reply to u/ruthlessreuben at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/w5yz0n/comment/ihxojq0/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

u/ruthlessreuben, as a historian, you're likely to appreciate some variations which aren't as Luhmann-centric. Try some of the following:

• Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• S. D. Goitein used a (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten to write many things including the magisterial A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (1967–1993). Incidentally he took 1/3 less notes and had 1/3 more output than Luhmann: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.

The following note taking manuals (or which cover it in part) all bear close similarities to Luhmann's system, but were written by historians and related to the ideas of "historical method":

• Barzun, Jacques. The Modern Researcher. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992. http://archive.org/details/modernresearcher00barz_1.
• Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
• Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
• Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.

Although she's a sociologist, you might also appreciate Beatrice Webb's coverage which also has some early database collection flavor:

Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.

Just as Warburg's suggestion that an album of collected stamps could help us to understand the world visually if all other images were lost, perhaps subsections of traces of other cultures could do the same.

How do we better distinguish the margins between histories, biographies, and hagiographies and the motivations of the writers who produce them?

How do we better underline these subtleties to the broader publics outside of historians and other specialists?

Railroads/Transportation was a big thing as I am noticing a lot of laws were becoming effective in this time frame. Although the Jim Crow Laws were to promote segregation, this law at least ensured that colored people are recieving the services at the rate they are paying. They were able to sue companies if they were treated otherwise. The cars of the trains were to be in good condition and could not be different than the cars and services for white people.

I feel like the voices of chidldren were limited, marginalized and omitted. I feel this was because they had feelings too! I think not all white kids wanted to be racists towards other children but were influenced by their families. And to have all these laws put into place as a black child, I would be sad that people feel like I am a distraction or that I am so disgustiing that they do not want to sit next to me or play on the same play ground as me. They were children and could not express their true feelings, even caucasion children.

This is signifigant because we wouldnt see the first african american student attend an all white school until Ruby Bridges nearly 100 years later (1960). Between the years of the Jim Crow Laws in Tennesse, there were a couple other laws that were effective when it came to education. Whites and colored people, high school and elemantary, separate facilities, and eventually even adding penalties of fines and imprisonment.

Thesis; As of 1954, segregation laws for miscegenation, transportation and public accommodation were still in effect.

I say this is the thesis because this senetence tells the point of the entire article; what was outlawed and when these laws would become ineffective. After this sentence, we would see a list of the laws that were put into place during this time.

Jim Crow Laws were set into place for years 1866-1955 in the state of Tennesee. These Jim Crow Laws were laws that outlawed miscegenation, transportaion and public accomodation of black people and white people. The 1869 Law stated that no person can be excluded from recieving an education from tne University of Tennesee due to race but mandated that black people receive the same education in a separate faciliity. These Jim Crow Laws in Tennesee would last until 1955.

An example of a bi-lingual German-English speaker/writer specifically translating and using Zettelkasten as an established word in English.

Who is the audience? Is the document/artifact created for public/private setting?

It was created for the public. Fredrick Douglas published his article in his Rochester, New York newspaper. The article, The North Star, dates July 28th, 1848.

What is the main argument/thesis/idea/ of the document in one sentence?

Women need to be as equal as a man.

Why is it important and or significant?

This is significant because women have been recognized equal to a man. Whereas these observations and impressions were taken at the very first womens rights convention. This convention was followed by the article, The North Star by Fredrick Douglas.

Fredrick Douglas observed that the convention was ran by mostly women. He says depsite the different opinions and view points, these women maintained good decorum. He says their proceedings were marked by ability and dignity. At this convention, he would see these women read grievances and other documents setting forth the rights for women.

When- July 19-20th, 1848 Who- 100 people (32males/68females) Fredrick Douglas attended and wrote his impressions about the convention in a newspaper. Article named, The North Star What- Very first womens rights conventions. Article : The North Star Where- NewYork, Seneca Falls.

