1,396 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2024
    1. "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.

    2. "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.)

    3. "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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    3. Watching this now, I am reminded that I really want to read more. To become erudite.

    1. 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.

      [...] 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.

      <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>

      Field Notes: Reporter's Notebook from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.

    1. 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

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

  2. Sep 2024
    1. 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)

    1. 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).
    1. 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?

  3. Aug 2024
    1. 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?

    2. 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.

    3. For parallel reading, read multiple different genres/topics to prevent confusion and boredom.

    4. Due to this time/mood conundrum, you can read books that you do feel like reading.

    1. 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

    1. 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.
    2. Doing commonplace books using index cards (Zettelkasten) also bypasses a page limit, no need to think about amount of pages to leave free.

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    1. 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?

  4. Jul 2024
    1. 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]].

    1. 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...

    1. https://once.com/writebook

      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.

  5. Jun 2024
    1. 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)

    2. 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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

    1. 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

    2. 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)

    1. 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?

    2. 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
    3. 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/

    4. 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.

    5. Adler first came into contact with the great books idea whenhe took John Erskine’s General Honors course at Columbia Universityin 1920.
    6. It is Woodberry who bringsus to Columbia University and John Erskine.27
    7. 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?

    8. To understand elitism in relation to the great books idea, one mustconsider the meaning and existence of cultural hierarchies in litera-ture.
    9. 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?

    10. (Habermas called books “the bourgeois means of educationpar excellence”).19

      fn: Habermas, Structural, 168.

    11. Adler’s communityof discourse is a crucial part of this story about the great books idea
    12. 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

    13. 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?

    1. 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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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 ?

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. The two mfasi^rfs of intrinsic greatness — scope and significance

      It seems that most of the ideas were chosen based on scope and significance.

    6. 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)

    7. 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.

    8. 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.

    9. THE PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OFSYNTOPICAL CONSTRUCTION
    1. 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."

    2. Umberto Eco recommends to have as much unread books in your personal library as your financial means allow.

    3. For an intellectual, the library is not there to simply collect books, but rather to serve as a tool for research.

    4. Tsundoku = Japanese for the art of buying more books than you can read.

  6. May 2024
    1. The “great books idea” becomes, then, a singular theoretical tool fordealing with change over time.
    2. 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.
    3. 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

    4. 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.

    1. 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.


      Comment link: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7197621782743252992?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7197621782743252992%2C7198233333577699328%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287198233333577699328%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7197621782743252992%29

      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)

    1. "The great books are the inexhaustible books. The books that can sustain a lifetime of reading."

    2. "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."

    3. "The great books are the books that everyone wants to have read but no-one wants to read."

    4. 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.

    5. 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...

      1. The Bible
      2. Antonin Sertillanges' The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Method, Conditions
      3. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

      No other book, to my mind, that I have read so far would cut it to my list.

    1. 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).

  7. Apr 2024
    1. 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.

    1. Very sobering figures on the publishing industry. Vgl [[Een boek verkoopt gemiddeld nog 44 papieren exemplaren 20220215170655]] and [[Boeken schrijven is flauwekul 20210930172532]]

    1. Francis Bacon once remarked, “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

      Good Quote.

    1. I began reading it quickly, almost skimming

      Superficial Reading.

      For better reading tactics, refer to Mortimer's How To Read A Book

    1. 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.

    2. A book is morelike the score of a piece of music thanit is like a painting.
    1. 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
    1. 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?

  8. Mar 2024
    1. 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

    2. 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!

    1. 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?

    1. 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
    1. 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

    1. 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.

    1. 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, ...

  9. Feb 2024
    1. 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.

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

  10. Jan 2024
    1. 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.

    1. 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.

    1. 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/

    1. 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.

    1. 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.

    1. 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 ...

    1. 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

  11. Dec 2023
    1. Adler & Hutchinson's Great Books of the Western World was an encyclopedia-based attempt to focus society on a shared history as their common ground. H. G. Wells in his World Encyclopedia thesis attempts to forge a new "moving" common ground based on newly evolving knowledge based on distilling truth out of science. Shared history is obviously much easier to dispense and spread about compared to constantly keeping a growing population up to date with the forefront of science.

