890 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. science has transformed our understanding of time.

      for - language - primacy of - symbolosphere - adjacency - language - science - worldviews - scientific vs religious - Michael Levin - multi-scale competency architecture

      comment - Deep time narrative has potential for unifying polarised worldviews - but citing purely scientific evidence risks excluding and alienating large percentage of people who have a predominantly religious worldview - language, the symbolosphere is the foundation that has made science possible - Starting with language could be even more unifying as there are large cultural groups that do not prioritize the scientific worldview and narrative, but prefer a religious one. - yet language is even more primary than science

    1. Labour saving therefore means systematic application of expertlabour.

      This quote is broadly recognized in economic settings as true, but few in the knowledge management space place emphasis or focus on designing both simple systems which are easy to master and use on a regular, ongoing basis. This allows the knowledge worker the ability to more quickly (almost blindly) handle their indexing and filing operations so that things are precisely where they need them when required for use.

      Poor design will not only decrease the ease of use, but also discourage the user from both efficiently using and benefiting from their systems.

      Even simple and efficient filing systems require familiarity and expertise for them to effect useful gains to their users, and prove their effectiveness over time. If a user can't get to a basic level of functionality in short time, they're likely to give up on it and never see the ultimate benefits.

    2. The development of the card system and itsmore universal adoption within recent years isundoubtedly due in the mail to the development in modernbusiness and factory organisation ; it may be regarded as anoffspring of manufacture in quantities. (Massenfabrikation, Gross-industrie.) The recognised principle in manufacture in quantities ismaximum of output with minimum of labour. The means to attainthis end is specialisation, which in its turn yields greater precisionand accuracy as it^ result. All this is equally applicable to thecard system, and the last factor, greater precision and accuracy,is one of its most conspicuous claims.

      Julius Kaiser contemporaneously posits that mass manufacture and maximizing efficiency (greater output for minimum input) are the primary drivers of card index system use in the early 20th century. These also improve both precision and accuracy in handling information which allow for better company or factory operation, which would have been rising concerns for businesses and manufacturing operations at the rise of scientific management during the time period.

  2. Feb 2024
  3. Jan 2024
    1. Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA

      I find this truly exhilarating! This speaks of evidence being found for the first time on how our orgins and life itself may have been originated from perhaps the big bang or something we don't yet know yet. Giving us the largest hint we've ever thought possible on soon discovering where the true origins of life originated. Now all we need to do is find the "How" this was possible by this shocking evidence.

  4. Dec 2023
    1. if we want to see science having a deeper impact on society and politics it's crucial that we have also 00:45:52 scientific storytellers
      • for: quote - Yuval Noah Harari, quote - storytelling, quote - scientific storytelling, science communication, climate communication

      • key insight

      • quote

        • If we want to see science having a deeper impact on society and politics, it's crucial that we have also scientific storytelling
      • comment

        • I would just add that it should be COMPELLING scientific storytelling
    1. Will artificial intelligence create useless class of people? - Yuval Noah Harari

      1:00 "bring the latest findings of science of the public", otherwise the public space "gets filled with conspiracy theories and fake news and whatever".<br /> he fails to mention that ALL his beautiful "scientists" are financially dependent on corporations, who dictate the expected results, and who sabotage "unwanted research".<br /> for example, the pharma industry will NEVER pay money for research of natural cancer cures, or "alternative" covid cures like ivermectin / zinc / vitamin C, because these cures have no patent, so there is no profit motive, and also because the "militant pacifists" want to fix overpopulation this way.<br /> a "scientist" should be someone, who has all freedom to propose hypotheses, which then are tested in experiments (peer review), and compared to real placebo control groups. because that is science, or "the scientific method". everything else is lobbying for "shekel shekel".

  5. Nov 2023
    1. Muchrecent scholarship on card indexes and factuality falls into one of two modes: first,scholars have excavated early modern indexes, catalogues, and the pursuit of ‘facts’to demonstrate information overload prior to the contemporary ‘information age’ as wellas the premodern attempts to counteract the firehose of books and other information(Blair, 2010; Krajewski, 2011; Mu ̈ ller-Wille and Scharf, 2009; Poovey, 1998;

      Zedelmaier, 1992). All the same, a range of figures have tracked and critiqued the trajectory of the ‘noble dream’ of historical and scientific ‘objectivity’ (Appleby, Hunt and Jacob, 1994: 241-70; Daston and Galison, 2007; Novick, 1988).

      Lustig categorizes scholarship on card indexes into two modes: understanding of information overload tools and the "trajectory of the 'noble dream' of historical and scientific 'objectivity'".

    1. haha, china and russia and friends are shitting all over your "scientific models".<br /> the ONLY problem is "too many humans", aka overpopulation, caused by pacifism.<br /> these "save the world" policies are collective suicide for the 95% useless eaters. byee!

    1. After I had been searching for ways to flesh out this parallel between contemplative and scientific research, through the common element of a lab method, I finally stumbled upon the Husserlian epoche as a stepping stone or connection piece between the two
      • for: bridge between - scientific and contemplative world

      • comment

        • this describes my current strong interest in the epoche as a potentially b transformative Deep Humanity BEing journey tool
    2. It is possible, however, to be really struck by this option, to make a deeply felt shift from living in a material world to living in an experiential world.
      • paradigm shift - ontological - from material to experiential

      • for: paradigm shift - scientific ontology

      • comment

        • the paradigm shift from a scientific worldview from a material to an experiential one of the profound shift alluded to in the previous annotation
    3. Ask a scientist what the world is made out of, and he or she may talk about atoms or molecules, or quantum mechanical wave functions, or possibly strings or vacuum fluctuations, depending on the level on which one want to focus. Diverse as those answers may be, they all have in common that they borrow elements from descriptions of building blocks of nature, as used already within contemporary physics. Now propose to a scientist that everything could be seen as `made out of experience', or at least, for starters, as `given in experience.'
      • for: what is the world made of, paradigm shift - scientific ontology

      • question

        • what off the world made of?
      • answer ( Phenomenological)
        • experience!
    1. Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense thatsurrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being, that is to say, the experience of whatwe are. Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences andexperience. In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts. It is the sum of bordersand horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regeneratedby experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
      • for: key insight - phenomenology as life's pre-scientific dimension