Fredrick Douglas was one of one hundred people who attended the very first womens rights conevention. Located in New York, Seneca Falls. Frederick Douglas is the author of the article, The North Star. Dated July 28th, 1848. Article is about

Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/498809

...have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wirterbuch der...

This is the oldest appearance of the word "Zettelkasten" appearing in a journal article which I could find on JSTOR.

I'm not surprised it's in a journal in the humanities and specifically on archaeology.

Update: even better, this has introduced me to a massive new ZK: Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache!

Where is Indiana Jones' zettelkasten?!

Google translation:

Every Egyptology student learns in their first semester that the Egyptian word pt (pronounced pet) means "heaven". The collection of documents in the dictionary archive comprises around 6,000 document slips. In the order of this material one learns that the Egyptian heaven has gates and ways, waters and banks, sides, pillars and chapels. This makes it tangible that the Egyptians had something completely different in mind when they heard the word "heaven" than modern Westerners do, namely a mythical space in which gods and spirits of the dead dwell.

This is a fantastic example of context creation for a dead language as well as for creating proper historical context.

Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809.

Tagged this because it's the first appearance of Zettelkasten in an English language setting in the JSTOR repository.

see also: https://hypothes.is/a/RYZOssqXEe2H5wtABI0puA

Started on 2023-03-24; finished on 2023-03-27.

ägyptischen Sprache.

This is the first use of the word Zettelkasten in an English (non-German) context in JSTOR that I've been able to find.

Still likely not the first appearance, but reasonably early...

Blair, Ann M. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.

Annotation target: urn:x-pdf:202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965

Hypothes.is: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965

Review: [Untitled] Roman und Satire im 18. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Poetik by Jörg Schönert Review by: J. D. Workman Monatshefte, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1970), pp. 420-421 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30156502

...form of the period for which there are no classical "rules." Schinert musters his evidence in an interesting and generally very lucid manner, although at times he may seem somewhat overzealous, if not indeed repetitious, in assembling all the data: at times one detects the faint odor of the Zettelkasten...

faint odor! ha! and in an English language document.

In Memoriam: Josef Körner (9 May 1950) Robert L. Kahn The Modern Language Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 38-59 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3720394

...of German letters long before Heine, impudently naive and imprudently honest, though always in- dustrious, 'griindlich' (and was it not Korner who 'discovered' the numerous un- published notebooks of Friedrich Schlegel and, in turn, left behind some twenty ' Zettelkasten ' which were recently acquired by Bonn University, a unique 'Fund-...

example of use of zettelkasten in English here in 1963 specifically as a loan word from German...

Review: [Untitled] Historical Records of Rameses III by William F. Edgerton, John A. Wilson Review by: William C. Hayes American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1936), pp. 558-559

...have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wirterbuch der...

This is the oldest appearance of the word "Zettelkasten" appearing in a journal article which I could find on JSTOR.

I'm not surprised it's in a journal in the humanities and specifically on archaeology.

Where is Indiana Jones' zettelkasten?!

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.

Isuwa (transcribed Išuwa and sometimes rendered Ishuwa) was the ancient Hittite name for one of its neighboring Anatolian kingdoms to the east. Isuwa is the origin of our word 'Asia'.

A Graduated English-Welsh Spelling Book by John Lewis

Some of the words may have shifted a bit since 1857, but there's something delightfully subversive about considering using this book to learn/practice Welsh in 2023.

Seen in a Hoskins business equipment advertisement in Business magazine (1903) for card index:

YOUR BUSINESS AT YOUR FINGER ENDS

Close to the phrase "at your finger tips". Would it have appeared before or after this?

Business: The Magazine for Office, Store and Factory. Vol. 16. Business Man’s Publishing Company, 1903. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Business/QKaxezfHjL0C?hl=en&gbpv=0.

Washington, George. “From George Washington to The States, 8 June 1783.” University of Virginia Press, Founders Online, National Archives http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-11404.

