Did our word "ray" (as in ray of sunshine) derive from the ancient Egyptian word for their god "Ra"?

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...

What a searing insult carefully couched here!

National libraries began to more commonly acquire the working papers (nachlass) of authors and researchers after the mid-19th century.

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

The split between the ideas of commonplace book and zettelkasten may stem from the time period of the Anglicization of the first. If Gessner was just forming the tenets of a zettelkasten practice in 1548 and the name following(?) [what was the first use of zettelkasten?] while the word commonplace was entering English in 1531 using a book format, then the two traditions would likely have been splitting from that point forward in their different areas.

Apparently Cole Steel manufactured typewriters in the 1960s.

reply to u/zleonska at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/1223a2e/comment/jdp8nbl/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks for sharing this u/zleonska! More people might consider using a card index to index their commonplace books for future search and discovery. The first person I'd ever come across doing this was W. Ross Ashby whose commonplace and index have been digitized and are now searchable online at http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html. It seems a nice change of pace to have a centralized index over keeping one in each book and having to search in multiple books over time as described in John Locke's commonplacing method, though it obviously seems to have made a significant impact.<br /> If folks find it interesting/useful I did come across https://www.indxd.ink, a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears. This could potentially be used by those who have analog commonplace/zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.

u/zleonska in discussing their paper notebook commonplace practice reports that finding their material within multiple notebooks isn't difficult but that, like W. Ross Ashby, they use index cards to index their commonplaces.

• We don't have everything we need, e.g., information, resources, etc.

• We're tired, overwhelmed, frustrated, and/or burnt out.

• We're waiting until we have more motivation. Future me will be brimming with motivation and get so much done

• We lack urgency. This can wait until tomorrow.

• We lack a big enough why. Why does this project even matter?

• We've hit the project's boring/tedious/difficult bits.

• We're surrounded by tantalizing distractions

• We struggle to get started because we'll just be interrupted in a few minutes, breaking our flow.

• We feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the project.

• We struggle with perfectionism

• We get sucked into distraction spirals. A 5-minute Reddit break turns into two hours.

• We do many urgent but unimportant tasks, so there's no time/energy for the important stuff.

• We seek distractions to quiet the monkey brain. (If we could snap our fingers and silence the mental chatter, we'd be more productive.)

• We dream of creating something amazing and perfect. Once we start the work, the ability to create something perfect disappears. As long as we don't start, perfection feels possible.

• We talk about projects and daydream a lot. These feel good and feel like progress. But these good feelings diminish our motivation to actually get started.

• We dream of doing so many things. It's hard to commit to one project because it means saying No to a dozen others. Not starting on a project means we're keeping our options open.

• We seek out distractions to soothe negative emotions.

• We fear judgment and criticism.

• We fear making mistakes.

• We fear failing

• We have imposter syndrome.

• We have too many concurrent projects/responsibilities. This causes us to constantly switch contexts and/or feel overwhelmed. This kills any chance of getting into a flow state.

• We feel like other people don't have to work as hard, and it's not fair that things take so much effort for us.

• We don't have anyone to cheer us on, celebrate tiny wins and small victories, etc

• We don't have anyone holding us accountable.

• We're surrounded by people who procrastinate, so it feels normal to put things off. Who wants to be the only person not procrastinating?

• We feel lonely, so it's hard to find the motivation to do stuff.

via u/clumsyAmeba on https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/121pe2x/ive_identified_27_causes_of_procrastinationwhich/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geChDY3MQj8

Similar to TUL disk bound notebooks.

Paper is nice for fountain pens.

On the expensive side.

https://williamhannah.com/

https://plotterusa.com/

reply to u/deafpolygon at https://www.reddit.com/r/PKMS/comments/121ihrj/other_pkm_forums_places_to_discuss/

The space is fragmented broadly by both tools (some with specific workflows) and philosophies, so you may have to hunt/peck (or subscribe/filter) for the types of pieces you're searching for. Here's some resources you might appreciate. In the fora section things are ordered roughly by relation to the topic as well as frequency of posting/activity.

Fora

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/
• https://forum.zettelkasten.de/
• Tools for Thought Rocks https://lu.ma/community/com-mmvGpDTZoRDsxou
• https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/
• https://forum.obsidian.md/
• https://forum.eastgate.com/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity
• https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalGardens/

Sites

• https://jarango.com/ and related podcast
• https://rheingold.com/
• https://zettelkasten.de/
• https://writing.bobdoto.computer/
• https://boffosocko.com/category/note-taking/
• https://www.lesswrong.com/ (Not entirely focused but frequently has related material to the space)

Discord

For some communities like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. you're also likely to find discord servers with some reasonable sub-channels and activity as well. A good non-product specific Discord with related material is The Productivists at https://discord.gg/m2bP2hh3. There's also one for Zettelkasten https://discord.gg/bYrVm9sr.

