largely followed Dewey), or in fact a foundation forit?
As some research shows, knotty life questions without clear answers can evoke a dark mood without any clear biological explanation. This can be particularly difficult for adolescents, pondering for the first time big questions about fate and death, emptiness and meaninglessness, guilt and condemnation.
Is this a possible reason why reading great books in youth is so useful?
reply to u/SupItsBuck88 at https://old.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1h0vuek/zettelkasten_vs_commonplace_book/ on Zettelkasten vs Commonplace Book
Don't tell anyone as it's a well-kept secret, but the way most digital practitioners (especially in Obsidian) arrange their "zettelkasten" is generally closer to commonplace book practice than it is to that of Niklas Luhmann's particular practice of zettelkasten. Honestly outside of Luhmann's practice (and those who follow his example more closely) really all zettelkasten into the late 1900s were commonplace books written on index cards rather than into books or notebooks. It's certainly the case that as the practices got older, commonplaces morphed from storehouses of only sententiae to more focused databases and tools for thought, particularly after the works on historical method done by Ernst Bernheim and later by Charles Seignobos & Charles Victor Langlois in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
More modern variations and versions in English can be seen in:
See also:
Generally, the more focused your needs for particular types of information and the higher need of specific outputs may drive one to adopt one form over another. At the end of the day, I would contend that the specific affordances for how each of these forms work for the vast majority of people are exactly the same. This is especially true if one is using digital methods. In practice, I find that a lot of the difference between the practices comes down to where the user wishes to put in their work: either upfront (Luhmann-artig zettelkasten) or down the road in a more laissez faire manner (commonplace book or "traditional" zettelkasten). As a result, I always recommend people experiment a bit and settle on the method(s) which is (are) more motivating and useful for their modes and styles of work. Everyone's needs, inputs, and outputs will differ, and, as a result, so will their methods.
Serializing a Book Online: Lessons From My Web 2.0 Memoir by [[Richard MacManus]] 2024-10-29
I had hoped to somewhat emulate the success of ex-Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky and his Substack serialization project, Hardcore Software (“personal stories and lessons from inside the rise and fall of the PC revolution”). Sinofsky’s project was an inspiration for mine, but I don’t think I’ve reached his level in terms of reader comments and reshares.
possibly due to author platform?
Essay Idea: Moving beyond collecting: how to begin turning your bookmarks into something useful
the Mathom-house – The Homebound Symphony by [[Alan Jacobs]]
So look for this blog to become something like Cory Doctorow’s Memex Method, a commonplace book as a public database — though I prefer to call it the Mathom-house Method. There will be more posts here, I think. But for heaven’s sake if you don’t like, or don’t agree with, or otherwise disapprove of something I quote, don’t send me an email about it.
I always thought that Alan Jacobs blogging practice was a method of commonplacing and digital publishing all rolled up into one. Nice to see him lay out some of his thinking and method here.
He even kept “indexes to indexes,” as Robert D. Richardson describes in his wonderful biography, Emerson: The Mind on Fire: Indexing was a crucial method for Emerson because it allowed him to write first and organize later and because it gave him easy access to the enormous mass of specific materials in his ever-increasing pile of notebooks… Emerson spent a good deal of time methodically copying and recopying journal material, indexing, alphabetizing indexes, and eventually making indexes of indexes. When he came to write a lecture, he would work through his indexes, making a list of possible passages. He then assembled, ordered, and reordered these into the talk or lecture.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man who encouraged his friend Thoreau to start a journal and the man who had the most success with the journal > lecture > essay > book method, kept elaborate notebooks just for indexing his other notebooks.
I’m always negotiating the relationship between micro.blog and my big blog, but I’m getting closer to a system in which micro.blog is a box of delights and the big blog is a Memex. Gonna try to stick with that model.
reply to @ayjay @annie at https://micro.blog/ayjay/48571448
@ayjay I've long presumed you were digitally commonplacing by means of your websites, so thanks for laying out some of your specific current thoughts on the process.
@Annie I've been collecting examples of bloggers who are using their personal websites as commonplaces, zettelkasten, and "thought spaces" at https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book. If you're interested, you'll also find examples and details to explore in my own digital commonplace. "Thought spaces" is an interesting entry point.
Doctorow goes through more of his process in which he's saving both his "box of delights" and the refashioning of them into longer pieces in "20 years a blogger". In his case it's (now) all done on Pluralistic and syndicated out from there, in much the same way @dave has done for years.
20 years a blogger on 2021-01-13 by [[Cory Doctorow]]
The auctorial equivalent to the artist’s sketchbook is the “commonplace book,”
"The Stoic Practice is a Dialogue With The Self" -- Ryan Holiday (~7:58)
I think this is also true for Zettelkasten. You write for yourself. Only you need to understand your notes, nobody else.
"You can see I have quite a lot notes I have to make."
This is a difference in mentality between Ryan Holiday and me (as well as Muhammed Ali Kilic)
@M.AKilic50
Our mentality (inspired by GTD and other standard productivity stuff, mostly Flow) is to avoid creating homework.
You don't HAVE to make notes on something. You select what you deem valuable and are interested in working with at the moment.
Because of the marginal gains effect I wrote about earlier, it doesn't matter if you don't make a lot of notes. Besides, you can always return later--especially with a proper bib card and potentially a custom index/ToC for a book.
A Zettelkasten is the lazy man's path to excellence.
(this is an ironic statement of mine because a Zettelkasten asks a lot of work over time. However, it doesn't have to be on a day to day basis. Plus you work only on what you want, hence it doesn't require that much discipline.)
"If you do one or two positive contributions a day, it adds up." - Ryan Holiday
Perhaps this is the essence of both Zettelkasten and Commonplace books; Marginal Gains.
Exponentional Increase over time. Upon first glance, it seems linear (1+1 = 2)... However, the formula is different because, at least in Zettelkasten, a new note means N new possible connections as this new note can virtually be connected to all other notes. In a Zettelkasten this is explicit, in a commonplace book connections are implicit.
Engaging in a Zettelkasten/Commonplace book in this way is equal to inherent spaced repetition and recall perhaps?
Especially if you allow some time of rumination... Read book, wait a few days to a few weeks before processing it. The book's contents remain in the back of your mind.