See also copy at: https://americainclass.org/sources/makingrevolution/independence/text1/washingtoncircularstates.pdf

Referenced by Chapter: Founding Myths by Akhil Reed Amar in Kruse, Kevin M., and Julian E. Zelizer. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Basic Books, 2023. Location 538-539

Washington had emphasized the need for such an indivisible union—most dramatically in his initial farewell address, a world-famous circular letter to America’s governors in 1783.

ostensibly in The Story of America: Essays on Origins

Sam Matla talks about the collector's fallacy in a negative light, and for many/most, he might be right. But for some, collecting examples and evidence of particular things is crucially important. The key is to have some idea of what you're collecting and why.

Historians collecting small facts over time may seem this way, but out of their collection can emerge patterns which otherwise would never have been seen.

cf: Keith Thomas article

concrete examples of this to show the opposite?

Relationship to the idea of AI coming up with black box solutions via their own method of diffuse thinking

Jacob Marcus, ‘The Historian’s Credo’, 1958, AJA Marcus Nearprint File, Box 2.

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'".

Great example of a historian implying the benefit of not only a card index, but of potentially how commonplace it was to not only have one, but to have stenographers or secretaries to help manage them.

Link this to the reference in Heyde about historians and others who were pushed to employ stenographers or copyists to keep their card indexes in order.

Given the cost of employing secretaries to manage our information, one of the affordances that computers might focus on as tools for thought is lowering the barrier for management and maintenance. If they can't make this easier/simpler, then what are they really doing beyond their shininess? Search is obviously important in this context.

What was the reference to employing one person full time to manage every 11 or 12 filing cabinets' worth of documents? Perhaps Duguid in the paper piece?

Interesting to see this quote in light of the work of Ernst Bernheim and historical method.

At what point did history begin to be viewed as a science this way? (Did it predate Berheim?) Is it still?

Gotthard Deutsch didn't adhere to any particular theory of information when it came to the size of his notes. Instead Jason Lustig indicates that his perspective was influenced by his personal motto 'de minimis curat historicus' (history's minutiae matter), and as a result, he was interested in the smallest of distinctions of fact and evidence. ᔥ

Not sure that I agree with the framing of "algorithmic processing" here as it was done manually by a person pulling out facts. But it does bring out the idea of where collecting ends and synthesis of a broader thesis out of one's collection begins. Where does historical method end? What was the purpose of the collection? Teaching, writing, learning, all, none?

In contrast to the sort of mixing of personal life and professional life suggested by C. Wright Mills' On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952), a half century earlier Gotthard Deutsch's zettelkasten method showed what Lorraine Datson would term 'mechanical objectivity'. This is an interesting shift in philosophical perspective of note taking practice. It can also be compared and contrasted with a 21st century perspective of "personal" knowledge management.

Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by [[Taylor Lorenz]]

shifts in language and meaning of words and symbols as the result of algorithmic content moderation

instead of slow semantic shifts, content moderation is actively pushing shifts of words and their meanings

article suggested by this week's Dan Allosso Book club on Pirate Enlightenment

Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by Taylor Lorenz

https://de-crypt.org/

Google Translate:

Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.

The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.

The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.

How might this leadership happen within the social epidemic view of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point framework?

• the law of the few,
• the stickiness factor, and
• the power of context

and with respect to mavens, connectors, and salespeople?

The modern day culture of the Betsimisaraka which displays both egalitarian and stubborn people who refuse the authority of any overlords is some of the evidence that their culture through pirate stories into Europe were the beginnings of the Enlightenment.

• Llyn Bochlwyd (lake gray cheek)
• Foel Fawr
• Coed Llugwy
• Cwm Cneifion

Erasure of culture

Memory and place names

"A nation which forgets its past has no future." - Winston Churchill (check quote and provenance)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLQ6XlG0MQ4

Can I use some of these sorts of methods with respect to corpus linguistics over time to better identified calcified words or archaic phrases that stick with the language, but are heavily limited to narrower(ing) contexts?