      • key insight

      • paraphrase
        • Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense that surrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being,,
          • that is to say, the experience of what we are.
        • Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.
        • The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. -This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences and experience.
        • In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts.
        • It is the sum of borders and horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regenerated by experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
    2. Phenomenologyexplains that consciousness, treated as an object, limits this pretension: human subjectivity is thefoundation of all scientific knowledge. Therefore, there is a logical error in trying to explain thefoundation through what it has founded.
      • for: scientific naturalism - circular argument, logical error, subjectivity - explanation, quote, quote - studying consciousness

      • quote: consciousness

        • Human subjectivity is the foundation oof all scientific knowledge. Therefore, there is a logical error in trying to explain the foundation through what it has founded.
      • author: Doris Elida Fuster Guillen

      • comment

        • Alternative way to state it
          • Human subjectivity is the foundation oof all scientific knowledge. Therefore, there is a logical error in trying to explain the foundation through what itself.
    3. The phenomenological approach projects a radical criticism of scientific naturalism,which assumes that the object of science is to find laws that govern reality, where the person isconceived as another object of nature.
      • for: scientific naturalism - critique, scientific naturalism - phenomenology, consciousness - objectification of, SELF-consciousness

      • comment

        • Good observation that is quite salient to the hard problem of consciousness. Language can be used to describe any observable pattern.
        • Our own bodies are an observable pattern. As we associate our consciousness with our body, It is a small step to observe our own consciousness. SELF-consciousness is what allows us to be observer and observed at different times.
  6. Oct 2023
    1. The distinction proposed here is popularly recognizedwhen we say that science is experimental or depends uponelaborate observational researches, whereas philosophy ismerely armchair thinking
    2. James' Principles of Psychology is both a scientific and a philosophical work, although it is primarily scientific.
    3. Since titles and subject-matter names are not likely to helpus determine whether a book is philosophical or scientific, howcan we tell? There is one criterion that we think always works,although you may have to read a certain amount of the bookbefore you can apply it. If a theoretical book emphasizesthings that lie outside the scope of your normal, routine, dailyexperience, it is a scientific work. If not, it is philosophical.
  7. Sep 2023
    1. science progresses generally not because of a thing that we see but because we increase our ability to perceive

      for: quote, quote Aza Raskin, quote - progress, quote - scientific progress and expanding perception

      • quote
        • science progresses generally not because of a thing that we see
        • but because we increase our ability to perceive
      • author
      • Aza Raskin
      • date: 2023
    1. terminus ante quem

      literal Latin translation: boundary before which

      the latest possible date for something

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    1. So whatever problem you have in your knowledge, and suddenly you think, oh, that doesn't fit, there is a problem, and so on, what do you do? You stop projecting your attention onto the set of theoretical object you have, and you come back where you are. Where are you? In the laboratory observing dots on the screen. 00:24:54 And then you think, is my picture adequate to the dots I'm seeing now in the screen? That's what occurs at each scientific revolution. Suddenly, if things, scientists say, poof, finished, all this theory, I have to think everything again from what is given to me.
      • for: scientific revolution, incremental science, science - epoche

      • quote

        • So whatever problem you have in your knowledge, and suddenly you think, oh, that doesn't fit, there is a problem, and so on, what do you do?
        • You stop projecting your attention onto the set of theoretical object you have, and you come back where you are.
        • Where are you? In the laboratory observing dots on the screen.
        • And then you think, is my picture adequate to the dots I'm seeing now in the screen?
        • That's what occurs at each scientific revolution.
        • Suddenly, if things, scientists say, poof, finished, all this theory,
        • I have to think everything again from what is given to me.
      • author: Michel Bitbol
    2. He concealed the origin of this knowledge 00:23:38 by trying to show how you can derive the life of the nowhere out of the nowhere's intellectual byproduct.
      • for: quote, quote - Michel Bilbot, quote - circularity of materialism, scientific materialism - circularity

      • quote

        • He (Galileo) concealed the origin of this knowledge by trying to show how you can derive the life of the nowhere out of the nowhere's intellectual byproduct.
      • author: Michel Bilbot

      • comment

        • This is a very pith observation. It illustrates the circularity inherent in panpsychic scientific theory.
        • In a sense, we are putting the cart before the horse by using theory, which is the nowhere's intellectual byproduct, to derive the life of the nowhere.
    1. If we can argue against the privacy of phenomenal properties, then we can escape the trap into which both the dualist and illusionist fall. We interpret the dualist and illusionist extremes as unfortunate consequences of a mistaken view of naturalism.
      • for: harmonizing illusionists and scientific dualists

      • paraphrase

        • illusionist exclude qualia from naturalism and try to explain it away
        • scientific dualist consider qualia a new category to add on to naturalism
        • If phenomenal properties are not private, then we can escape the trap into which both the dualist and illusionist fall.
        • We interpret the dualist and illusionist extremes as unfortunate consequences of a mistaken view of naturalism.
  8. Jul 2023
    1. Bruce Bills, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and co-author of the new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “Moonquakes reoccur again and again in the same locations at the same time of the month, which seems to link them to the monthly tidal cycles” he says, “but so far, nobody has been able to construct a physical model or clear pattern to explain the relationship.”

      2012: Nasa Bruce Bills: Moonquakes were explained by the gravitational pull on the earth but moonquakes occur again and again in the same locations at the same time every month. So far, [nobody] has been able to construct a model or clear pattern to explain the relationship.

  9. Jun 2023
    1. Lucy Calkins Retreats on Phonics in Fight Over Reading Curriculum by Dana Goldstein

      Not much talk of potentially splitting out methods for neurodivergent learners here. Teaching reading strategies may net out dramatically differently between neurotypical children and those with issues like dyslexia. Perceptual and processing issues may make some methods dramatically harder for some learners over others, and we still don't seem to have any respect for that.

      This example is an interesting one of the sort of generational die out of old ideas and adoption of new ones as seen in Kuhn's scientific revolutions.

  10. May 2023
  11. Mar 2023
    1. Watts, Charles J. The Cost of Production. Muskegon, MI: The Shaw-Walker Company, 1902. http://archive.org/details/costproduction01wattgoog.

      Short book on managing manufacturing costs. Not too much of an advertisement for Shaw-Walker manufactured goods (files, file management, filing cabinets, etc.). Only 64 pages are the primary content and the balance (about half) are advertisements.