Then when processing you get engaged with the substance again and therefore interrupt the ebbinghaus curve.
Perhaps I need to argue more with the authors and the content, as Adler & van Doren also recommend.
This might be a limitation in (the way I do) Zettelkasten. Because I am not writing in the margins and not engage in "tearing up" the book, I am less inclined to argue against/with the work.
Maybe I need to do this more using bib-card. Further thought on implementation necessary...
Perhaps a different reason is that I like to get through most books quickly rather than slowly. Sometimes I do the arguing afterward, within my ZK.
I need to reflect on this at some point (in the near future) and optimize my processes.
Watching this now, I am reminded that I really want to read more. To become erudite.
Reporter John Dickerson talking about his notebook.
While he doesn't mention it, he's capturing the spirit of the commonplace book and the zettelkasten.
<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/169725470?h=778a09c06f&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>[...] I see my job as basically helping people see and to grab ahold of what's going on.
You can decide to do that the minute you sit down to start writing or you can just do it all the time. And by the time you get to writing you have a notebook full of stuff that can be used.
And it's not just about the thing you're writing about at that moment or the question you're going to ask that has to do with that week's event on Face the Nation on Sunday.
If you've been collecting all week long and wondering why a thing happens or making an observation about something and using that as a piece of color to explain the political process to somebody, then you've been doing your work before you ever sat down to do your work.
Field Notes: Reporter's Notebook from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.
Michael Sonenscher
for - capitalism - etymology - modern - book Capitalism: The Word and the Thing - Michael Sonenscher - from - Discussion of "spiritual capitalism" on Kansas Missouri Fair Shares Commons chat thread - to - youtube - New Books Network - interniew - Captialism: The word and the thing - Michael Sonenscher
Summary - Michael Sonenscher discusses the modern evolution of the word "capitalism". Adding the suffix "ism" to a word implies a compound term. - Capitalism is a complex, compound concept whose connotations from the use in 18th and 19th century France and England is quite different from today's. - How meaning evolved can give us insight into our use of it today.
to - youtube - New Books Network - interniew - Captialism: The word and the thing - Michael Sonenscher - https://hyp.is/ftWWfoxQEe-FkUuIeSoZCA/www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpNaxyPpOf0
This is the great advantage of the Card-System overthe ordinary Scheme (on a single sheet of paper), forwith the latter one has to be thinking of two things atthe same time, namely, of the Arrangement of theIdeas as well as the Collection of the Ideas.
Using a card-system over writing on a single sheet of paper or in a notebook allows one to separate the thinking work. Instead of both capturing the idea and arranging them simultaneously, one is splitting these tasks into smaller parts for simpler handling.
You s/wuld always carry a few Cards about inyour pocket, in case you should think of anything useful,for instance, during a walk. It will be very easy todistribute these Cards afterwards in their proper packets.You should keep a special place for these miscellaneousHeadings, and these you should sort at intervals.
Miles' version of fleeting notes.
He gives due honor to Frank & George7 I should like to keep it a few days to read your life. When this monument has been erected to Dr. D you should set about erecting your own in the shape of a really handsome Edition of the Origin that a gentleman could read8 EAD
Footnote 8:
The last edition of Origin published during CD’s lifetime was the 1876 reprint of Origin 6th ed., and had some corrections and additions to the text (Freeman 1977). This edition was produced in a cheaper form than previous ones, with small type and a relatively small page; a ‘gentleman’s’ edition usually had larger type and page size, with wider margins.
Ref: Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11918,” accessed on 30 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11918.xml
ᔥ[[Richard Carter]] in Mastodon at Sep 23, 2024, 08:20 AM (accessed:: 2024-09-30 01:34:36)
A business in agreement with Dul is Kibbitznest Books, Brews & Blarney on Clybourn in Sheffield Neighbors, which strives to be unplugged and WiFi free. The cafe, bar, bookstore, and venue has five typewriters provided by Kibbitznest, Inc., the nonprofit associated with the business, although only one typewriter is currently in working order and available to use by customers. Annie Kostiner founded both the nonprofit and business aspects of Kibbitznest (the for-profit cafe is now run by Paige Hoffman).
databases are not designed to be browsed.
Casey Newton makes this blanket statement. Any real evidence for this beyond his "gut"?
Many "paper machines" like Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten were almost custom made not just for searching, but for browsing through regularly much like commonplace books.
Perhaps the question is really, how is your particular database designed?
When switching, do this only at the end of a chapter, not in media res (in the middle of action).
Also summarize the last thing that happened/got explained for an easy refresher the next time you get back.
Bib-Card? Potentially Marginaelia? Feeling more like a dedicated notebook for this. Need to work out.
Vashik does this summary of a chapter on index cards... Useful to do in a Zettelkasten, or too much effort?
Vashik recommends to keep a list of books to read. I can do this on Obsidian, but I also keep a reading log like Parker Settecase recommends.
For parallel reading, read multiple different genres/topics to prevent confusion and boredom.
Due to this time/mood conundrum, you can read books that you do feel like reading.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/LettersWithImpact
Someone selling individual typed index cards with quotes for $9.99 each?!? Who knew this was a business?
example:<br />
He recommends to read in the following order, because of thematic significance, I have to determine if I'll do the same.
Books: - A Defence of Classical Education, R. W. Livingstone - Weapons of Mass Instruction, John Taylor Gatto - The Republic, Plato - The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis - Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Étienne de La Boétie - The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek - The Political Theory of the American Founding, Thomas G. West
Useful advice. I will not integrate it into notebooks most likely though, I'll use the principles to add certain sections to my slip-box. Doing this in a Zettelkasten manner allows me to: A) Bypass page size limitations, I do not have to think about how many pages to leave free as I can simply add more index cards to the sequence B) Have both the treasury and manuscript style at the same time... C) Reference everything whenever I need it for my overall research for my Grand Theory of Optimal Education, and other writing/research projects. For the treasury I can simply thumb through "Wise Saying" collection cards without any particular organization/order (although I might add one, I have to think about this)... And for the manuscript I can just reference the unique IDs of those sayings and then write about them. This is the ideal scenario for me.