Multiple interesting things going on here with the use of "Micros✽ft W✽rd".

He's simultaneously: - Voldemorting the phrase to some extent so that it doesn't show up easily or at all in digital search. - He's visually marring the phrase to show active dislike of the software and its general use - By using the symbols, he's effectively turning the word into a form of profanity the way many have used the top row of symbols on typewriters to indicate swear words in the 20th century. Examples: sh@t, dmn, he!!, or any set of four symbols like &%^ to generally indicate a "four letter word" as many profane words typically have four letters.

Apparently Aby Warburg "obsessively kept" notes on antisemitic incidents on the Eastern front in his zettelkasten.

This piece looks at Warburg's Jewish identity as supported or not by the contents of his zettelkasten, thus placing it in the use of zettelkasten or card index as autobiography.

Might one's notes reflect who they were as a means of creating both their identity while alive as well as revealing it once they've passed on? Might the use of historical method provide its own historical method to be taken up on a meta basis after one's death?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_R._Gottschalk

As a complete aside I can't help but wonder if Tami Gottschalk is related to Louis R. Gottschalk, the historian who wrote Understanding history; a primer of historical method?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/109r830/who_else_is_pretty_much_avoiding_the_digital_zk/

movie tickets as stores of memory

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnwelsh/comments/10acr9j/sut_i_ddweud_i_memorized_yn_gymraeg/

Fascinating that the Welsh language doesn't seem to have a direct translatable word/verb for "to memorize". The closest are dysgu (to learn, to teach) and cofio (to remember).

Related phrase: yn dysgu cerddi ar gof (to learn poems by heart), though this last is likely a more direct translation of an English concept back into Welsh.

Is this lack of a seemingly basic word for such a practice a hidden indicator of the anthropology of their way of knowing?

If to learn something means that one fully memorizes it from the start, then one needn't sub-specify, right?

Geniza studies rule of thumb: ALWAYS consult the original of a document when referencing work by other scholars as new translations, understandings, context, history, and conditions regarding the original work of the scholar may have changed.

know that the recipient is already familiar with the subject. 17

17 Indeed, writers often used this shared understanding to stress the relationship they had with the recipients.

reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)

ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.

Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:

• Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
• Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
• Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
• Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)

For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.

What does the collector's fallacy really relate to?

If you're collecting material you're not processing and either linking/tagging for future active use, then yes, it's definitely a fallacy. Collecting articles and tidbits that you don't read and don't use, at least in the moment is a massive waste.

But if, instead, you're collecting tidbits of context and examples over time, say like historian Keith Thomas (? double check this reference, but I think it was him in his essay Working Methods (LRB, 2010)) describes, and then linking them into some sort of larger thesis or puzzling out some pattern between and amongst those examples, then you're collecting correctly and productively.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/brooks-and-capehart-on-the-midterm-results-and-what-it-means-trumps-role-in-the-gop#transcript

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Km_Vyhvww

David Brooks here (coins?) uses the phrase "normie Republican" to describe Republicans who tend to center rather than to the far right, Christian right, or who are Trump Republicans. Some of those people might describe these normie Republicans as Rhinos (Republicans in name only.)

Typically I've only seen "normie" used by those who identify as ADHD, Aspergers, or otherwise on the (neurodiverse) spectrum to describe average people who don't display those behaviors.

Judy Woodruff: So, I just want to be clear. We're using the word normie, as in — this is a David Brooks word, right? (LAUGHTER)

David Brooks: No, this — I did not invent this. I think two generations below me invented that word. (LAUGHTER)

Brooks admits he learned the word from others, but he's also using it with a different meaning and context than the original "normie" unadorned.