      Given the publication date of 1902, this would have preceded the publication of System Magazine which began in 1903. This may have then been a prototype version of an early business magazine, but with a single author, no real editorial, and only one article.

      Presumably it may also have served the marketing interests of Shaw-Walker as a marketing piece as well.


      Tangentially, I'm a bit intrigued by the "Mr. Morse" mentioned on page 109 who is being touted as an in-house consultant for Shaw-Walker.... Is this the same Frank Morse who broke off to form the Browne-Morse Co.? (very likely)

      see: see also: https://hypothes.is/a/Sp8s4sprEe24jitvkjkxzA for a snippet on Frank Morse.

    1. Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (Sektion 1.2 Die Kartei) Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

      annotation target: urn:x-pdf:00126394ba28043d68444144cd504562

      (Unknown translation from German into English. v1 TK)

      The overall title of the work (in English: Technique of Scientific Work) calls immediately to mind the tradition of note taking growing out of the scientific historical methods work of Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos and even more specifically the description of note taking by Beatrice Webb (1926) who explicitly used the phrase "recipe for scientific note-taking".

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/BFWG2Ae1Ee2W1HM7oNTlYg

      first reading: 2022-08-23 second reading: 2022-09-22

      I suspect that this translation may be from Clemens in German to Scheper and thus potentially from the 1951 edition?

      Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende. 8., Umgearb. Aufl. 1931. Reprint, Berlin: R. Kiepert, 1951.

  12. Feb 2023
    1. People know it’s bad but not how bad. This gap in understanding remains wide enough for denialists and minimisers to legitimise inadequate action under the camouflage of empty eco-jargon and false optimism. This gap allows nations, corporations and individuals to remain distracted by short-term crises, which, however serious, pale into insignificance compared with the unprecedented threat of climate change.
      • it is the conservative nature of science
      • to spend years to validates claims.
      • Unfortunately, in a global emergency as we find ourselves in now, we don’t have the luxury of a few years.
      • In the case of this wicked problem, we need to find a way to make major decisions based on uncertain but plausible data
      • The misinformation has the effect of causing society to set the wrong priorities and making things worse
  13. Jan 2023
    1. contemporary radical thinkersare more likely to see Enlightenment thought as the ultimate inreceived authority, as an intellectual movement whose mainachievement was to lay the foundations of a peculiarly modern formof rational individualism that became the basis of “scientific” racism,modern imperialism, exploitation, and genocide

      second and third order effects of the Enlightenment movement...

    1. After browsing through a variety of the cards in Gertrud Bauer's Zettelkasten Online it becomes obvious that the collection was created specifically as a paper-based database for search, retrieval, and research. The examples and data within it are much more narrowly circumscribed for a specific use than those of other researchers like Niklas Luhmann whose collection spanned a much broader variety of topics and areas of knowledge.

      This particular use case makes the database nature of zettelkasten more apparent than some others, particularly in modern (post-2013 zettelkasten of a more personal nature).

      I'm reminded here of the use case(s) described by Beatrice Webb in My Apprenticeship for scientific note taking, by which she more broadly meant database creation and use.

  14. Dec 2022
    1. We distinguish between scientific Earth system targets, targets at the global or near-global scale that are generated primarily by scientific inquiry but may be informed by societal judgments about risks (Pickering & Persson, 2020), and science-based targets, targets for actors that are aligned with scientific evidence but which may involve negotiations based on responsibility and feasibility (Andersen et al., 2020).

      !- comparison : scientific earth system targets vs science-based targets

  15. Nov 2022
    1. Modern science is, to a large extent, a model-building activity. In the natural and engineering sciences as well as in the social sciences, models are constructed, tested and revised, they are compared with other models, applied, interpreted and sometimes rejected or replaced by a better model.
    1. Empiricism was thenew intellectual trend. Before this, just about any difficult question on anysubject at all could find a perfectly acceptable answer in authority of one kind oranother—in ‘It is God’s will’, rather than ‘Let’s find out’.

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  16. Oct 2022
    1. Thus Paxson was not content to limit historians to the immediateand the ascertainable. Historical truth must appear through some-thing short of scientific method, and in something other than scien-tific form, linked and geared to the unassimilable mass of facts.There was no standard technique suited to all persons and purposes,in note-taking or in composition. "The ordinary methods of his-torical narrative are ineffective before a theme that is in its essen-tials descriptive," he wrote of Archer B. Hulbert's Forty- Niners(1931) in 1932. "In some respects the story of the trails can notbe told until it is thrown into the form of epic poetry, or comes un-der the hand of the historical novelist." 42

      This statement makes it appear as if Paxson was aware of the movement in the late 1800s of the attempt to make history a more scientific endeavor by writers like Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos, and others, but that Pomeroy is less so.

      How scientific can history be as an area of study? There is the descriptive from which we might draw conclusions, but how much can we know when there are not only so many potential variables, but we generally lack the ability to design and run discrete experiments on history itself?

      Recall Paxson's earlier comment that "in history you cannot prove an inference". https://hypothes.is/a/LIWSoFlLEe2zUtvMoEr0nQ

      Had enough time elapsed up to this writing in 1953, that the ideal of a scientific history from the late 1800s had been borne out not to be accomplished?

    1. Regarding his work on the sciences, Blumenberg did not facilitate hisreception within the Anglophone tradition by engaging much with it. Hemay have initiated the translation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutionsinto German,

      Hans Blumenberg didn't engage much with the Anglophone world of science outside of initiating the translation of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions into German.

    1. https://www.loom.com/share/a05f636661cb41628b9cb7061bd749ae

      Synopsis: Maggie Delano looks at some of the affordances supplied by Tana (compared to Roam Research) in terms of providing better block-based user interface for note type creation, search, and filtering.


      These sorts of tools and programmable note implementations remind me of Beatrice Webb's idea of scientific note taking or using her note cards like a database to sort and search for data to analyze it and create new results and insight.

      It would seem that many of these note taking tools like Roam and Tana are using blocks and sub blocks as a means of defining atomic notes or database-like data in a way in which sub-blocks are linked to or "filed underneath" their parent blocks. In reality it would seem that they're still using a broadly defined index card type system as used in the late 1800s/early 1900s to implement a set up that otherwise would be a traditional database in the Microsoft Excel or MySQL sort of fashion, the major difference being that the user interface is cognitively easier to understand for most people.

      These allow people to take a form of structured textual notes to which might be attached other smaller data or meta data chunks that can be easily searched, sorted, and filtered to allow for quicker or easier use.