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

      How could one distribute the effects evenly?

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

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

    2. 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.

    1. 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.

    1. 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

      aka "Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good."

    1. 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!

  12. Nov 2023
    1. 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).

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

    1. 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.
    1. 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.

    1. Maybe this will help: [Great Books of the Western World SYNTOPICON changes in 1986 (more info in comments) : ClassicalEducation](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicalEducation/comments/hlvnkv/great_books_of_the_western_world_syntopicon/)

      reply to u/Paddy48ob at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17jscyk/comment/k80z1nn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Thanks for this pointer. As a note, when I compare my 1954 version against the photo of the 1990 edition (which has fewer pages), it's obvious that the "1. The ends of education" section in the 1954 edition is significantly more thorough with more references (and supplementary data) which don't exist in the 1990 edition. The 1990 edition presumably removes the references for the books which they may have removed from that edition (though it may have actually been even more--I didn't check this carefully).

      Just comparing the two pages that I can see, I don't see any references to the added texts of the 1990 edition appearing in that version of the Syntopicon at all.

      I took a quick look at the Syntopicon V1 (1990) via the Internet Archive and of the added texts that year I sampled searches for Voltaire, Erasmus, and John Calvin and the only appearances of them to be found are in the Addition Bibliography sections which is also where they appeared in the 1952 editions. My small sampling/search found no added references of any of these three to the primary portions of the main References sections, so they obviously didn't do the additional editorial work to find and insert those.

      As a result, it appears that the 1952 (and reprint editions following it) have a measurably better and more valuable version of the Syntopicon. The 1990 (2nd Edition) is a watered down and less useful version of the original. It is definitely not the dramatically improved version one might have hoped for given the intervening 38 years.

    1. Cannot get it either to be honest. I want to use the antinet method for 2 main topics: Management and Personal growthIn management, for sure needs to add notion of leadership for example: how to approach the coding identification? I’ve assigned 2000 to management: shall I assign 2500 to all cards related to leadership? This is just an example, it’s a bit unclear for me so far.

      reply to u/marco89lcdm at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/17m7ggz/comment/k839k22/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      The way you're currently thinking is a top down approach in which you already know everything and you're attempting to organize it to make it easier for others who know nothing about the ideas to find them. The Luhmann model supposes you know nothing about anything to begin with and you're attempting to create order from the bottom up, solely by putting related ideas you're building on close to each other and giving them numbers so that you might find them again when you need them.

      If your only use is for those two topics and closely related subtopics and nothing else, then consider not using a Luhmann-artig model? Leave off the numbers and create two tabbed cards with those headings (and possibly related subheadings) and then sort your related cards behind them. (This is closer to the commonplace book tradition maintained on index cards and used by those like Mortimer J. Adler et al., Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday and Billy Oppenheimer. Example: https://billyoppenheimer.com/notecard-system/)

      Otherwise the mistake you may be making is mentally associating the top level numbers with the topics. Break this habit! The numbers are only there so you can index ideas against them to be able to find them again! These numbers aren't like the Dewey Decimal system where 510.### will always mean something to do with math. You'll specifically want to intermingle disparate topics, so the only purpose the numbers provide is the ability to find what you're looking for by using the index which will give you a neighborhood in which you'll find the ideas you know are going to be hiding there or very near by.

      Cards that are near to each other (using the numbers as an idea of ordering and re-finding) create a neighborhood of related ideas, even if they're disparate in topics. This might allow you to intermingle two related ideas, one which is in anthropology and another from mathematics for example, but which would otherwise potentially be thousands of cards away from each other if done in a Dewey-like system.

      Or to take your example, what do you do with an idea that relates to both management AND personal growth? If it's closer to an idea on management you might place it near a related idea on that branch rather than in the personal growth section where it may be potentially less useful in the future. (You can always cross index them if need be, but place it where it creates the closest link and thus likely the greatest value for building on top of your previous ideas.)

