• for: key insight - modernity - inefficiency - biological system - resilience

• key insight

  • in our modern way of thinking the dominant metaphors are mechanical
  • and in mechanical system is literally the case if you can make the system more efficient you get rid of waste
  • so if you have parts that duplicate each other they're not needed you can get rid of one of them
  • and that's true for mechanical systems so that waste and mechanical systems is something you can get rid of and decrease efficiency
  • but in living human and even biological systems duplication is not waste it's resilience

• comment

  • aspectualization and situatedness

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.

Mechanical philosophy and vitalism were popular and co-existed on a non-mutually exclusive spectrum in the seventeenth century.

Mechanical philosophy is a philosophy of nature which arose broadly in the 17th century and sought to explain all natural phenomenon in terms of matter and motion without relying on "action at a distance" or the idea of a cause and effect that occurred without any physical contact or direct motivation.

René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Marin Mersenne all held mechanistic viewpoints.

See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_philosophy

Link to: - spooky action at a distance (quantum mechanics)

Hugh of St. Victor wrote Didascalicon, a text about what topics should be learned and why. In it, he outlined seven mechanical arts (or technologies) in analogy with the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium) as ways to repair the weaknesses inherit in humanity.

These seven mechanical arts he defines are: - fabric making - armament - commerce - agriculture - hunting - medicine - theatrics

Hugh of St. Victor's description of the mechanical art of commerce here is fascinating. He says "reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and turns the private good of individuals into a benefit for all" (doublcheck the original quotation, context, and source). This sounds eerily familiar to the common statement in the United States about trade and commerce.

Link this to the quote from Albie Duncan in The West Wing (season 5?) about trade.

Other places where this sentiment occurs?

Is Hugh of St. Victor the first in history to state this sentiment?

https://www.carandache.com/us/en/

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.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

Overview and history of the Antikythera mechanism and the current state of research surrounding it.

Antikythera mechanism found in diving expedition in 1900 by Elias Stadiatis. It was later dated between 60 and 70 BCE, but evidence suggests it may have been made around 205 BCE.

Functions

One of the primary purposes of the device was to predict the positions of the planets along the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system.

The device was also used to track the positions of the sun and moon. This included the moon's phase, position and age (the number of days from a new moon). It also included the predictions of eclipses.

Used to track the motions of the 5 known planets including 289 synodic cycles in 462 years for Venus and 427 synodic cycles in 442 years for Saturn.

Risings and settings of stars indexed to a zodiac dial

Definitions

metonic cycle, a 19-year period over which 235 moon phases recur; named after Greek astronomer Meton, but discovered much earlier by the Babylonians. The Greeks refined it to a 76 year period.

saros cycle, the 223 month lunar cycle which was used by the Babylonians to predict eclipses. A dial on the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses using this cycle.

synodic events: conjunctions with the sun and its stationary points

People

Archimedes - potentially the designer of an early version of the Antikythera mechanism

Elias Stadiatis - diver who discovered the Antikythera mechanism

Albert Rehm - German philologist who the numbers 19, 76 and 223 inscribed on fragments of the device in the early 1900s

Derek J. de Solla Price, published Gears from the Greeks in 1974. Identified the gear train and developed a complete model of the gearing.

Michael Wright - 3D x-ray study in 1990 using linear tomography; identified tooth counts of the gears and understood the upper dial on the back of the device

Tony Freeth - author of article and researcher whose made recent discoveries.

The first sophisticated astronomical clocks were not created until the 14th century.

Link to https://hyp.is/_N6Fjo0SEeyu8o-ym2lrLg/www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

The first known precision-geared mechanism is a sundial and calendar of Byzantine origin dating to circa 600 C.E.

It really kills me that there's so much hero worship of all this, particularly given the information processing power of index card systems at the time. I don't really think it took such a leap to image automating such a system given the technological bent of the time.

Of course actually doing it is another thing, but conceptualizing the idea at the time would have be de rigueur.

https://us.makerscabinet.com/products/ferrule

What a beautiful looking instrument!

In order to become a free-standing tool, the card index needed to have self-referential closure.

This may have been one of the necessary steps for the early ideas behind computers. In addition to the idea of a clockwork universe, the index card may have been a step towards early efforts at creating the modern computer.

https://www.wallpaper.com/design/best-mechanical-pencils

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card

Duarte, B., Shoots-Reinhard, B., Silverstein, M., Goodwin, R., Bjälkebring, P., Markowitz, D. M., & Peters, E. (2021). Using MTurk to Capture Change: Tracking Perceptions of COVID-19 in a U.S. sample through the UO-EPIDeMIC Study. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/v5s6w

Bauer, B., Larsen, K. L., Caulfield, N., Elder, D., Jordan, S., & Capron, D. (2020). Review of Best Practice Recommendations for Ensuring High Quality Data with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/m78sf

July 22, J. H. M. 2020 A.-493 P. O. F., & DOI 10.12788/jhm.3497, 2020 |. (2020). Effect of Systemic Glucocorticoids on Mortality or Mechanical Ventilation in Patients With COVID-19. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 15(8). https://doi.org/10.12788/jhm.3497

Martel, C., Mosleh, M., & Rand, D. (2020). You’re definitely wrong, maybe: Correction style has minimal effect on corrections of misinformation online. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w3tfb

Arechar, A. A., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Turking in the time of COVID [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vktqu

So...not Borg? (cf. mholder on Astell)

I'm a little puzzled by this. I understand the part clarifying that natural doesn't mean inherent to human nature, but what do they mean by "not mechanical"? If gestures are attached to ideas, does that make them a physical extension of thought (and thereby not solely bodily)? Is that (mechanical/bodily) what they are getting at? If so, the separation of language and thought and/or body and mind gets a bit blurry.

In contrast to Sheridan's approach, which the RT editors noted was "non-mechanical"--what do they mean by this term?

I also viewed this as placing order on the disordered.

Despite the premeditated nature of these movements, I am guessing they are performed in a way that seems inherently natural? Or are the movements meant to look mechanical?

Seemingly almost robotic?

This reminds me of the Mechanical Turk a fake chess-playing machine from the 18th century. This is called a mechanical illusion.

Organic movements?

This description gives me the creeps.. Makes me think of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" for some reason