      Ostensibly from a mathematical (or set theoretic and even topological) point of view there should be a variety of one-to-one and onto relationships (some might even extend these to "links") between these sorts of notes and database representations such that one should be able to implement their note taking system in Excel or MySQL and do all of these sorts of things.

      Cascading Idea Sheets or Cascading Idea Relationships

      One might analogize these sorts of note taking interfaces to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). While there is the perennial question about whether or not CSS is a programming language, if we presume that it is (and it is), then we can apply the same sorts of class, id, and inheritance structures to our notes and their meta data. Thus one could have an incredibly atomic word, phrase, or even number(s) which inherits a set of semantic relationships to those ideas which it sits below. These links and relationships then more clearly define and contextualize them with respect to other similar ideas that may be situated outside of or adjacent to them. Once one has done this then there is a variety of Boolean operations which might be applied to various similar sets and classes of ideas.

      If one wanted to go an additional level of abstraction further, then one could apply the ideas of category theory to one's notes to generate new ideas and structures. This may allow using abstractions in one field of academic research to others much further afield.

      The user interface then becomes the key differentiator when bringing these ideas to the masses. Developers and designers should be endeavoring to allow the power of complex searches, sorts, and filtering while minimizing the sorts of advanced search queries that an average person would be expected to execute for themselves while also allowing some reasonable flexibility in the sorts of ways that users might (most easily for them) add data and meta data to their ideas.


      Jupyter programmable notebooks are of this sort, but do they have the same sort of hierarchical "card" type (or atomic note type) implementation?

    1. There is a difference between various modes of note taking and their ultimate outcomes. Some is done for learning about an area and absorbing it into one's own source of general knowledge. Others are done to collect and generate new sorts of knowledge. But some may be done for raw data collection and analysis. Beatrice Webb called this "scientific note taking".

      Historian Jacques Goutor talks about research preparation for this sort of data collecting and analysis though he doesn't give it a particular name. He recommends reading papers in related areas to prepare for the sort of data acquisition one may likely require so that one can plan out some of one's needs in advance. This will allow the researcher, especially in areas like history or sociology, the ability to preplan some of the sorts of data and notes they'll need to take from their historical sources or subjects in order to carry out their planned goals. (p8)

      C. Wright Mills mentions (On Intellectual Craftsmanship, 1952) similar research planning whereby he writes out potential longer research methods even when he is not able to spend the time, effort, energy, or other (financial) resources to carry out such plans. He felt that just the thought experiments and exercise of doing such unfulfilled research often bore fruit in his other sociological endeavors.

    1. A career-line study of the presidents, all cabinet members,and all members of the Supreme Court. This 1 'already have onIBM cards from the constitutional period through Truman'ssecond term, but I want to expand the items used and analyze itafresh.

      Notice that it's not just notes, but data on IBM cards that he's using for research here. This sort of data analysis is much easier now, but is also of the sort detailed by Beatrice Webb in her scientific note taking.

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  17. Sep 2022
    1. Oftentimes they even refered to one another.

      An explicit reference in 1931 in a section on note taking to cross links between entries in accounting ledgers. This linking process is a a precursor to larger database processes seen in digital computing.

      Were there other earlier references that are this explicit within either note making or accounting contexts? Surely... (See also: Beatrice Webb's scientific note taking)


      Just the word "digital" computing defines that there must have been an "analog' computing which preceded it. However we think of digital computing in much broader terms than we may have of the analog process.

      Human thinking is heavily influenced by associative links, so it's only natural that we should want to link our notes together on paper as we've done for tens of thousands of years (at least.)

    1. arranged according to their subject-matter ;" that" epigraphic monuments belonging to the sameterritory mutually explain each other when placedside by side ;" and, lastly, that " while it is all butimpossible to range in order of subject-matter ahundred thousand inscriptions nearly all of whichbelong to several categories ; on the other hand,each monument has but one place, and a verydefinite place, in the geographical order."

      Similar to the examples provided by Beatrice Webb in My Apprenticeship, the authors here are talking about a sort of scientific note taking method that is ostensibly similar to that of the use of a modern day computer database or spreadsheet function, but which had to be effected in index card form to do the sorting and compiling and analysis.

      Do the authors here use the specific phrase scientific note taking? It appears that they do not.

    2. The systematic order, or arrangement by sub-jects, is not to be recommended for the compilationof a Corpus or of regesta.
  18. Aug 2022
    1. Neurath claimed that magic was unfalsifiable and therefore disenchantment could never be complete in a scientific age.[18]
      1. Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
    2. Neurath believed that socio-economic theory and scientific methods could be applied together in contemporary practice.
  19. Jul 2022
    1. Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of Lynxes)

      There's something about this name and its original purpose as a society that makes me wonder if this wouldn't have been an excellent throwback name for the "Friends of the Link"?

    2. During the seventeenth century, this associative view vanished and was replaced by more literallydescriptive views simply of the thing as it exists in itself.

      The associative emblematic worldview prevalent prior to the seventeenth century began to disappear within Western culture as the rise of the early modern period and the beginning of the scientific revolution began to focus on more descriptive modes of thought and representation.


      Have any researchers done specific work on this shift from emblematic to the descriptive? What examples do they show which support this shift? Any particular heavy influences?

      This section cites:<br /> William B. Ashworth, Jr. “Natural History and the Emblematic World View,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westfall, eds #books/wanttoread<br /> which could be a place to start.


      Note that this same shift from associative and emblematic to descriptive and pedantic coincides not only with the rise of the scientific revolution but also with the effects of rising information overload in a post-Gutenberg world as well as the education reforms of Ramus (late 1500s) et al. as well as the beginning of the move away from scholasticism.


      Is there any evidence to support claims that this worldview stemmed from pagan traditions and cultures and not solely the art of memory traditions from ancient Greece? Could it have been pagan traditions which held onto these and they were supplemented and reinforced by ecclesiastical forces which used the Greek traditions?


      Examples of emblematic worldview: - particular colors of flowers meant specific things (red = love, yellow = friendship, etc.) We still have these or remants - Saints had their associative animals and objects - anniversary gifts had associative meanings (paper, silver, gold, etc.) We still have remnants of these things, though most are associated with wealth (gold, silver, platinum anniversaries). When did this tradition actually start? - what were the associative meanings of rabbits, turtles, and other animals which appear frequently in manuscript marginalia? (We have the example of the bee (Latin: apes) which where frequently used this way as being associated with the idea of imitation.) - other broad categories?