Doing commonplace books using index cards (Zettelkasten) also bypasses a page limit, no need to think about amount of pages to leave free.
Of course if you write the quotes/sayings in your Zettelkasten you can have both the treasury & manuscript style commonplace book at the same time. For treasury you just look through the sayings, but for manuscripting, you reference the notes and then write about it. Ideal situation.
Useful tip to collect wise sayings; mark them in the book and write "Proverb" next to them, or a symbol...
Can also then write the page number on your bib card, or perhaps a dedicated index card to proverbs per book.
Those different types of commonplace books can be integrated into a notebox as well instead of a notebook... Give them all a unique ID and integrate them into a ZK.
Especially the wise sayings "Pocket Proverbs" one this would be cool.
Aspects of commonplace books by Parker Settecase: - Scope: General or topic-bound; specific? - Purpose: Treasury or Manuscript
A treasury is used whenever you like, simply a collection. A manuscript you add your own context, thoughts, observations, etc.
According to Vashik Armenikus, reading and book collecting becomes an obsession/addiction when you do it indiscriminately, without thought, without taking into account the bigger picture.
Fascinating and troublesome is the idea that older books are being edited to be less "offensive" in modern times. This alters the meaning of the past. Do not do this.
Keep it original.
This person argues that one should cultivate a personal library, the tangibleness of the physical, to safeguard knowledge and prevent information control from falling to a single institution or person, so that they may never control the past.
I think he should go deeper into his argument, I do not fully understand what he means.
he two groups making most use of librarieswere “students and housewives” (women users outnumbered men by twoto one), but neither group was well served; and among employed men,6 percent of whites borrowed books, but only 0.1 percent of Black min-ers.18 These were dreadful numbers.
reading as a leading indicator of cultural shift to help provide power to women and non-whites.
Was the Great Books idea being pressed towards "men" a means of pushing back against this in some sense?
https://web.archive.org/web/20240725080148/https://fossacademic.tech/2024/02/11/Move-Slowy-Preview.html [[Move Slowly and Build Bridges by Robert Gehl]] is a forthcoming book on 'Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Ethical Social Media'. This post gives summaries per chapter of the draft. Ch1 focuses on Xodus after Musk only. Odd, there are many examples where costs of leaving socmed platforms played a role, which may well be more informative than just n=1. Ch 2 on AP as protocol Ch 3 CoC as a social layer on networked tech (no regard here it seems for the fact that human networks exist outside of tech and span multiple tech platforms simultaneously, and themselves have social norms that guid behaviour regardless whether codified in CoC or expressed in federation choices) Ch 4 on blocking and defederation as a needed safety tool. Socially I think the default might need to be the other way around, federating is the choice, defed the default, as it is how we do it socially irl. We are not unwelcoming to newcomers in a group but we are wary. Ch 5. Who pays for the fediverse infra. Short answer is we all do/many of us do. I pay my own instance, and also contribute hours to the governance of the largest Dutch instance. Good point about people forgetting there are other bizz models for digital media than what centralised adtech kraken do. Ch 6. on eco impact of socmed, and need of awareness what running this stuff costs ecologically. Seems to then pivot to how degrowth and solarpunk people using fediverse tech to interact, which is not the same thing. (It says mitigate, but compared to what, X? ) Ch 7. Threads , or the corp reaction to a growing fediverse. Conclusion, this is where the ethics will be discussed finally.
Forthcoming w Oxford Univ Press. Not sure this is for me, reads like a snapshot with a limited time window in which it might be informative. Perhaps of interest for [[Stichting ActivityClub Bestuur Hoofdnote]].
Daily links from Cory Doctorow by [[Cory Doctorow]] 2024-02-19
https://www.jonmsterling.com/index.xml
ᔥRichard in A forest of evergreen notes at 2024-06-02<br /> (accessed:: 2024-06-07 11:14:53)
There is for himno royal road to order. Knowledge andright will a r e indispensable. This doesnot mean that the world will heed, andeducate its feelings and thoughts forthe sake of self-preservation. But quiteproperly, Mr. Wells should not care.He has diagnosed the ailment and pre-scribed the sensible dose. The patientis always a t liberty to pass out in self-conceit or with the aid of quacks.PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORGELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED
relationship to Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and modern politics?
relationship to the Great Books idea in 1942-1952 and beyond?
repeating history...
Writebook<br /> Instantly publish your own books on the web for free, no publisher required.
ᔥ[[Evan Hildreth]] in Downloaded 37Signals’ Writebook at 2024-07-04 (accessed:: 2024-07-04 08:29 AM)
Downloaded 37Signals’ Writebook because free. I might try to run it locally as a Scrivener replacement, but I’m bristling at the thought of running a full Rails app on the server for what should be static files.
https://melinbapur.cymru/
Kurutz, Steven. “Now You Can Read the Classics With A.I.-Powered Expert Guides.” The New York Times, June 13, 2024, sec. Style. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/style/now-you-can-read-the-classics-with-ai-powered-expert-guides.html.
There are 3 types of Reading Projects: 1. Doing a research project. Having a well-defined research question and answering it through means of reading. 2. Reading a set of books or a genre in itself or even author; finding out the types or history of it... Mostly applicable to fiction. 3. Becoming more engaged with a specific author or thinker; Reading as much as possible about a specific author (primary, secondary)
There is a value in reading a lot.. But it's not in the number, it is more in the concept of Exploration vs. Specialization. Some form of exploration is highly useful.
Furthermore, web annotation also affords curation, creating a static but unstable record of this emergent and dynamic performance, accenting via hypertext particular ideas and moments from a malleable document.
Comment by chrisaldrich: One of the pieces missing from Hypothes.is is the curateable notebook which more easily allows one to create new content from one's annotations.
Search is certain there, but being able to move the pieces about and re-synthesize them into new emergent pieces is the second necessary step.
Platforms like Hypothes.is, which afford social and collaborative web annotation, demonstrate the ease with which authors and their audience can create a sociotechnical milieu to share thinking in progress, voice wonder, and rehearse informal dispositions in service of publication.
Comment by chrisaldrich: I personally identify with this since I'm porting my annotations and thoughts to a notebook as part of a process for active thinking, revision, writing, and eventual publication.