      For more on this, try: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/

      I suspect that Scheper suggests using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as a numbering structure because it's an early choice he made for himself and it provides a perch to give people a concrete place to start. Sadly this does a disservice because it's closer to the older commonplace topical method rather than to the spirit of the ordering that Luhmann was doing. It's especially difficult for beginners who have a natural tendency to want to do this sort of top-down approach.

  13. Oct 2023
    1. Alter’s commentary benefits from his allusions to, among others, Freud, Gilgamesh, Herodotus, Hesiod, Homer, Josephus, Joyce, Kafka, Melville, Milton, Molière, Nabokov, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Sophocles. But technical words and phrases often appear without explanation: aleatory device, autochthonous, collocation, deictic, diachronic collage, dittography, durance vile, emphatic anaphora, gnomic, haplography, metonymy, and threnody. (To my knowledge, there is no readily available glossary containing all these words—so you will just have to google one word at a time, dear reader.) Even when Alter offers a definition as an aside, I wonder how many people will benefit from his explanations., e.g., “This pairing is virtually a zeugma, the syntactic yoking together of disparate items” (Isaiah 44:15).

      Is it really incumbent on the author to translate every word he's using with respect to the language in which he's writing. He's already doing us a service by translating the Hebrew. Are modern readers somehow with out a dictionary? I might believe they've not been classically educated to capture all the allusions, but the dictionary portion is a simple fix that is difficult to call him out on from a critical perspective, especially in a publication like "Law & Liberty" whose audience is specifically the liberally educated!?!

    1. Possible further answers to your open questions are in »›Schmierbuchmethode bestens zu empfehlen.‹ Sudelbücher?«, in: Ulrich Joost et al. (eds.), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1742–1799. Wagnis der Aufklärung, München 1992, 19–48. PDF in GermanThere’s plenty more at the Lichtenberg society.And a fascinating online exhibition. See display no. 20 for an example of one of Lichtenberg’s annotated bibliographies, which he had published specially in an interleaved edition, and, wouldn’t you know it, some of his loose slips!
    2. Each page just has a page number at the top corner, as far as I can see. The German Wikipedia entry says that from notebook E, he numbered the front pages with Arabic numerals and the back pages with Roman numerals, so his notes began at both ends and met in the middle of the book. This is clear in the original, but hard to understand. And he would at least have been able to refer to his notes in the form {volume letter, page number}.It seems he didn’t number consecutive entries himself, but that in later Lichtenberg scholarship there developed an editorial convention to do so. After his death they only published his ‘aphorisms’, organised by theme, and later re-organised by date, but still missing his scientific and other writings.
    3. Analysis of Lichtenberg’s methods is in: McGillen, P. Wit, bookishness, and the epistemic impact of note-taking:. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 90, 501–528 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-016-0025-8
    1. Posted byu/practicalSloth2 days agoAnyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I really like the idea of being able to re-sort pages and was wondering if anyone has tried something like this? I've also considered an "Everbook", but was a bit concerned with all the loose pages of paper flying around everywhere

      u/practicalSloth interested in implementing a commonplace book using a FiloFax!

    2. Anyone use a FiloFax or similar for a commonplace book? .t3_17drtzn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/practicalSloth at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/17drtzn/anyone_use_a_filofax_or_similar_for_a_commonplace/

      For centuries, many have kept their commonplace books on index cards or slips of paper) rather than on book/notebook pages just like you're suggesting. They then indexed them against topic words and filed the ideas alphabetically rather than writing them in books and indexing them separately.

      Some popular versions of the practice which are described/viewable online include:

      Others with index card or small slip-based commonplaces include Ronald Reagan, Phyllis Diller (whose commonplaced joke file is now at the Smithsonian), and Joan Rivers.

      In German, this general practice was called zettelkasten (which translates as slip box), there are lots of people doing versions of this in r/Zettelkasten following some of Niklas Luhmann's method. Many more are using digital platforms like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. for this.