    1. recipe for scientific note-taking

      Notice that Beatrice Webb uses the modifier "scientific" to describe her note taking. She also indicates that note taking has a "scientific value".

    2. This process serves a similar purpose in sociology to that of theblow-pipe and the balance in chemistry, or the prism and the electro¬scope in physics. That is to say, it enables the scientific worker to breakup his subject-matter, so as to isolate and examine at his leisure itsvarious component parts, and to recombine them in new and experi¬mental groupings in order to discover which sequences of events have acausal significance

      Beatrice Webb analogized the card index (or note taking using slips of paper) as serving the function of a scientific tool for sociologists the way that chemists use blow pipes and balances or physicists use the prism or electroscope. These tools all help the researcher examine small constituent parts and then situate them in other orderings to provide insight into the subject areas.

  20. Jun 2022
    1. nature abhors a vacuum I think that the way you spark creativity is to empty your mind I meditate every day I take long walks in the woods with my dog

      nature abhors a Vaccum - Aristotle quote

      https://news.tulane.edu/pr/roll-over-aristotle-nature-doesn%E2%80%99t-always-hate-vacuum - defending against this quote by their research (click above link) - explained with new chemistry jargon - bowl-shaped molecules called cavitands

    1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/

      I can see why there's so much backlash on this piece.

      It could and should easily have been written without any reference at all to E. O. Wilson and been broadly interesting and true. However given the editorial headline "The Complicated Legacy of E. O. Wilson", the recency of his death, and the photo at the top, it becomes clickbait for something wholly other.

      There is only passing reference to Wilson and any of his work and no citations whatsoever about who he was or why his work was supposedly controversial. Instead the author leans in on the the idea of the biology being the problem instead of the application of biology to early anthropology which dramatically mis-read the biology and misapplied it for the past century and a half to bolster racist ideas and policies.

      The author indicates that we should be better with "citational practices when using or reporting on problematic work", but wholly forgets to apply it to her own writing in this very piece.

      I'm aware that the magazine editors are most likely the ones that chose the headline and the accompanying photo, but there's a failure here in both editorial and writing for this piece to have appeared in Scientific American in a way as to make it more of a hit piece on Wilson just days after his death. Worse, the backlash of the broadly unsupported criticism of Wilson totally washed out the attention that should have been placed on the meat of the actual argument in the final paragraphs.

      Editorial failed massively on all fronts here.


      This article seems to be a clear example of the following:

      Any time one uses the word "problematic" to describe cultural issues, it can't stand alone without some significant context building and clear arguments about exactly what was problematic and precisely why. Otherwise the exercise is a lot of handwaving and puffery that does neither side of an argument or its intended audiences any good.

    1. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6202

      Scientific American apparently published an unsupported hit piece on E. O. Wilson just following his death.


      Desperately sad to hear as I've read many of his works and don't recall anything highly questionable either there or in his personal life, even by current political standards.

      SA does seem to have slipped from my perspective and I'm more often reading Quanta instead.

  21. May 2022
    1. Thus, the sensitive seismographer of avant-garde develop-ments, Walter Benjamin, logically conceived of this scenario in 1928, of communicationwith card indices rather than books: “And even today, as the current scientific methodteaches us, the book is an archaic intermediate between two different card indexsystems. For everything substantial is found in the slip box of the researcher who wroteit and the scholar who studies in it, assimilated into its own card index.” 47
      1. Walter Benjamin, Einbahnstra ß e, in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1928/1981), 98 – 140, at 103.

      Does Walter Benjamin prefigure the idea of card indexes conversing with themselves in a communicative method similar to that of Vannevar Bush's Memex?

      This definitely sounds like the sort of digital garden inter-communication afforded by the Anagora as suggested by @Flancian.

    1. I think it may have been the British Library interview in which Wengrow says something like, you know, no one ever challenges a new conservative book and says, so and so has just offered a neoliberal perspective on X. But when an anarchist says something, people are sure to spend most of their time remarking on his politics. I think it's relevant that G&W call out Pinker's cherry-picking of Ötzi the ice man. They counter this with the Romito 2 specimen, but they insist that it is no more conclusive than Ötzi. So how does a challenging new interpretation gain ground in the face of an entrenched dominant narrative?

      This sentiment is very similar to one in a recent lecture series I'd started listening to: The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida #.

      Lawrence Cahoone specifically pointed out that he would be highlighting the revolutionary (and also consequently the most famous) writers because they were the ones over history that created the most change in their field of thought.

      How does the novel and the different manage to break through?

      How does this relate to the broad thesis of Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?


      The comment Wengrow makes about "remarking on [an anarchist's] politics" as a means of attacking their ideas is quite similar to the sort of attacks that are commonly made on women. When female politicians make relevant remarks and points, mainstream culture goes to standbys about their voice or appearance: "She's 'shrill'", or "She doesn't look very good in that dress." They attack anything but the idea itself.

  22. Apr 2022
    1. Dr Ellie Murray, ScD. (2021, September 19). We really need follow-up effectiveness data on the J&J one shot vaccine, but not sure what this study tells us. A short epi 101 on case-control studies & why they’re hard to interpret. 🧵/n [Tweet]. @EpiEllie. https://twitter.com/EpiEllie/status/1439587659026993152

    1. Dr. Deepti Gurdasani [@dgurdasani1]. (2021, October 30). A very disturbing read on the recent JCVI minutes released. They seem to consider immunity through infection in children advantageous, discussing children as live “booster” vaccines for adults. I would expect this from anti-vaxx groups, not a scientific committee. [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1454383106555842563

    1. Dr Nisreen Alwan 🌻. (2020, March 14). Our letter in the Times. ‘We request that the government urgently and openly share the scientific evidence, data and modelling it is using to inform its decision on the #Covid_19 public health interventions’ @richardhorton1 @miriamorcutt @devisridhar @drannewilson @PWGTennant https://t.co/YZamKCheXH [Tweet]. @Dr2NisreenAlwan. https://twitter.com/Dr2NisreenAlwan/status/1238726765469749248

    1. Dr. Jonathan N. Stea. (2021, January 25). Covid-19 misinformation? We’re over it. Pseudoscience? Over it. Conspiracies? Over it. Want to do your part to amplify scientific expertise and evidence-based health information? Join us. 🇨🇦 Follow us @ScienceUpFirst. #ScienceUpFirst https://t.co/81iPxXXn4q. Https://t.co/mIcyJEsPXe [Tweet]. @jonathanstea. https://twitter.com/jonathanstea/status/1353705111671869440

    1. Adam Kucharski. (2021, February 6). It’s flattering being asked for your opinion by the media (especially if you have lots of them) but I do think it’s important to defer to others if you’re being asked on as a ‘scientific expert’ and the subject of the interview falls outside your area of research/expertise. [Tweet]. @AdamJKucharski. https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1358050473098571776

    1. In this way the pressures of the multitude and diversity of authorita-tive opinion, already articulated in the previous century by Peter Abelard (1079–1142), were heightened by the development of reference books, from indexes and concordances that made originalia searchable and to the large compilations that excerpted and summarized from diverse sources.