I like the Penguins just fine, and have to confess to enjoying the look of their matte-blank ranks on a shelf when stood all together. I wish they were still priced at the same as a pack of cigarettes, but I guess Allen Lane couldn't have predicted the sorry state of our world. As far as alternatives go, the Oxford World's Classics imprint offers comparable breadth and (often) superior critical material. They're also willing to print interesting variants; one example of this may be found in their offering of both the widely-known 1831 single-volume edition and the original 1818 edition, which contains significant differences. Two other imprints for which to watch out: The Norton Critical Editions are distinctive in all their colourful, oversized splendour, but they offer some of the best value for money if you're seeking an edition of a classic work that also includes a host of useful supplemental documents, critical writings, timelines, and other things that may be of use to those seeking a wider context. This can admittedly get a bit ridiculous in its scope (though I wouldn't have it any other way; the Norton edition of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darknessis around 500 pages long, for instance, with maybe a fifth of that being accounted for by the novella itself. Similarly to the above, the Broadview editions (put out by a Canadian company of the same name) tend to have extremely in-depth supplementary materials. They're also known for offering just as serious and useful editions of comparatively obscure works as they are for well-known classics.
Publishers that are good in general, for older material: * Penguin Classics * Oxford World Classics * Norton Critical Editions * Broadview Editions
Awesome! I will look into Oxford and the New York Review of Books lines. I have a couple Norton Critical books from school, (one of which is Heart of Darkness, as a matter of fact) and they are crazy good if you are looking for a wide slice of criticism and analysis (thus the critical edition moniker, I guess). For me though, it's really too much for a book you just want to read. I like informative introductions and frequent notes on the personal or literary context (these were great for Monte Cristo), but any more than that begins to weigh things down.
Some publishers can be too much for certain works (depending on the goal for reading)
What enabled these high aspirations in the 1940s?
also, what impact did these programs in the late 40s and early 50s have on subsequent events in the 60s and 70s as these cohorts continued to age?
In Chicago, one catalyst for that growth—as a kind of public sym-bol and tacit approval from the business community—was “the FatMan’s Class,” which had begun meeting in 1942–1943 at Chicago’sUniversity Club. The moniker derived, according to some, from thegroup’s “affluence rather than the girth of its members.” Membersof this class included Chicago notables such as Harold and CharlesSwift, Marshall Field, Jr., Walter Paepcke, Hermon Dunlap Smith,William Benton, Hughston McBain (president of Marshall Field andCompany), and Laird Bell. This group caught the “fancy” of thepopulace, causing the University of Chicago’s University College topartner with the Chicago Public Library in 1944 to set up great bookscourses around the city.43
An anonymous review in The Atlantic touched on the samesnobbish fear addressed by Barzun:Mr. Adler’s notion that “almost all of the great books in every fieldare within the grasp of all normally intelligent men” seems to usto need a deal of sifting. We do not know what he means by “nor-mally intelligent,” but if he means the average run of intelligencein our population, or in the student body of our schools and col-leges, we believe he is deplorably wrong. So also . . . the book’s sub-title, “The Art of Getting a Liberal Education,” savors strongly ofquackery. 39
Compare this with the ideas of intelligence and eugenics of the time as well as that of class in Isenberg's White Trash.
Presumably this anonymous author would have been seeing things from a more dominant eugenics viewpoint at this time period of 1940.
See also: The Eugenics War (American Experience) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics-crusade/
Dr. Harry McNeill’s June 1940 assessment in Interracial Review
Interesting commentary here on conversion of African-Americans to Catholicism as well as self-help nature of reading for improvement. Analogizes African-Americans without Catholicism to Mortimer J. Adler as a Jew.
Possible tone of colonialism to assimilate African-Americans into Western Culture here? Though still somehow some space for movement and growth.
Adler first came into contact with the great books idea whenhe took John Erskine’s General Honors course at Columbia Universityin 1920.
It is Woodberry who bringsus to Columbia University and John Erskine.27
Those larger goals highlighted edu-cation for good citizenship; to them great books were more of anantidote than a contributor to that bland, conformist mass culturefeared by mid-century critics (left and liberal and conservative) anddescribed by cultural historians.
How, if at all, did the great books idea contribute to the idea of Manufacturing Consent for the 20th century?
To understand elitism in relation to the great books idea, one mustconsider the meaning and existence of cultural hierarchies in litera-ture.
cultural democratization as a sometimes contentious process.
some of the cultural democratization at that time presumed free time as well as conscious choice to make the effort... what about those who have patience for neither?
what about the economic choices to participate or not?
(Habermas called books “the bourgeois means of educationpar excellence”).19
fn: Habermas, Structural, 168.
Adler’s communityof discourse is a crucial part of this story about the great books idea
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Barzun wrote a review of of the Great Books when they came out in 1952.
Barzun, Jacques. “The Great Books.” The Atlantic, December 1952. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1952/12/the-great-books/642341/.
See notes at: https://hypothes.is/a/8o-z3DHLEe6_PMtDOvwCmg
still building the Culture Wars politicalteleology.
did the tension inherent in the cultural evolution of the great books idea versus vocational and other forms of education set up the culture wars of the late 1900s/early 2000s?
But consider a new narrative. Imagine instead that books offer us a way to enter into a prolonged conversation across generations. We might even call this the Great Conversation. Imagine instead that authors have generally meant well, and so when they produced difficult works it is because the subject matter is a difficult one. Imagine instead that the past is a kind of mirror for the present, and that history is a guide to the future. New associations are encouraged by this narrative. New works are continuous with old works; both new and old works have something to teach us; difficult works might be more insightful because they engage with the complexity of the world.
Interesting. Using Mortimer J. Adler's concept of Syntopical Reading to produce motivation, in a good way, for diving into books.
The foregoing examples illustrate various forms topics take according to thedifferent kinds of subjects they propose for discussion. Some deal with the natureof a thing or its definition, some with its qualities or attributes, some with itscauses, and some with its kinds; some deal with distinctions or differences, andsome with comparisons or contrasts; some propose a general theory for considera-tion, some present a problem, and some state an Issue. Some— such as the lastthree above —are difficult to characterize by any formula.