      Certainly putting it into a FiloFax is a flexible and doable option.

      I've written a bit about the mistaken identities and differences between Niklas Luhmann's practice which has become popular in English speaking countries over the last decade and index card-based commonplaces: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.

      Perhaps some of the examples will give you some ideas for how to best do your own. Good luck!

    1. It's been burning in my mind all day: you're right that too often, for reasons likely hidden in the folds of of educational reform, some of our most powerful methods of working, researching, and writing are lost or seem like magic when they're rediscovered. Rarely are classes on the subject taught, thereby leaving the student to find their own way in the dark. Thank you for pulling back the curtain covering the proverbial proscenium arch on Act I of research methods.

      For those flailing in the dark, Keith Thomas's brief essay (2010) discusses some of the basic problem along with solutions, while Adler and Van Doren (1972) talk about the levels of reading which are now rarely taught or reached (and how to reach them), and finally, imminent scholars/researchers like Umberto Eco or Jacques Barzun & Henry Graff reveal alternate versions of what you're already doing. Others certainly exist, often in piecemeal form, but this short set in combination with your YouTube channel for examples provides one royal road to the destination many seek.

      • Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010.
      • Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.
      • Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
      • Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957.
    1. And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.

      A stark statement that lays bare the original sin of Western thought.

    1. books of normative philosophy concern themselvesprimarily with the goals all men ought to seek-goals such asleading a good life or instituting a good society-and, unlikecookbooks and driving manuals, they go no further than prescribing in the most universal terms the means that ought tobe employed in order to achieve these goals.
    2. This book is practical, not theoretical. Any guidebook isa practical book. Any book that tells you either what youshould do or how to do it is practical. Thus you see that theclass of practical books includes all expositions of arts to belearned, all manuals of practice in any field, such as engineering or medicine or cooking, and all treatises that are conveniently classified as moral, such as books on economic,ethical, or political problems. We will later explain why thislast group of books, properly called "normative," constitutes avery special category of practical books.
    3. To make knowledge practical we must convert it intorules of operation. We must pass from knowing what is thecase to knowing what to do about it if we wish to get somewhere. This can be summarized in the distinction betweenknowing that and knowing how. Theoretical books teach youthat something is the case. Practical books teach you how todo something you want to do or think you should do.
  14. Sep 2023
    1. https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/index.htm

      An interesting commonplace book-like old school website with an actual "index" and fascinatingly about "Rhetorics of the Web"!

      Example of a collected quote: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/burke.htm

      Note also the linked ideas at the bottom of this example.

      It also has a references section: https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/2.1/features/brent/referenc.htm

      The separations of the pieces and their form is very reminiscent of a zettelkasten and the building up of pieces in places almost admits to a hand-built wiki.

    1. We use the term"canonical" to refer to such books; in an older tradition wemight have called them "sacred" or "holy," but those wordsno longer apply to all such works, though they still apply tosome of them.

      they provide a broader definition of sacred/holy texts that extend to books which form the basis of a groups' identity and often involve orthodoxy.

      relation to politics, gender identity, cults, etc.

    2. RECOMMENDED READING LIST

      Compare this list to what ultimately became the Great Books of the Western World in 1952. Lots more 20th century writing on it to begin...

    3. Although not all of the books listed are "great" in any of the commonly accepted meanings of the term, all of them will reward you for the effort you make to read them.

      This book was published originally in 1940 and apparently the Great Books of the Western World was hatched in 1943, so this book isn't necessarily a stepping stone to pitching/selling those, though obviously it informs the ideas which led up to its creation.

      Note that it is roughly contemporaneous to his article a year later:

      Adler, Mortimer J. “How to Mark a Book.” Saturday Review of Literature, July 6, 1941.<br /> https://stevenson.ucsc.edu/academics/stevenson-college-core-courses/how-to-mark-a-book-1.pdf

    4. The first is a commonplace. By combining analysis with experimentation-by combining theorizing with systematic observation of natural phenomena-men like Gali­leo and Newton launched an intellectual revolution and helped to usher in our modern age of science. Not only did they dis­cover truths about the physical world that continue to be rele­vant and important, but they also developed new methods of studying nature that have proved to be of wide usefulness in many areas of study and research.