      Prior to the flourishing of reference materials, Peter Abelard (1079-1142) had articulated the idea of "the multitude and diversity of authoritative opinion" to be found in available material. How was one to decide which authority to believe in a time before the scientific method?

      link to https://hypothes.is/a/oMSaKLb2EeyXOE_0Yh1Chw

    2. Even if the Speculum was copied only in parts, Vincent of Beauvais exposed the reader to multiple opinions on any topic he discussed. Neither the concordance nor the encyclo-pedic compendium resolved the textual difficulties or contradictions that they helped bring to light. Vincent explicitly left to the reader the task of reaching a final conclusion amid the diversity of authoritative opinions that might exist on a question: “I am not unaware of the fact that philosophers have said many contradictory things, especially about the nature of things. . . . I warn the reader, lest he perhaps be horrified, if he finds some contradictions of this kind among the names of diverse authors in many places of this work, especially since I have acted in this work not as an author, but as an excerptor, that I did not try to reduce the sayings of the philosophers to agreement but report what each said or wrote on each thing; leaving to the judgment of the reader to decide which opinion to prefer.”161

      Interesting that Vincent of Beauvais indicates that there were discrepancies between the authors, but leaves it up to the reader to decide for themself.

      What would the reader do in these cases in a culture before the scientific method and the coming scientific revolutions? Does this statement prefigure the beginning of a cultural shift?

      Are there other examples of (earlier) writers encouraging the the comparison of two different excerpts from "expert" or authoritative sources to determine which should have precedence?

      What other methods would have encouraged this sort of behavior?

  23. Mar 2022
    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: ‘@alexdefig are you really going to claim that responses to the introduction of passports on uptake across 4 other countries are evidentially entirely irrelevant to whether or not passports are justified or not?’ / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved 31 March 2022, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1444358068280565764

    1. James Heathers. (2021, October 26). Perish the thought I would be as peremptory as @GidMK. No, I’m going to hector, mock, or annoy those replies, THEN ask for money, THEN block you when I get bored. See, these aren’t rebuttals. No-one’s said anything about the actual work. Nothing. Not a sausage. [Tweet]. @jamesheathers. https://twitter.com/jamesheathers/status/1452980059497762824

    1. There are some additional interesting questions here, like: how do you get to the edge quickly? How do you do that across multiple fields? What do you do if the field seems misdirected, like much of psychology?
      1. How do you get to the edge quickly?

      I think this is where literature mapping tools come in handy. With such a tool, you can see how the literature is connected and which papers are closer to the edge of understanding. Some tools on this point include Connected Papers, Inciteful, Scite, Litmaps, and Open Knowledge Maps.

      1. How do you do that across multiple fields?

      I think this requires taking an X-disciplinary approach that teeters on multiple disciplines.

      1. What do you do if the field seems misdirected, like much of psychology?

      Good question. It is hard to re-orient a field unless you can find a good reason (e.g., a crisis) for a paradigm shift. I think Kuhn's writing on [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions(https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/Kuhn.html) may be relevant here.

    1. Indigenous scholars conducting scientific research combine formalacademic training and a personal lived experience that bridgesIndigenous and Western ways of knowing. In the United States andCanada, this concept is called Etuaptmumk, meaning ‘Two-EyedSeeing’. Etuaptmumk comes from the Mi’kmaw language of easternCanada and Maine, and was developed by Elders Dr Albert Marshalland Murdina Marshall.

      Developed by Elders Dr. Albert Marshall and Murdina Marshall, the Mi'kmaw word Etuaptmunk describes the concept of "Two-Eyed Seeing". It is based on the lived experience of Indigenous peoples who have the ability to see the world from both the Western and Indigenous perspectives with one eye on the strengths of each practice.


      The idea behind Etuaptmunk is designed and geared toward Western thinkers who place additional value on the eyes and literacy. Perhaps a second analogy of "Two-Eared Hearing" might better center the orality techniques for the smaller number of people with lived experiences coming from the other direction?

      These ideas seem somewhat similar to that of the third culture kid.

    2. These ways of knowinghave inherent value and are leading Western scientists to betterunderstand celestial phenomena and the history and heritage thisconstitutes for all people.

      The phrase "ways of knowing" is fascinating and seems to have a particular meaning across multiple contexts.

      I'd like to collect examples of its use and come up with a more concrete definition for Western audiences.

      How close is it to the idea of ways (or methods) of learning and understanding? How is it bound up in the idea of pedagogy? How does it relate to orality and memory contrasted with literacy? Though it may not subsume the idea of scientific method, the use, evolution, and refinement of these methods over time may generally equate it with the scientific method.

      Could such an oral package be considered a learning management system? How might we compare and contrast these for drawing potential equivalencies of these systems to put them on more equal footing from a variety of cultural perspectives? One is not necessarily better than another, but we should be able to better appreciate what each brings to the table of world knowledge.

    1. Immersion in previous work may bia s creativity and limit imagination if users cannot break free from tradition.

      Being bound in the shackles of prior traditions and even one's own work can be stifling for future creativity and the expansion of our imaginations.

      Link to the scientific revolution thesis of Thomas Kuhn.

    2. Creativity occurs when a person, using the symbols of a given domain ... has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty is selected by the appropriate field for inclusion in the relevant domain. The next generation will encounter that novelty as part of the domain they are exposed to, and if they are creative, they in turn will change it further.