The use of kafala shows a shift from a meaning of social responsibility into a meaning co-opted by capitalism and social contract.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bushnell_Hart

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/848/zettelizers

A thread about what to call those who have a zettelkasten or those who practice the method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bushnell_Hart

In the 1923 short notices section of the journal History, one of the editors remarked in a short review of "The Mechanical Processes of the Historian" that they wished that Charles Johnson had spent more than two pages of the book on note taking and "other aspects of the 'Plan and Arrangement of Collections'" as the zettelkasten "is a doctrine so practically important" to historians.

T., T. F., A. F. P., E. R. A., H. E. E., R. C., E. L. W., F. J. C. H., and E. J. C. “Short Notices.” History 8, no. 31 (1923): 231–37.

Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394

read on 2022-10-30 - 10-31

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?

you may carry on the inquiry for a lifetime without discovering other events inconsistent with the hypothesis which has caught your eye. But you can never get beyond a circumstantial case. . . .<br /> "A Footnote to the Safety-Valve," August 15, 1940, Paxson Papers (University of California Library, Berkeley)

Examples of other historians who likely had a zettelkasten method of work.

Rhodes' method is tangentially mentioned by Earle Wilbur Dow as being "notebooks of the old type". https://hypothes.is/a/PuFGWCRMEe2bnavsYc44cg

One cannot excerpt their way into knowledge, simply cutting and pasting one's way through life is useless. Your notes may temporarily serve you, but unless you apply judgement and reason to them to create something new, they will remain a scrapheap for future generations who will gain no wisdom or use from your efforts.

relate to: notes about notes being only useful to their creator

Note, n.d. (probably made during the 1920's), unsorted, Paxson File.

One can easily leave out bits of evidence or cherry pick evidence to arrive at a given a priori conclusion. The truest thinker or historian will use the fullest context of evidence available at the time to arrive at their conclusion.

Naturally, additional evidence and emergent effects as history unfolds may change some of these conclusions over time.

Review of John B. Black, The Art of History; A Study of Four Great His- torians of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1926), New York Herald Tribune Books, December 12, 1926, p. 12.

Frederic L. Paxson frequently advised that a historian should work fully through the background material.

https://catalog.huntington.org/record=b1792186

Is it possible that this miscellany collection is of a zettelkasten nature?

Found via a search of the Huntington Library for Frederic L. Paxson's zettelkasten

Historical Falsification.

relationship with zettelkasten in the history of historical methods?

Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français (DEAF) is a dictionary built out of a slip box containing 1.5 million slipswith over 12 million references.

Tuchman, Barbara W. Practicing History. Ballantine, 1982.

Active historical amnesia is a feature that can dramatically disrupt and change human culture. Naturally this can be either a good or a bad thing depending on the subsequent changes with respect to broader society. Given stronger historical context, however, one might better plan for future changes and benefits.

Historical amnesia is harder to implement in smaller, close knit Indigenous oral communities, but with the right conditions in highly connected and dramatically diverse world wide communities it can be implemented at mass scale as has been shown by recent social media and political shifts creating a post-truth society.

This scientific viewpoint of history was not unique to the time and can be seen ensconced in popular books on historical method of the time, including Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos.

Given the time period (1859-1921), what was the potential influence, if any, on Deutsch and his methods by historical methods writers and the evolution of the science of history by Ernst Bernheim or Seignobos/Langlois from that same period?

Who is the father of the method of historical understanding?

https://academic.oup.com/book/9329/chapter-abstract/156108952?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Does Droysen cover any note taking or academic research methods the way Bernheim or Langlois and Seignobos did?