      Adler has juxtaposed the ideas of genius and commonplace together, but somehow doesn't notice the ratchet that ties them together to be one and the same tool for making them so productive?!?

    1. t may be that in using his system hedeveloped his mind and his knowledge of history to the point wherehe expected his readers to draw more inferences from the facts heselected than most modern readers are accustomed to doing, in thisday of the predigested book.

      It's possible that the process of note taking and excerpting may impose levels of analysis and synthesis on their users such that when writing and synthesizing their works that they more subtly expect their readers to do the same thing when their audiences may require more handholding and explanation.

      Here, both the authors' experiences and that of the cultures in which they're writing will determine the relationship.


      There's lots of analogies between thinking and digesting (rumination, consumption, etc), in reading and understanding contexts.

      Source: https://hypothes.is/a/hhCGsljeEe2QlccJUQ55fA

    1. Merchants have their waste book, Sudelbuch or Klitterbuch in German I believe, in which they list all that they have sold or bought every single day, everything as it comes and in no particular order. The waste book’s content is then transferred to the Journal in a more systematic fashion, and at last it ends up in the “Leidger [sic] at double entrance,” following the Italian way of bookkeeping. […] This is a process worthy of imitation by the learned.”(See Ulrich Joost’s analysis in this volume, 24-35.)

      I've seen this quote earlier today, but interesting seeing another source quote it.

    1. (~6:00) Discussion of messiness as a record of working - notes don't need to be "perfect".

      (9:08) He shows the wikipedia page for waste book with my additions :)

      (late) quote from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's waste books about waste books

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdeOHF-fu9I

      A brief overview of Newton's note taking in his waste book

    1. Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Philosophical Writings. Edited and translated by Steven Tester. SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy, 1.0. State University of New York Press, 2012.

    2. Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]

      —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776


      In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.

      Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.

      It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.

      Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.


      Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?

    1. In 1896, they invented a simple mending tape to fix torn currency, but it soon became a hit with librarians for mending books. Gaylord Bros. became a purveyor of supplies to libraries across the country.
    1. I mean, just what I said. If you adapt the zettelkasten to meet knowledge management needs, that’s great. But it does need adapting (as your examples, none of which are conversation-partner zettelkästen but, as syntopicon implies, a collection of information gathered into categories) and is not the best way to do it. (Edit: Ryan Holiday’s system is, by his own admission, not a zettelkästen despite being a bunch of cards with notes on them categorized in a box). Even the source you use about Goitein admits that he was more in the commonplace book tradition, and that other people’s use of his cards is not common to the point of being remarked on here. He doesn’t even call it a zettelkästen, and shouldn’t. There’s not even links or reference numbers, which are integral to the ZK system.It’s not an argument. But as with everything ymmv.(For what it’s worth, my ZK is extremely specific to my individual projects and readings. But I imagine that yes, with time and heavy adaptations, you can make it into little more than a record of my knowledge into broad topics. That you can use it that way does not mean that’s what it is for.)

      reply to u/glugolly at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16njtfx/comment/k1l8lyk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      How is it that you're defining knowledge management or knowledge management system?

      I would argue that any zettelkasten of any stripe is taking knowledge/ideas from either content or one's own brain and transferring them into some sort of media by which they are managed or structured in some way for later linking, combination, or other reuse. By base definition this is clearly knowledge management. I don't know how one defines it otherwise except by pure denial.

      Your view of zettelkasten seems remarkably narrow. As a small sample the original Maschinen der Phantasie Marbach exhibition in 2013, which broadly prefigured the popularization of zettelkasten (and in particular the launch of zettelkasten.de) which we see today featured six zettelkasten of which Luhmann's was the only one with reference numbers or what we might now consider explicit HTML-like links. Most of the others contained either explicit groupings or implied links, but that doesn't diminish the value they held for their creators for creating a conversation of ideas for them. Incidentally most of the zettelkasten featured there prefigured Luhmann's and only two were roughly contemporaneous with his.