      —Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

    1. for the most part, people bought the party line and pushed for a migration regardless of the specifics

      Tailorism requires Taylorism. If you fail at the latter, you'll never be able to reason accurately about the former.

  24. Feb 2022
    1. 9/8g Hinter der Zettelkastentechnik steht dieErfahrung: Ohne zu schreiben kann mannicht denken – jedenfalls nicht in anspruchsvollen,selektiven Zugriff aufs Gedächtnis voraussehendenZusammenhängen. Das heißt auch: ohne Differenzen einzukerben,kann man nicht denken.

      Google translation:

      9/8g The Zettelkasten technique is based on experience: You can't think without writing—at least not in contexts that require selective access to memory.

      That also means: you can't think without notching differences.

      There's something interesting about the translation here of "notching" occurring on an index card about ideas which can be linked to the early computer science version of edge-notched cards. Could this have been a subtle and tangential reference to just this sort of computing?

      The idea isn't new to me, but in the last phrase Luhmann tangentially highlights the value of the zettelkasten for more easily and directly comparing and contrasting the ideas on two different cards which might be either linked or juxtaposed.


      Link to:

      • Graeber and Wengrow ideas of storytelling
      • Shield of Achilles and ekphrasis thesis

      • https://hypothes.is/a/I-VY-HyfEeyjIC_pm7NF7Q With the further context of the full quote including "with selective access to memory" Luhmann seemed to at least to make space (if not give a tacit nod?) to oral traditions which had methods for access to memories in ways that modern literates don't typically give any credit at all. Johannes F.K .Schmidt certainly didn't and actively erased it in Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.

    1. The linear process promoted by most study guides, which insanelystarts with the decision on the hypothesis or the topic to write about,is a sure-fire way to let confirmation bias run rampant.

      Many study and writing guides suggest to start ones' writing or research work with a topic or hypothesis. This is a recipe for disaster to succumb to confirmation bias as one is more likely to search out for confirming evidence rather than counter arguments. Better to start with interesting topic and collect ideas from there which can be pitted against each other.

    1. Deepti Gurdasani. (2022, January 29). Going to say this again because it’s important. Case-control studies to determine prevalence of long COVID are completely flawed science, but are often presented as being scientifically robust. This is not how we can define clinical syndromes or their prevalence! A thread. [Tweet]. @dgurdasani1. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1487366920508694529

    1. Deepti Gurdasani. (2022, January 30). Have tried to now visually illustrate an earlier thread I wrote about why prevalence estimates based on comparisons of “any symptom” between infected cases, and matched controls will yield underestimates for long COVID. I’ve done a toy example below here, to show this 🧵 [Tweet]. @dgurdasani1. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1487578265187405828

  25. Jan 2022
    1. Prof. Gavin Yamey MD MPH. (2022, January 7). Thank you @j_g_allen for continuing to advocate for childhood vaccination & for sharing evidence on masks Yesterday, the U.S. saw a record number of COVID-19 pediatric hospital admissions, almost 1,000 Unvaxxed kids are 10 X more likely to be hospitalized than vaxxed kids 1/2 [Tweet]. @GYamey. https://twitter.com/GYamey/status/1479265484562386944

  26. Dec 2021
    1. Timothy Caulfield. (2021, December 30). #RobertMalone suspended by #twitter today. Reaction: 1) Great news. He has been spreading harmful #misinformation. (He has NOT contributed to meaningful/constructive scientific debate. His views demonstrably wrong & polarizing.) 2) What took so long? #ScienceUpFirst [Tweet]. @CaulfieldTim. https://twitter.com/CaulfieldTim/status/1476346919890796545

    1. Deepti Gurdasani. (2021, December 23). Some brief thoughts on the concerning relativism I’ve seen creeping into media, and scientific rhetoric over the past 20 months or so—The idea that things are ok because they’re better relative to a point where things got really really bad. 🧵 [Tweet]. @dgurdasani1. https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1474042179110772736

    1. Hobbes and Rousseau told their contemporaries things that werestartling, profound and opened new doors of the imagination. Nowtheir ideas are just tired common sense. There’s nothing in them thatjustifies the continued simplification of human affairs. If socialscientists today continue to reduce past generations to simplistic,two-dimensional caricatures, it is not so much to show us anythingoriginal, but just because they feel that’s what social scientists areexpected to do so as to appear ‘scientific’. The actual result is toimpoverish history – and as a consequence, to impoverish our senseof possibility.

      The simplification required to make models and study systems can be a useful tool, but one constantly needs to go back to the actual system to make sure that future predictions and work actually fit the real world system.

      Too often social theorists make assumptions which aren't supported in real life and this can be a painfully dangerous practice, especially when those assumptions are built upon in ways that put those theories out on a proverbial creaking limb.


      This idea is related to the bias that Charles Mathewes points out about how we treat writers as still living or as if they never lived. see: https://hypothes.is/a/VTU2lFvZEeyiJ2tN76i4sA

    1. ReconfigBehSci. (2021, December 18). One thing I keep coming back to in my thoughts is the formerly respected scientists who completely lost their way in this pandemic. Is there something we could be teaching young researchers that would help minimise this in future? Are there norms of science we could strengthen? [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1472172123829456897

    1. Every serious (academic) historical work includes a conversation with other scholarship, and this has largely carried over into popular historical writing.

      Any serious historical or other academic work should include a conversation with the body of other scholarship with which argues for or against.

      Comparing and contrasting one idea with another is crucial for any sort of advancement.

    1. Tom Moultrie. (2021, December 12). Given the comedic misinterpretation of the South African testing data offered by @BallouxFrancois (and many others!) last night ... I offer some tips having contributed to the analysis of the testing data for the @nicd_sa since April last year. (1/6) [Tweet]. @tomtom_m. https://twitter.com/tomtom_m/status/1469954015932915718

    1. Foucault proclaimed in a footnote: “ Appearance of the index card and development of the human sciences: another invention little celebrated by historians. ”

      from Foucault 1975, p. 363, n. 49; see Foucault 1966, pp. XV and passim for discourse analysis.

      Is he talking here about the invention of the index card about the same time as the rise of the scientific method? With index cards one can directly compare and contrast two different ideas as if weighing them on a balance to see which carries more weight. Then the better idea can win while the lesser is discarded to the "scrap heap"?