C. Wright Mills delineates a rough definition of "sociological imagination" which could be thought of as a framework within tools for thought: 1. Combinatorial creativity<br /> 2. Diffuse thinking, flâneur<br /> 3. Changing perspective (how would x see this?) Writing dialogues is a useful method to accomplish this. (He doesn't state it, but acting as a devil's advocate is a useful technique here as well.)<br /> 4. Collecting and lay out all the multiple viewpoints and arguments on a topic. (This might presume the method of devil's advocate I mentioned above 😀)<br /> 5. Play and exploration with words and terms<br /> 6. Watching levels of generality and breaking things down into smaller constituent parts or building blocks. (This also might benefit of abstracting ideas from one space to another.)<br /> 7. Categorization or casting ideas into types 8. Cross-tabulating and creation of charts, tables, and diagrams or other visualizations 9. Comparative cases and examples - finding examples of an idea in other contexts and time settings for comparison and contrast 10. Extreme types and opposites (or polar types) - coming up with the most extreme examples of comparative cases or opposites of one's idea. (cross reference: Compass Points https://hypothes.is/a/Di4hzvftEeyY9EOsxaOg7w and thinking routines). This includes creating dimensions of study on an object - what axes define it? What indices can one find data or statistics on? 11. Create historical depth - examples may be limited in number, so what might exist in the historical record to provide depth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Renan

Ernest Renan argued in Life of Jesus that Jesus should be studied and written about like any other historic person or process. His life and the history and writings around it should be open to critical scrutiny just like any other biography or autobiography.

https://twitter.com/inkasrain/status/1566410516721016833

Does anyone know what exactly this is? A friend gave it to me years ago when they visited Jerusalem. I don't read Hebrew. Is it something harmless or should it be shamshed(jew magic)? (attached photo of a mezuzah)

The idea of "magic" here within a modern religious context is interesting in that it shows the divergence of religion and magic as concepts with respect to cultural practices.

The phrasing also has a sense of othering the unknown culture with a sense of fear in the idea that the object should be smashed. There's also a lack of basic science knowledge and tinge of superstition implied by the fact that they think that smashing will somehow dissipate the unknown magic.

So many different cultural indicators of various things going on here...

The "subclassing" word choice here is interesting. It matches the model eventually suggested in HTML 3.x, but at the time of this draft, HTML was in a draft specification stage (third revision — "02") for HTML 2.0

I'm interested in the discussion that led to this.

Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. Century Company, 1924.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1560611614226882560.html

A reframing of what the story of the Tower of Babel means.

The moral of the Tower of Babel is to encourage power with rather than power over.

Allosso is using "both sides" in a broadly journalistic fashion the way it had traditionally meant in the mid to late 21st century until Donald J. Trump's overtly racist comment on Aug. 15, 2017 "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." following the Charlottesville, VA protests.

Perhaps it might be useful if people quit using the "both sides" as if there were only two perspectives on an issue (for or against), when in reality there is often a spectrum of thoughts and feelings, not all mutually exclusive, about issues?

https://www.nz.histinst.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/datdr

related: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-27798-7_4-1

Interesting that he notices this and explicitly calls it out in a handbook on writing.

Dutcher, George Matthew. “Directions and Suggestions for the Writing of Essays or Theses in History.” Historical Outlook 22, no. 7 (November 1, 1931): 329–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/21552983.1931.10114595

Definitely a paragraph aimed at the student in the manner of a syllabus, but also an interesting tidbit on the potential evolution of writing forms over time.

How does language over time change with respect to the types and styles of writing forms, particularly when they're prescribed or generally standardized over time? How do these same standards evolve over time and change things at the level of the larger pictures?

These look fascinating, but alas for another day.

I'm curious, what, if any, detail Fling (1920) and Vincent (1911) provide on note taking processes?

Jocelyn Harris mentioned in her talk "Who is Captain Wentworth" that this a reference to a specific historical person who painted Austen's brother Frank's (a sailor) portrait. The Thing about Austen podcast does a full episode (29) on this miniature.

https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/grasshoppers/36340

Variations of the word grasshopper in Welsh:<br /> * Ceiliog y gwair * Sioncyn y gwair * Robin sbonciwr * Sbonciwr y gwair * Ceiliog y rhedyn

Note that the last one translates as cockerel of the fern and is probably related to kilhog-raden (in Bretton) and kulyek reden (in Cornish).

The verb (y)sboncio means to spring/leap/jump<br /> thus sbonciwr is someone/something that springs, leaps or jumps and is also related to sboncen (the game squash).

gwair translates as grass

What is the origin of this metaphor?