      If you look more closely at Adler, et al. you'll notice that the entire purpose of their enterprise was to create and nurture a conversation between themselves and their readers with texts and authors spanning over 2,500 years, a point which is underlined by the introductory volume which preceded the two volumes of the Syntopicon. Not coincidentally, that first volume of the 54 book series was entitled "The Great Conversation."

      Specifically from Adler's "How to Read a Book", the first edition of which predated the Great Books of the Western World:

      Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author.

      This is a process which is effectuated by

      Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.

      and later,

      That is to make notes about the shape of the discussion-the discussion that is engaged in by all of the authors, even if unbeknownst to them. For reasons that will become clear in Part Four, we prefer to call such notes dialectical.

      (As an aside, why aren't more people talking about the nature of dialectical notes, which seem far more important and useful than either fleeting notes and permanent notes?)

      In your link to Holiday, he doesn't say his system isn't a zettelkasten, a word which an English speaker was highly unlikely to have used in 2013 in any case, even when referencing Manfred Kuehn from 2007. It simply indicates that "[Luhmann's] discipline seems to exceed mine because I am a lot less ordered".

      The Goitein source (which I wrote) may use commonplace book as a descriptor but that doesn't mitigate the fact that the entirety of the zettelkasten tradition arises from it (the primary difference being things written (usually) on bound pages versus slips of paper). Before these there was the closely related idea of florilegia stemming from the earlier locus communis (Latin) and tópos koinós (Greek).

    1. According to his biographer, Michael Keene, General Patton used to use a similar system: “He read every treatise on warfare ever written. He would take copious notes on 4-by-6 index cards for every book that he ever read. It was that immense knowledge of history that he had that he could bring to battle. So he could almost anticipate what the enemy was going to do next.”

      via SAMUEL MORNINGSTAR comment on August 14, 2014 at 5:22 pm

      According to Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer by Michael Keene, General George Patton used a 4x6" index card system for note taking.

    2. I was searching for notecard systems after reading Will and Ariel Durant’s dual autobiography and not having much luck. The book talks a lot about his writing and the use of “classification slips” to cover the depth of material, especially for The Story of Civilization series they did.

      via SAM on January 15, 2017 at 8:54 pm

      Apparently Will Durant and Ariel Durant used a form of commonplace book set up in which they used "classification slips".

    3. -It looks like the system is also very similar to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

      Ryan Holiday's system puts some of the work farther from the note taking origin compared with Nicholas Luhmann's system which places more of it up front.

      How, if at all, do the payoffs from doing each of these vary for the end user of the system?

    1. folgezettel pushes the note maker toward making at least one connection at the time of import.

      There is a difference between the sorts of links one might make when placing an idea into an (analog) zettelkasten. A folgezettel link is more valuable than a simple tag/category link because it places an idea into a more specific neighborhood than any handful of tags. This is one of the benefits of a Luhmann-artig ZK system over a more traditional commonplace one, particularly when the work is done up front instead of being punted to a later time.

      For those with a 1A2B3Z linking system (versus a pure decimal system), it may be more difficult to insert a card before other cards rather than after them because of the potential gymnastics of numbering and the natural tendency to put things into a continuing linear order.

      See also: - https://hypothes.is/a/ToqCPq1bEe2Q0b88j4whwQ - https://hyp.is/WtB2AqmlEe2wvCsB5ZyL5A/docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/Introduction-to-Luhmanns-Zette---Ludecke-Daniel-h4nh8.pdf

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iRzF_ZAdUI

      Scott Sheper demonstrates one of the lowest forms of zettelkasten: simply indexing an idea from a book into one's index. This includes skipping the step of excerpting the idea into it's own card.

      He describes it as zettelkasten knowledge building for busy people. It's definitely a hard turn from his all-in Luhmann-esque method.

