Reasonable overview of history. Worth digging into to flesh out more fully with respect to the major system in particular.

https://theodora.com/encyclopedia/m2/mnemonics.html

Indices are certainly an old construct. One of the oldest structured examples in the note taking space is that of John Locke who detailed it in Méthode nouvelle de dresser des recueils (1685), later translated into English as A New Method of Organizing Common Place Books (1706).

Previously commonplace books had been structured with headwords done alphabetically. This meant starting with a preconceived structure and leaving blank or empty space ahead of time without prior knowledge of what would fill it or how long that might take. By turning that system on its head, one could fill a notebook from front to back with a specific index of the headwords at the end. Then one didn't need to do the same amount of pre-planning or gymnastics over time with respect to where to put their notes.

This idea combined with that of Konrad Gessner's design for being able to re-arrange slips of paper (which later became index cards based on an idea by Carl Linnaeus), gives us an awful lot of freedom and flexibility in almost any note taking system.

Building blocks of the note taking system

• atomic ideas
• written on (re-arrangeable) slips, cards, or hypertext spaces
• cross linked with each other
• cross linked with an index
• cross linked with references

are there others? should they be broken up differently?

Godfathers of Notetaking

• Aristotle, Cicero (commonplaces)
• Seneca the Younger (collecting and reusing)
• Raymond Llull (combinatorial rearrangements)
• Konrad Gessner (storage for re-arrangeable slips)
• John Locke (indices)
• Carl Linnaeus (index cards)

In descending order of citations following the traditional Bible and church fathers florilegia included sententiae from classical writers including Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, Lucan, and Seneca.

cross reference: 105. Munk Olsen (1980), 153–54.

What time period and corpus of work does this accounting include?

Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.

Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:

“Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).

(See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)

The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.

The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.

Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.

Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

(Not sure if I had this in my notes already from other reading, but adding again just in case.)

Construction is definitely work. The question about how much it may be should be addressed on a continuum of knowing or understanding particular concepts as well.

Creating palaces for raw data de-novo, as in a memory championship, takes a lot of practice for speed and the lack of relationships. However in a learning setting, it may be better to read, grasp, and understand material and then create a palace to contain the simple raw facts which might then also bring back other bits of the knowledge and understanding.

This might be a useful idea to explore further, gather some data, and experiment with.

Vico seems to be opposed, then, to highly specialized education and in favor of breadth of knowledge. This has echoes of Aristotle and Cicero.

Not, though, through book learning (unless that counts as observation?).

Calls again to Cicero's discussion of art, where the 'rules' come from observed and practiced successes (not handbooks)

It's been quite a long way since Cicero's eye-rolling at handbooks...

This brings to mind Cicero's De Oratore, where Crassus discusses art (in the sense of a skill, systematic knowledge of a particular field) and eloquence. Instead of a theory of rhetoric/oratory leading to eloquence, "certain people have observed and collected the practices that eloquent men have followed of their own accord. Thus, eloquence is not the offspring of art, but art [is the offspring] of eloquence." The skill itself always precedes the systematization of the skill.

Cicero also identifies writing as essential in De Oratore. It crops up a few times, but one of them is in Book I, section 150 or so.

New emphasis on "rhetorical and political theory" in Cicero.

Public > Private

Ethics.

I'm guessing that the character of Cicero might have some reflection to play in these parts. I'd have to research further to draw up a conclusion.

Just a note that Cicero uses smell a LOT in De Oratore. He describes the orator, in fact, as a hunting-dog tracking down the scent of an audience in DO 1.223. It makes more sense to me now how that particular sensation might be relevant to audience identification, particularly in the context of porphura.

Cicero mastered eloquence but Quintilian was also eloquent.

regarding Cicero: Yep, me too.

knowledge with all things, knowledge with which one speaks

reference to Cicero