The complexity of the topic is determined by the content of the discussion the topic is about.
It is easier to say what a topic is not, than what it is or should be. If it mustalways be a less determinate expression than a sentence, and if it must usually be amore complex expression than a single word or pair of words (which are theverbal expression of terms, such as the great ideas), it would seem to follow thatthe proper expression of a topic is a phrase— often, perhaps, a fairly elaboratephrase involving a number of terms and signifying a number of possible relationsbetween them. This general description of the grammatical form of a topic docsnot, however, convey an adequate notion of the extraordinary variety of possi-ble phrasings.
To me, it seems that Adler et al., are arguing that a topic should be stated as a phrase with varying degrees of complexity, determined by ?
For example, “The ideal of the educated man’"(Education la) is a simple topic; “The right to property: the ownership of themeans of production” (Labor 7b) is a complex topic; and “The use and criticismof the intellectual tradition: the sifting of truth from erroi; the reaction againstthe authority of the past” (Progress 6c) is a more complex topic.
Some examples of topics that are formulated and used in the original syntopicon.
The topics are the basic units of the Syntopicon. They perform a doublefunction. The Outline of Topics in each chapter is the analysis of a great idea,setting forth its various meanings, its themes and problems; and the individualtopics serve as the immediate headings under w^hich are assembled the referencesto the discussion of each particular subject in the great books. The topics are themajor subdivisions of the discussion in the sphere of each of the great ideas, as theideas are the main divisions of the whole discussion in the great books. As eachidea represents a general field of discourse— a domain of learning and inquiry—covering a variety of related themes and problems, so, under each idea, the varioustopics represent the themes and problems which are the particular subjects ofdiscussion in that field.
It seems as though an idea is very broad and a "sub-topic" is more granular, though also determined based on the overall content and related to the primary idea.
The two mfasi^rfs of intrinsic greatness — scope and significance
It seems that most of the ideas were chosen based on scope and significance.
The reason which operated against such multiplication of chapters was(as already stated) the desire to avoid excessive duplication among topics andreferences.
Adler et al. operated from a state of efficiency in the sense that they did not want the book to become too long (even though, or maybe because of, the fact that the end result became already two volumes each more than a thousand pages)
Both the great books and the great ideas were chosen to represent the unity andcontinuity of the tradition of western thought. The great l^ks are those whichdeal imaginatively or intellectually with the ideas which arc fundamental through-out this whole tradition. Any important work -ancient, mediaeval, or modern-will necessarily be concerned with these ideas in some uay. What distinguishes thegreat books is the originality, the profundity, and the scope of their treatment ofthese ideas. Other books, important in some special field of learning, may havethese qualities with respect to one idea or even to several related ideas, but thegreat books possess them for a considerable range of ideas, covering a variety ofsubject matters or disciplines; and among the great books the greatest arc thosewith the greatest range of imaginative or intellectual content.
Adler explains the distinctive factor determining which authors and works were included in the list of the Great Books of the Western World.
Basically, they were works that were influential, written excellently, and had applicability to a considerable amount of ideas processed by the whole.
The great majority of terms eliminated were those which did not appear to ,receive extensive or elaborate treatment in the great books. They were terms thatdid not seem to have a lively career —a continuous and complex developmentthroughout the three-thousand-year tradition of the great books.The editors usedthe actual content of the great books as the test whereby to separate a small set oftruly great ideas from a much larger number of important concepts or notions.The reader can apply this test himself by comparing the 1800 concepts listed inthe Inventory of Terms, with the 102 ideas that are treated as the principalterms in the Syntopicon.
The ideas were chosen on the basis of coverage within the Great Works.
THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OFSYNTOPICAL CONSTRUCTION
One point for having many unread books is to show the extent of ignorance and develop intellectual humility.
As Confucius already said: "True knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
Umberto Eco recommends to have as much unread books in your personal library as your financial means allow.
For an intellectual, the library is not there to simply collect books, but rather to serve as a tool for research.
Tsundoku = Japanese for the art of buying more books than you can read.
The “great books idea” becomes, then, a singular theoretical tool fordealing with change over time.
The phrase “great books idea” arose to capture the evident diversityin thinking about the topic—the who, what, where, when, and howassociated with the notion of a great book and great books. The word“idea” allows for the abstraction from material circumstances: lists,institutions, book production, particular debates, people, et cetera.
In his renowned essay,“Battle of the Books” (1698), Jonathan Swift celebrated these texts asmore excellent than moderns realized—and he bequeathed a phraseto describe the honey of the ancients that Matthew Arnold wouldlater make infamous: “sweetness and light.”
note the "honey of the ancients" description here with a tangential nod to the commonplace tradition
see: <br /> - https://hypothes.is/a/mCsl9voQEeuP3t8jNOyAvw<br /> - https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22jonathan+swift%22+tag%3A%22commonplace+books%22
Lacy, Tim. The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. https://amzn.to/3R2rCox.
Alan Clark Agreed...also; learning = change in behaviour, is another widely held belief.
Reply to John Whitfield: I think that one is mostly a semantic issue. In some definitions of learning, learning does equate to a change in behavior. In parenting for example, how is learning measured? If the behavior is changed. Therefore, for parenting, learning is a change in behavior.
I'd argue for many books the same is true, what is the use of a book if the knowledge is only in your head. Application, thus changing one's behavior, is essential for the proper use. Obviously this is not for everything the case, but I am highlighting a few scenarios where it would be accurate to say that learning is a change in behavior.
Nothing is ever black and white, it is quite simplistic to say such things, often there is a lot of nuance going on.
Link for Hypothes.is context: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992/?commentUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7197621782743252992,7198233333577699328)&dashCommentUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7198233333577699328,urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992)
"The great books are the inexhaustible books. The books that can sustain a lifetime of reading."
"The great books are the books that never have to be written again. They are so good no-one can try to write them again."
"The great books are the books that everyone wants to have read but no-one wants to read."
What did not stand out to me before while reading the book, but does now when watching this, is the fact that the greatest books are subjective to each individual... Meaning my list might not be the same for others.
Very fascinating thought experiment. Out of the 140+ books I have read so far only a few, less than a handful, would fit the list of "growth" books; the greatest, that I would take to the deserted island for 10 years...