      In the end it comes down to where one puts in the work. Saving the work of having done some reading for a small idea one may tangentially reference later is most of the distance, but he's still going to have to do more work later to use the idea.

    1. The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. 27th Printing. Vol. 1. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. 1952. Reprint, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1984.

      I read the first edition.

      Hutchins, Robert M. The Great Conversation: The Substance of a Liberal Education. Edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. 1st ed. Vol. 1. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

      urn:x-pdf:0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac<br /> Annotation search: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0ce8391ed9f9f1cfc78c28b6c923abac

    1. Underlines and margin notes in an unknown hand are interspersed throughout the texts. Volume I includes a daily devotional page that has been used as a bookmark. The back endpapers of Volume IV has been copiously annotated.

      Jack Kerouac followed the general advice of Mortimer J. Adler to write notes into the endpapers of his books as evidenced by the endpapers of Volume IV of the 7th Year Course of The Great Books Foundation series with which Adler was closely associated.

    1. (1:20.00-1:40.00) What he describes is the following: Most of his notes originate from the digital using hypothes.is, where he reads material online and can annotate, highlight, and tag to help future him find the material by tag or bulk digital search. He calls his hypothes.is a commonplace book that is somewhat pre-organized.

      Aldrich continues by explaining that in his commonplace hypothes.is his notes are not interlinked in a Luhmannian Zettelkasten sense, but he "sucks the data" right into Obsidian where he plays around with the content and does some of that interlinking and massage it.

      Then, the best of the best material, or that which he is most interested in working with, writing about, etc., converted into a more Luhmannesque type Zettelkasten where it is much more densely interlinked. He emphasizes that his Luhmann zettelkasten is mostly consisting of his own thoughts and is very well-developed, to the point where he can "take a string of 20 cards and ostensibly it's its own essay and then publish it as a blog post or article."

    1. Wills, Garry. “After 54 Great Books, 102 Great Ideas, Now—Count Them !—Three Revolutions.” The New York Times, June 13, 1971, sec. BR. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/13/archives/the-common-sense-of-politics-by-mortimer-j-adler-265-pp-new-york.html

      It's not super obvious from the digitized context (text), but this review is in relation to The Common Sense of Politics (1971) by Mortimer J. Adler.

      Wills criticizes Adler and his take in the book as well as the general enterprise of the Great Books of the Western World.

      There seem to be interesting sparks here in the turn of the Republican party in the early 70s moving into the coming Reagan era.

  15. Aug 2023
    1. For context, I don't use a traditional Zettelkasten system. It's more of a commonplace book/notecard system similar to Ryan HolidayI recently transitioned to a digital system and have been using Logseq, which I enjoy. It's made organizing my notes and ideas much easier, but I've noticed that I spend a lot of time on organizing my notesSince most of my reading is on Kindle, my process involves reading and highlighting as I read, then exporting those highlights to Markdown and making a page in Logseq. Then I tag every individual highlightThis usually isn't too bad if a book/research article has 20-30 highlights, but, for example, I recently had a book with over 150 highlights, and I spent about half an hour tagging each oneI started wondering if it's overkill to tag each highlight since it can be so time consuming. The advantage is that if I'm looking for passages about a certain idea/topic, I can find it specifically rather than having to go through the whole bookI was also thinking I could just have a set of tags for each book/article that capture what contexts I'd want to find the information in. This would save time, but I'd spend a little more time digging through each document looking for specificsCurious to hear your thoughts, appreciate any suggestions

      reply to m_t_rv_s__n/ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/164n6qg/is_this_overkill/

      First, your system is historically far more traditional than Luhmann's more specific practice. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/

      If you're taking all the notes/highlights from a particular book and keeping them in a single file, then it may be far quicker and more productive to do some high level tagging on the entire book/file itself and then relying on and using basic text search to find particular passages you might use at a later date.