One might suspect the 1500s or during the Scientific Revolution?

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/renaissance-phrases

These French authors are specifically aware of Ernst Bernheim's 1894 text which also has sections on note taking methods. Should be interesting to see how this differs at least for the brief portion of Bernheim I read on the topic.

Link to: - https://hyp.is/RJ-6-AekEe268sOEeQ79Yw

General purpose of the text.

Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie: mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte. Leipzig : Duncker & Humblot, 1908. http://archive.org/details/lehrbuchderhist03berngoog.

Title translation: Textbook of the historical method and the philosophy of history : with reference to the most important sources and aids for the study of history

A copy of the original 1889 copy can be found at https://digital.ub.uni-leipzig.de/mirador/index.php

Ein großer Teil der Regestenarbeit wird neuerdings dem Forscher durch besondere Regestenwerke abgenommen, namentlich auf dem Gebiet der mittelalterlichen Urkunden. Daß diese bevorzugt werden, hat zwei Gründe: erstens sind die Urkunden fur die Geschichte des Mittelalters gewissermafen als festes Gerippe von besonderer Wichtigkeit; zweitens sind sie so verstreut in ihren Fund- und Druckorten, daß die Zusammenstellung derselben, wie sie ftir jede Arbeit von neuem erforderlich wire, immer von neuem die langwierigsten und mtthsamsten Vorarbeiten nötig machen würde. Es ist daher von größtem Nutzen, daß diese Vorarbeiten ein fir allemal gemacht und dem einzelnen Forscher erspart werden.

Google translation:

A large part of the regesta work has recently been relieved of the researcher by special regesta works, especially in the field of medieval documents. There are two reasons why these are preferred: first, the documents are of particular importance for the history of the Middle Ages as a solid skeleton; Secondly, they are so scattered in the places where they were found and printed that the compilation of them, as would be necessary for each new work, would again and again necessitate the most lengthy and laborious preparatory work. It is therefore of the greatest benefit that this preparatory work should be done once and for all and that the individual researcher be spared.

While the contexts are mixed here between note taking and historical method, there is some useful advice here that while taking notes, one should do as much work upfront during the research phase of reading and writing, so that when it comes to the end of putting the final work together and editing, the writer can be spared the effort of reloading large amounts of data and context to create the final output.

Derartige geordnete Eintragungen historischer Materialien nennt man Regesten, Regesta, eine Ableitung von dem Verbum regerere, das schon bei Quintilian in der Bedeutung ,abschreiben, eintragen“ vorkommt. Spezielle Zusammenstellungen der Aufenthaltsorte historischer Persönlichkeiten aus den Quellen nennt man Itinerare. (p 556-557)

Google translation:

Such ordered entries of historical material are called regesta, regesta, a derivation of the verb regerere, which already occurs in Quintilian in the meaning "to copy, to enter". Special compilations of the whereabouts of historical figures from the sources are called itineraries.

Regesta in this context are complete copies of ordered entries of historical material. One might also translate this as historical copies or entries.

While Bernheim is talking about historical records and copies thereof in his discussion of regesta, he does bring up a useful point about manual note taking practice: one needn't completely copy the original context, just do enough work to create context for yourself so as not to be overburdened with excess material later. Some working in digital contexts may find it easy to simply copy and paste everything from an original document, but capturing just the useful synopsis may be enough, particularly when the original context can be readily revisited.