No other book, to my mind, that I have read so far would cut it to my list.
Polt, Richard. The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century. 1st ed. Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2015.
annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:65fe580cf845ed035c4e57ad02a987cf
39:00 Vanevar Bush misses out on a whole swath of history regarding commonplace books and indexing. In As We May Think he presents these older methods to the computer. "Why not imitate?" Aldrich says, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel (or thinking you are doing so).
Counterclaim that the stats were represented wrong. Still Vgl [[Een boek verkoopt gemiddeld nog 44 papieren exemplaren 20220215170655]] stands, Flemish gov stats: 44 copies is the average.
Very sobering figures on the publishing industry. Vgl [[Een boek verkoopt gemiddeld nog 44 papieren exemplaren 20220215170655]] and [[Boeken schrijven is flauwekul 20210930172532]]
https://www.instagram.com/onetypedquote/
An Instagram account that aggregates photos of typed quotes, usually including a part of the typewriter it was written on. It amounts to a group manufactured commonplace book.
Found via https://onetypedpage.com/otq/
Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”
Good Quote.
I began reading it quickly, almost skimming
Superficial Reading.
For better reading tactics, refer to Mortimer's How To Read A Book
https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Obsidian-Beginner-Advance-Techniques-ebook/dp/B0BZ11C7KY
What is their specific definition of a digital zettelkasten? (Is it more Luhmann-artig or commonplace book?)
Inthe case of good books, the point is notto see how many of them you can getthrough, but rather how many can getthrough you—how many you can makeyour own
This is not only a nice quote by itself, but seems to be saying something deeper to me about productivity.
There's a difference in productivity for it's own sake, but being both productive in the send of time spent efficiently and productive in the sense of producing something of greater value with your time than you might have spent doing something else which was less valuable, but which might still have been time well spent.
A book is morelike the score of a piece of music thanit is like a painting.
HOW TO IMPROVE TO MOTHER TONGUE LEARNING Begin literacy teaching in mother tongueA curriculum, rooted in the child’s known language, cultureand environment, with appropriate and locally-developedreading and curriculum materials, is crucial for earlylearning success. Using the home language in the early stagesof schooling in multilingual contexts supports child-centricpolicies. It starts with what is familiar and builds in newknowledge. It creates a smooth transition between home andschool; it stimulates interest and ensures greaterparticipation and engagement. This prepares children for theacquisition of literacy and encourages fluency andconfidence in both the mother tongue and, later, in otherlanguages, where this is necessary. Ensure availability of mother-tongue materialsChildren need to be engaged in and excited about readingand learning and this can only be done if the materials areones which they will understand and enjoy. In mostdeveloping countries, the only reading material children seeare school textbooks, which are often in very short supply.Other materials to support learning are hardly everavailable. Without access to good materials, children struggleto become literate and learn. In most low- and middle-income countries, the majority of primary schools have nolibrary, and books are luxuries which families cannot afford.For children from minority language communities, thesituation is even more dismal. Textbooks are rarely availablein local languages. Provide early childhood education in mother tongueLiteracy development starts early in life, and the homeenvironment is an important factor in children’s learningachievement. It helps build the knowledge and skills childrenneed for learning to read. Where parents and the communityare supporting literacy development, results show a markedimprovement. The earlier children are exposed to stories thebetter their reading is: reading for only 15 minutes a day canexpose children to one million written words in a year,thereby helping them to develop a rich vocabulary. Childrenwith access to materials at home are more likely to developfluency in reading
The neglect of the book is however not altogether advanta- 78geous.
There is a range of reading lengths and levels of argumentation which can be found in these various ranges.
Some will complain about the death of books or the rise of articles or the rise of social media and the attention economy. Where is balance to be found.
Kaiser speaks to these issues in ¶75-79. One must wonder what Kaiser would have thought about the bite-sized nature of social media and it's distracting nature?
ext in the home: Learners need to be given age-appropriate texts to take home to optimise exposureto text out of school and enhance the possibilities for reading with caregivers, siblings and neighbours
Another mention of text needed in home
Books in the home: There are two sites of acquisition for learning to read: the school and the home.Most learners are exposed to very little text in the home and few opportunities to engage with books,especially story books, outside of school hours. The responsibility for developing reading thus falls whollyto the teacher. Learners require more exposure to text and more opportunities to practice reading thanwhat is made available during school hours.
WE NEED BOOKS that can be shared more easily - that's me!
https://llyfrau.cymru/en/cyfresi-arbennig/dysgu-cymraeg/amdani-dysgwyr/
I read many such books as I set about trying to become a better, more effective manager.Most, I found, trafficked in a kind of simplicity that seemed harmful in that it offered falsereassurance. These books were stocked with catchy phrases like “Dare to fail!” or “Followpeople and people will follow you!” or “Focus, focus, focus!” (This last one was a particularfavorite piece of nonadvice. When people hear it, they nod their heads in agreement as if agreat truth has been presented, not realizing that they’ve been diverted from addressing thefar harder problem: deciding what it is that they should be focusing on. There is nothing inthis advice that gives you any idea how to figure out where the focus should be, or how toapply your energy to it. It ends up being advice that doesn’t mean anything.) These sloganswere offered as conclusions—as wisdom—and they may have been, I suppose. But none ofthem gave me any clue as to what to do or what I should focus on.
Curious that he might write this in a business book on creativity which is highly likely to fall trap to the same simple advice or catchy phrases.
Does he ultimately give his own clear cut advice that means something?
I'm reminded here of Dan Allosso's mention of the David Allen quote from Getting Things Done: "It is better to be wrong than to be vague."<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/yOFrNubcEe6AsafBDjDzBw
Are business books too often vague when it would be better for them to be wrong instead?