      Spending time reviewing over all of your notes and tagging/indexing them individually may be beneficial for some basic review work. But this should be balanced out with your long term needs. If your area is "sociology", for example, and you tag every single idea related to the topic of sociology with #sociology, then it will cease to have any value you to you when you search for it and find thousands of disconnected notes you will need to sift through. Compare this with Luhmann's ZK which only had a few index entries under "sociology". A better long term productive practice, and one which Luhmann used, is indexing one or two key words when he started in a new area and then "tagging" each new idea in that branch or train of though with links to other neighboring ideas. If you forget a particular note, you can search your index for a keyword and know you'll find that idea you need somewhere nearby. Scanning through the neighborhood of notes you find will provide a useful reminder of what you'd been working on and allow you to continue your work in that space or link new things as appropriate.

      If it helps to reframe the long term scaling problem of over-tagging, think of a link from one idea to another as the most specific tag you can put on an idea. To put this important idea into context, if you do a Google search for "tagging" you'll find 240,000,000 results! If you do a search for the entirety of the first sentence in this paragraph, you'll likely only find one very good and very specific result, and the things which are linked to it are going to have tremendous specific value to you by comparison.

      Perhaps the better portions of your time while reviewing notes would be taking the 150 highlights and finding the three to five most important, useful, and (importantly) reusable ones to write out in your own words and begin expanding upon and linking? These are the excerpts you'll want to spend more time on and tag/index for future use rather than the other hundreds. Over time, you may eventually realize that the hundreds are far less useful than the handful (in management spaces this philosophy is known as the Pareto principle), so spending a lot of make work time on them is less beneficial for whatever end goals you may have. (The make work portions are often the number one reason I see people abandoning these practices because they feel overwhelmed working on raw administrivia instead of building something useful and interesting to themselves.) Naturally though, you'll still have those hundreds sitting around in a file if you need to search, review, or use them. You won't have lost them by not working on them, but more importantly you'll have gained loads of extra time to work on the more important pieces. You should notice that the time you save and the value you create will compound over time.

      And as ever, play around with these to see if they work for you and your specific needs. Some may be good and others bad—it will depend on your needs and your goals. Practice, experiment, have fun.

      Meme image from Office Space featuring a crowd of office employees standing in front of a banner on the wall that reads: Is this Good for the Zettelkasten?

    1. Journalist John Dickerson [https://twitter.com/jdickerson/status/1458036871531937798 indicates] that he uses [[Instagram]] as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ where he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of [[annotation]]s he makes in books.

      syndication links: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/16118vy/john_dickersons_digital_commonplace/

    1. In general the professors of the humanities and the socialsciences and history, fascinated by the marvels of experi-mental natural science, were overpowered by the idea thatsimilar marvels could be produced in their own fields by theuse of the same methods. They also seemed convinced thatany results obtained in these fields by any other methods werenot worth achieving. This automatically ruled out writerspreviously thought great who had had the misfortune to livebefore the method of empirical natural science had reachedits present predominance and who had never thought ofapplying it to problems and subject matters outside the rangeof empirical natural science.

      Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

      One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

    2. This set of books is offered not merely as an object uponwhich leisure may be expended, but also as a means to thehumanization of work through understanding.16

      Purpose of the Great Books of the Western World

    3. Sir RichardLivingstone said: "We are tied down, all our days and forthe greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That iswhere contact with great thinkers, great literature helps.

      What is the original context of this quote? Which meaning of "the commonplace" does he mean? The generic or the commonplace book?

    1. The American Philosopher Eric Hoffer was a great quotation collector. he has boxes and boxes of them all typed up on index cards. I began doing it after reading his biography where before they were scattered everywhere.

      Eric Hoffer apparently had a collection of quotes which he kept on index cards in boxes.

      Potentially mentioned in one of his biographies. Possibly:<br /> - American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of Eric Hoffer by Tom Shachtman https://www.amazon.com/American-Iconoclast-Life-Times-Hoffer/dp/1933435380<br /> - Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher by Tom Bethell https://www.amazon.com/Eric-Hoffer-Longshoreman-Philosopher-Institution/dp/0817914153