1. Regesten Da wir gesehen haben, wieviel auf tibersichtliche Ordnung bei der Zusammenstellung des Materials ankommt, muß man auf die praktische Einrichtung seiner Materialiensammlung von Anfang an bewußte Sorgfalt verwenden. Selbstverständlich lassen sich keine, im einzelnen durchweg gültigen Regeln aufstellen; aber wir können uns doch über einige allgemeine Gesichtspunkte verständigen. Nicht genug zu warnen ist vor einem regel- und ordnungslosen Anhäufen und Durcheinanderschreiben der Materialien; denn die zueinander gehörigen Daten zusammenzufinden erfordert dann ein stets erneutes Durchsehen des ganzen Materials; auch ist es dann kaum möglich, neu hinzukommende Daten an der gehörigen Stelle einzureihen. Bei irgend größeren Arbeiten muß man seine Aufzeichnungen auf einzelne lose Blätter machen, die leicht umzuordnen und denen ohne Umstände Blätter mit neuen Daten einzufügen sind. Macht man sachliche Kategorieen, so sind die zu einer Kategorie gehörigen Blätter in Umschlägen oder besser noch in Kästen getrennt zu halten; innerhalb derselben kann man chronologisch oder sachlich alphabetisch nach gewissen Schlagwörtern ordnen.

Google translation:

1. Regesture Since we have seen how much importance is placed on clear order in the gathering of material, conscious care must be exercised in the practical organization of one's collection of materials from the outset. It goes without saying that no rules that are consistently valid in detail can be set up; but we can still agree on some general points of view. There is not enough warning against a disorderly accumulation and jumble of materials; because to find the data that belong together then requires a constant re-examination of the entire material; it is also then hardly possible to line up newly added data at the appropriate place. In any large work one must make one's notes on separate loose sheets, which can easily be rearranged, and sheets of new data easily inserted. If you make factual categories, the sheets belonging to a category should be kept separate in covers or, better yet, in boxes; Within these, you can sort them chronologically or alphabetically according to certain keywords.

In a pre-digital era, Ernst Bernheim warns against "a disorderly accumulation and jumble of materials" (machine translation from German) as it means that one must read through and re-examine all their collected materials to find or make sense of them again.

In digital contexts, things are vaguely better as the result of better search through a corpus, but it's still better practice to have things with some additional level of order to prevent the creation of a "scrap heap".

link to: - https://hyp.is/i9dwzIXrEeymFhtQxUbEYQ

In 1889, Bernheim suggests making one's notes on separate loose sheets of paper so that they may be easily rearranged and new notes inserted. He suggested assigning notes to categories and keeping them separated, preferably in boxes. Then one might sort them in a variety of different ways, specifically highlighting both chronological and alphabetical order based on keywords.

(This quote is from the 1903 edition, but presumably is similar or the same in 1889, but double check this before publishing.)

Link this to the earlier section in which he suggested a variety of note orders for historical methods as well as for the potential creation of insight into one's work.

Google translation:

One sees that the material order already sets certain ones points of view ahead and is therefore conditional; only with a clear arrangement of the material will we also vice versa often enough due to accumulating data in a way that we didn't expect at first, in a completely new way points of view of our topic.

While discussing the various orders of research material, Ernst Bernheim mentions the potential of accumulating data and arranging it in various manners such that we obtain new points of view in unexpected ways. This sounds quite similar to a process of idea generation similar to combinatorial creativity, though not as explicit.

The process creates the creativity, but isn't necessarily used to force the creativity here.

While he doesn't point out a specific generative mechanism for the creation of the surprise, it's obvious that his collection and collation method underpins it.

This is an important think to understand - that making games to seem simple is quite hard. It takes a lot of work and thinking to make something simple for others to use. That is the key work of the developer historian – to take loads of historical research and turn it into easy to understand games.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/tech-etymology-tv-clicker/236965/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/when-to-use-its-vs-its

If it's true that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized instead of the more commonly capitalized "you", does this help to underline some of the self-centeredness show by most of the English speaking West?

Can it be?! Twyla Tharp has an entire chapter in her book on creativity that covers a variation of the zettelkasten note taking concept!!!

Does the phrase "thinking outside of the box" make a tacit nod to the idea of using a card index (or the German zettelkasten) for note taking, sense making, and thinking?

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/192957/20210920133840569_19-1392%20bsac%20Historians.pdf