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
How to start a commonplace book .t3_1bfu16h._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; }
Colleen Kennedy has a nice primer: https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_
It may also help to have an indexing method so you can find things later. John Locke's method is one of the oldest and most compact, though if you plan on doing this for a while, having a separate book for your index can be helpful. You can also create your index using index cards the way that Ross Ashby did; see: https://ashby.info/index.html
For John Locke's method try: - https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock - https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/
If you're into history, development, and examples of how people did this in the past, Earl Haven's has an excellent short book:<br /> Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/books/99718/earle-havens/commonplace-books-a-history-of-manuscripts-and-printed-books-from-antiquity-to-the-twentieth
Theindexer will want a feel, before they begin, for the concepts that willneed to be flagged, or taxonomized with subheadings. They mightskim the book – reading it in full but at a canter – before tackling itproperly with the software open. Or they may spend a while, as apreliminary, with the book’s introduction, paying attention to itschapter outline – if it has one – to gain a sense of what to look outfor. Often, having reached the end of the book, the indexer will returnto the first few chapters, going over them again now that they havegained a conceptual mapping of the work as a whole.
It's no wonder that Mortimer J. Adler was able to write such a deep analysis of reading in How to Read a Book after having spent so much time indexing the ideas behind The Great Books of the Western World.
Indexing requires a solid inspectional read at minimum, but will often go deeper into contexts which require at least some analytical reading. To produce the Syntopicon, one must go even further into analytical reading to provide the proper indexing of ideas so that they may be sub-categorized and used for deeper analysis for things such as comparison and contrast of those ideas.
here in germany, cops are planning to ban my book, in which i propose an answer to the illegal question "who are my friends?" this question is illegal, because efficient human relations are the foundation of any successful organization, but the empire hates competition, and the empire hates tribalism, tribe wars, small states, minarchy, secession, decentralization, free markets, ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20240202060134/https://andymatuschak.org/books/
Books and lectures are transmissionism (I'd say for historical reasons mostly). Engagement (different forms) is needed, but what form of medium would drive such engagement and do it flexibly is the hard question. (Seeing lecture as warm-up to engagement is a rationalisation afterwards, textbooks already do more but lack emotional and social scaffolding.) This is the research question behind his [[Timeful Texts 20201124070427]]. There's also a connection to my [[Boeken schrijven is flauwekul 20210930172532]] because the distrust in author's motives is that they don't even aim for transmissionism. Just the pretension of it.
Edit #2024/02/28 : Saw [[Chris Aldrich]] mention elsewhere that lectures started out as oral comments on a source text, sharing interpretation and sensemaking as it were. The word deriving from L lectio, reading.
My first spread doing this, I am so excited :D
quote from u/Panna1207 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18uqjwk/my_first_spread_doing_this_i_am_so_excited_d/
https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=spread&restrict_sr=1
First time I've seen a photo of a commonplace book referred to a "spread" which is more commonly seen in Bullet Journal contexts.
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Democratic-Culture-Mortimer-Intellectual/dp/0230337465
The Dream of a Democratic Culture: Mortimer J. Adler and the Great Books Idea (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History) by Tim Lacy
The box in the archives held two further address books belonging toMurray, and the following summer, in a box in the Bodleian Library, I foundanother three address books belonging to the Editor who had preceded him,Frederick Furnivall. As I worked my way through them, it became clear thatthere were thousands of contributors. Some three thousand, to be exact.
Sarah Ogilvie found a total of three address books from Dr. Murray as well as three address books from Frederick Furnivall which contained details about the three thousand or so contributors to the OED.
He had written the names and addresses of not just hundreds butthousands of people who had volunteered to contribute to the Dictionary.Finding Dr Murray’s address book
James Murray kept an address book with the names, addresses, and notations about the thousands of people who had volunteered contributions for the Oxford English Dictionary. Also included were the lists of material they read, the level of their contributions in number of slips and dates sent, as well as various personal details including relationships, marriages, and deaths.
With your Kokuyo Binder- do you know of a way to bind relatively large numbers of pages together? I want to use something like this as my commonplace book and archive as I go, but once I get enough archived on a given subject, I'd like to bind it as a sort of compendium. Does that seem possible with these or are they not good for larger numbers of pages?
reply to u/modspyder at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18fbwqx/comment/ko8bksm/
The small plastic binder I use comfortably holds 50 pages, but has room for maybe 25 more (though not 50). You could use several of them for binding together groups of pages like that. Searching around might reveal larger ring binders here if you want larger books.
For larger quantities:
You can use book rings (sold in various sizes) or even binder clips to hold these sheets together in batches, but with the ability to remove them or add sheets later.
File folders might be a useful option too for holding things together in categories.
With some inexpensive book binder's glue and cardboard you could bind together much larger numbers of sheets into custom books for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nivNPCoAHcM is a good basic primer, but you could also do more complicated bindings and covers or have pages bound at FedEx/Kinkos or other higher end professional binders depending on your need and ultimate budget. For this the sky may be the limit, though anything over 1000 pages may be getting awfully bulky.
Greek plays are not just about entertainment; they are invitations to the audience to discuss political events.
Greek plays are either tragedies or comedies. There is a much deeper meaning to them than just entertaining the public. Keeping this in mind when reading the stories gives them a much deeper meaning.(https://www.worldhistory.org/Greek_Theatre/) To know the full extent of what they were really meant for is important to the readers. For this specific play, the meaning behind the story is that the men in charge are operating from an excessively limited perspective as they ignore their partners' informed advice. This is a huge political controversy to this day. Women are very overlooked in society especially considering how far back this is dated. Back when this play was written women were given tasks like cooking and cleaning and had little to no rights so this was a good political example of how they were treated and overlooked.
https://lionsberg.wiki/lionsberg_wiki_books/lionsberg_wiki_books
Jordan Nicholas Sukut's Lionsberg Wiki has approximately 1.3M words which could be turned into a NeoBook. He calls it a "wiki book".
https://lionsberg.wiki/
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.
Without seeming to realize the split between the two ideas, Cahall seems to have organically discovered the basic difference between a topically oriented commonplace book method (on index cards) and a Luhmann-artig method of numbering cards as folgezettel.
He recommends picking one or the other, or potentially doing both and not worrying.
yeah. printing books is my "prepping" for the post-apocalypse world: no electricity, no computers, no internet, no DVD players, ...
on the other side, their aggressive push for digitalization of everything is their way of prepping for "the great memory hole". because the blackout is just a matter of time, and then "oops!" all data is gone, the collective memory is reset to zero, no proof of anything, no traces, no history ...