  27. Nov 2021
    1. tack towards discovery, towards truth

      This sailing metaphor is a useful one. Buffeted on all sides by distraction. Constantly shifting pressures, but generally going in the same direction. There maybe an ideal path forward, but the variables are too numerous to know where the ideal path lies.

    1. Dr Daya Sharma 😷🥽💨🧼💉💉. (2021, October 30). Some of the UK JCVI deliberations are deeply disturbing, eg arguing against childhood vax so that they can get infected & boost immunity in adults. Also imply that vax doesn’t have an individual benefit! 🤯 How much of this warped thinking is present in Australia? #COVID19Aus https://t.co/o887d2etcW [Tweet]. @DrDayaSharma. https://twitter.com/DrDayaSharma/status/1454418003429183492

  28. Oct 2021
  29. Sep 2021
    1. Bracher, J., Wolffram, D., Deuschel, J., Görgen, K., Ketterer, J. L., Ullrich, A., Abbott, S., Barbarossa, M. V., Bertsimas, D., Bhatia, S., Bodych, M., Bosse, N. I., Burgard, J. P., Castro, L., Fairchild, G., Fuhrmann, J., Funk, S., Gogolewski, K., Gu, Q., … Xu, F. T. (2021). A pre-registered short-term forecasting study of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland during the second wave. Nature Communications, 12(1), 5173. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25207-0

  30. Aug 2021
    1. After a long and influential career, commonplace books lost their influence in the late seventeenth century. Classical passages were relegated to the anti- quarian scholar; they no longer molded discourse and life. Men who sought confirmation in empirical evidence and scientific measurement had little use for commonplace books.

      I believe that Earle Havens disputes the idea of the waning of the commonplace book after this.

      I would draw issue with it as well. Perhaps it lost some ground in the classrooms of the youth, but Harvard was teaching the idea during Ralph Waldo Emerson's time during the 1800s. Then there's the rise of the Zettelkasten in Germany in the 1700s (and later officially in the 1900s).

      Lichtenberg specifically mentions using his commonplace as a scientific tool for sharpening his ideas.

      Can we find references to other commonplacers like Francis Bacon mentioning the use of them for science?

  31. Jul 2021
    1. There were to be still other surprises. In the middle of the afternoon, the Chicago printer told the Woodbridge team, “One of the most irritating things for me is the fact that you keep delivering paper in 100-inch rolls. My printing press is 95 inches wide. The first thing I do is chop off 5 inches of product, which creates a lot of scrap and an additional labor operation. I’ve been complaining about this for years.” “That’s news to me,” said Woodbridge’s manufacturing vice president, glaring at the sales rep. It seemed that communication gaps also existed at Woodbridge. “It would be worth studying the engineering to see if we could align the width of our machine with yours,” the Woodbridge engineering services manager said. “Our machine, as far as I know, works only for printing and packaging applications, and most of your colleagues must have similar presses. The only reason we made the paper as wide as we did is that it is generally accepted in the industry that the wider the machine, the cheaper it can make the product.” “If the engineering study works out, we could charge you by the usable square yard rather than by the pound as we do today,” the marketing vice president suggested. “I would like that,” the Chicago printer said, beaming. “I sell square inches of printed stuff, not pounds.” The two sketched out the rough parameters of the engineering, the new economics of the redesigned paper machine, and the associated pricing.
  32. Jun 2021
    1. Soderberg, C. K., Errington, T. M., Schiavone, S. R., Bottesini, J., Thorn, F. S., Vazire, S., Esterling, K. M., & Nosek, B. A. (2021). Initial evidence of research quality of registered reports compared with the standard publishing model. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01142-4

    1. We just cannot know all that life will throw at us, and if we want our grading contract to be fair and equitable for everyone, we need to reexamine it, reflect on how it has been working for each of us, and perhaps adjust it. 

      This idea of re-evaluating at regular time points can be a very useful and powerful tool in more areas than just writing.

      Society as a whole needs to look carefully at where it is do do this same sort of readjustment as well.

      It's the same sort of negative feedback mechanism which is at work in the scientific method and constantly improving the state-of-the art.

    1. Lynne Kelly's observation that oral cultures revised useful knowledge into their memories appears to me to be a simple precursor to annotation and the idea of the scientific method all in one...

    2. Scholars are likely familiar with the so-called “Great Conversation,” or the idea in Western thought that we collectively participate in an iterative process of knowledge production through reference, review, and refinement. As our conversation continues over time, an ever-expanding network of annotation–through notation, citation, links, and data–traces an interconnected lineage of ideas and insight.

      Again, Dr. Lynne Kelly discusses this sort of process in non-Western and primarily oral cultures as well. Songlines has some interesting discussion of this in the Australian aboriginal cultures.

  33. May 2021
    1. Long before Vannevar Bush, Francis Bacon cited Seneca to describe a similar ambition for his scientific method, which he hoped would “abridge the infinity of individual experience ... and remedy the complaint of vita brevis, ars longa.”
    2. Blair’s previous work demonstrated that the practices of literary reading and writing were central to the rise of scientific method. Focusing on the lawyer and scientist Jean Bodin in the sixteenth century, she meticulously examined how Bodin collected commonplace reading notes and then stored and analyzed them as scientific evidence.

      I really do need to create a historical timeline for commonplace books already.

      Georg Christoph Lichtenberg also did this in the late 1700's and became famous for it after his death and the publication of his Waste Books. Worth looking into who his influences may have been?

    1. Cringing at your own memories does no one any good. On the other hand, systematically reviewing your older work to find the patterns in where you got it wrong (and right!) is hugely beneficial — it’s a useful process of introspection that makes it easier to spot and avoid your own pitfalls.

      This idea is far from new and is roughly what Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was doing with the science portions of his Waste Books in the late 1700's where he was running experiments, noting wins, losses, and making progress using the scientific method.

    1. The scrapbooks reveal a critical and analytical way of thinking and emphasis on experimental evidence in physics, through which he became one of the early founders and advocates of modern scientific methodology. The more experience and experiments are accumulated during the exploration of nature, the more faltering its theories become. It is always good though not to abandon them instantly. For every hypothesis which used to be good at least serves the purpose of duly summarizing and keeping all phenomena until its own time. One should lay down the conflicting experience separately, until it has accumulated sufficiently to justify the efforts necessary to edifice a new theory. (Lichtenberg: scrapbook JII/1602)

      Georg Christoph Lichtenberg used his notebooks as thinking tools with respect to scientific methodology.