This is why choosing an external system that forces us todeliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with ourlack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smartmove.
Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.
What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding
Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?
link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA
Changing Images of Man (1982)
Books
Syntopical Construction by [[Dan Allosso]]
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?
very carefully assem-bled with the approval of outstandingauthorities in each subject, carefully col-lated and edited, and critically presented.It would be not a miscellany but a con-centration, a clarification and a synthesis.
Compare this with Hutchins and Adler's solution undertaken just a few years following this beginning in the early 1940s and finally published in 1952: The Great Books of the Western World.
These books speak toward the idea of living well and understanding mankind, but don't have the same deeply edited and critical synthesis viewpoint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGGQNqBaFDA<br /> Homekeeping Schedule by FindingKellyAnn<br /> posted Jul 25, 2013
Example of a user's Sidetracked Home Executives card index.
Includes a section of notes she took on a book at one time. She used it for a while and reported that it was successful, but she no longer uses it and has a binder method instead.
Getting over the fear of perfection .t3_188j2xt._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I have so many half-filled notebooks or ones that I abandoned because I disliked my penmanship or because I “ruined” pages. I am the type of person who will tear out a page if I make a mistake or if it looks bad.I really want to start a commonplace book but I feel like I must get over this fear of “messing up” in a notebook. Anyone else struggle with this?
reply to u/FusRoDaahh at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/188j2xt/getting_over_the_fear_of_perfection/
I had this problem too, but eventually switched to keeping my commonplace entirely on index cards, which also allows me to move them around and re-arrange them as necessary or when useful. (It also fixed some of my indexing problems.)
The side benefit is that if I botch a single card, no sweat, just pull out a new one and start over! If you like the higher end stationery scene afforded in notebooks, then take a look at Clairfontaine's bristol cards from Exacompta which are lush and come in a variety of sizes, colors, and rulings. (They're roughly equivalent to the cost per square meter of paper you'll find in finer notebooks like Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Moleskine, etc., though some of the less expensive index cards still do well with many writing instruments.) Most of their card sizes are just about perfect for capturing the sorts of entries that one might wish to commonplace.
Once you've been at it a while, if you want to keep up with the luxe route that some notebook practices allow, then find yourself a classy looking box to store them all in to make your neighbors jealous. My card indexes bring me more joy than any notebook ever did.
When penmanship becomes a problem, then you can fix it by printing your cards, or (even better in my opinion), typing them on your vintage Smith-Corona Clipper.
And of course the first thing one could type out on their first card and file it at the front where you can see it every day:
"Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good).<br /> — Montesquieu, in Pensées, 1726
Best Organization/Index System? .t3_18aggj9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/whiteo3 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18aggj9/best_organizationindex_system/
One of the most common methods may be using John Locke's indexing system. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685/ (And, yes, it's THAT John Locke...)
You could have a single notebook you use as your index which indexes the rest. Not sure how you number pages (or not), but you could keep a running page number from one notebook to the next to make differentiating notebooks a bit easier.
W. Ross Ashby was known to keep running page numbers across notebooks like this, however, instead of a notebook-based index, he actually used index cards to index them (the way libraries used to index books by subject, but instead of indexing books, he was obviously indexing quotes, ideas, and notes). So you could use a card with your index word on it with page numbers (and potentially brief notes). Then just file the category headings alphabetically to find them later. His collection has been digitized, so you can view it online to see what he was doing: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html
If you want to do hybrid paper/digital you could look at https://www.indxd.ink/, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.
I've used Obsidian in combination with Hypothes.is and documented the way I created a subject index out of it: https://boffosocko.com/2022/05/20/creating-a-commonplace-book-or-zettelkasten-index-from-hypothes-is-tags/
I've also used WordPress as a commonplace of sorts and documented what I did to make an index for that: https://boffosocko.com/2021/09/04/an-index-for-my-digital-commonplace-book/
Searching the entire sub may also unearth other options to get your creative indexing juices flowing: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=index&restrict_sr=1
Good luck!
Chapter 39 of Zoonomia, “On Generation,” presents Erasmus’ ideas on competition, extinction, and how “different fibrils or molecules are detached from…the parent…to form” the child. The Temple of Nature goes even farther, declaring “all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality” in ancient oceans.
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).
The Syntopicon Vault by Dan Allosso
Cut/Copy/Paste explores the relations between fragments, history, books, and media. It does so by scouting out fringe maker cultures of the seventeenth century, where archives were cut up, “hacked,” and reassembled into new media machines: the Concordance Room at Little Gidding in the 1630s and 1640s, where Mary Collett Ferrar and her family sliced apart printed Bibles and pasted the pieces back together into elaborate collages known as “Harmonies”; the domestic printing atelier of Edward Benlowes, a gentleman poet and Royalist who rode out the Civil Wars by assembling boutique books of poetry; and the nomadic collections of John Bagford, a shoemaker-turned-bookseller who foraged fragments of old manuscripts and title pages from used bookshops to assemble a material history of the book. Working across a century of upheaval, when England was reconsidering its religion and governance, each of these individuals saved the frail, fragile, frangible bits of the past and made from them new constellations of meaning. These fragmented assemblages resist familiar bibliographic and literary categories, slipping between the cracks of disciplines; later institutions like the British Library did not know how to collate or catalogue them, shuffling them between departments of print and manuscript. Yet, brought back together in this hybrid history, their scattered remains witness an emergent early modern poetics of care and curation, grounded in communities of practice. Stitching together new work in book history and media archaeology via digital methods and feminist historiography, Cut/Copy/Paste traces the lives and afterlives of these communities, from their origins in early modern print cultures to the circulation of their work as digital fragments today. In doing so, this project rediscovers the odd book histories of the seventeenth century as a media history with an ethics of material making—one that has much to teach us today.
https://thebookring.neocities.org/
via https://mastodon.social/@TheCozyCat@bookstodon.com/111395422092776577
GRMacGirl · 3 days agoSame. I journal them in a Commonplace Book. If I feel the need to keep a note IN the book for some reason I write it on a separate piece of paper and tuck it between the pages. Exception: cooking/recipe books where I need to have the information right there any time I’m cooking the food.
Interesting use of the verb "journal" to indicate placing something into a commonplace book.