And of course as you visit all these locales, be sure to mention r/PKMS and maybe more will learn that this location is a better catch-all for in-depth conversations and questions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/comments/122gsma/is_there_a_qwerty_keyboard_shorthand_system/

reply to u/taurusnoises at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ov8qp/comment/jbvdyx8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks for the tip Bob, JSTOR was a reasonably quick/easy search (compared to the larger list I've got that'll take some manual digging.) The vast majority of instances I found within JSTOR were in full German contexts, and many definitely were in a negative contextual light (generally as an epithet—one went so far as to mention a smell— describing authors' poor structure, over-reliance on ZK, argument, or writing style, potentially as not providing appropriate context.) Fascinatingly the number of appearances of zettelkasten in any language began in the early 1900s and have grown from a dozen every decade to 150 this past decade with a marked increase in the 1980s and 90s.

The oldest one I found in an English language article was from:

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. (JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/stable/498809)

All available earlier copies and parallel texts 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 Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache.

Potentially not the very first English appearance, but 1936 is reasonably early. I wasn't surprised that it appeared in an archaeology journal.

Of particular interest is that it provides an indication that the "Berlin Dictionary" or the Dictionary of the Egyptian Language, which was begun in 1897 just two years after the beginning of the Mundaneum by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, began life as a multi-user zettelkasten. For those who are looking for the rare versions of collaborative zettelkasten, this is a new version for folks to research.

Süss, Wilhelm. Karl Morgenstern (1770-1852), eloquentiae, I - ll. Gr. et Lat., antiquitatum, aesthetices et historiae litterarum atque artis p.p.o. simulque bibliothecae academicae praefectus : ein kulturhistorischer Versuch. Dorpat : Mattiesen. Accessed March 24, 2023. https://jstor.org/stable/community.32963350.

Karl Morgenstern (1770-1852), eloquence, I - ll. Gr. and Lat., antiquities, aesthetics and history of literature and art ppo and at the same time in charge of the academic library: ein kulturhistorischer Versuch<br /> 1928<br /> Sweet, William<br /> Karl Morgenstern (1770-1852), eloquence, I - ll. Gr. and Lat., antiquities, aesthetics and history of literature and art ppo and at the same time in charge of the academic library: ein kulturhistorischer Versuch,

... the ancient ones etc., his note boxes filled with quotations He compares the nations, speaks of the Germans who, since Gellert, “read and write and read what. has, eyes.. other nation has one, Leipziger which boasts such staid mass catalogues?” But not the word interpreters of the ancients, who the ...

Stroebe, Lilian L. “Die Stellung Des Mittelhochdeutschen Im College-Lehrplan.” Monatshefte Für Deutsche Sprache Und Pädagogik, 1924, 27–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44327729

The place of Middle High German in the college curriculum<br /> Lilian L. Stroebe<br /> Monthly magazines for German language and pedagogy (1924), pp. 27-36

... of course to the reading material. Especially in the field of etymology it is easy to stimulate the pupils' independence. For years I have had each of my students create an etymological card dictionary with good success, and I see that at the end of the course they have this card box ...

Müller, A., and A. Socin. “Heinrich Thorbecke’s Wissenschaftlicher Nachlass Und H. L. Fleischer’s Lexikalische Sammlungen.” Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 45, no. 3 (1891): 465–92. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43366657

Title translation: Heinrich Thorbecke's scientific estate and HL Fleischer's lexical collections Journal of the German Oriental Society

... wrote a note. There are about forty smaller and larger card boxes , some of which are not classified, but this work is now being undertaken to organize the library. In all there may be about 100,000 slips of paper; Of course, each note contains only one ...

Example of a scholar's Nachlass which contains a Zettelkasten.

Based on this quote, there is a significant zettelkasten example here.

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.

"Neither of us seems to be good for professors." The lectures by Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) Steffen Martus Journal for German Studies , New Series, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2010), pp. 79-103 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23977728

... of knowledge that can be constantly rearranged, constantly expanded, constantly rebuilt, added to and sorted out. While the topography was fixed in the old systems of knowledge, new categories could easily be set up in the Zettelkasten , for example, under which knowledge found its place that had not been foreseen ...

Paris on the Amazon?: Postcolonial Interrogations of Benjamin’s European Modernism (pp. 216-245) Willi Bolle From: A Companion to the Works of Walter Benjamin, Camden House (2009) Edition: NED - New edition https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brv7g

...and complete but constitutes an open repertoire, always in movement, expressing and stimulating the spirit of experimentation and invention. Let us remember that Benjamin, in his early work Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street, 1923/28), argued in favor of direct communication between the “ Zettelkasten ” (card box...

communication between?! though it is 2009 and after Luhmann's reference to communication with slip boxes....

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...

On organizational forms of historical research in Germany Hermann Heimpel Historical Journal , Vol. 189 (Dec., 1959), pp. 139-222 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27612563

... , has worked through baroque collectaneas laid out in book form, will appreciate the uniform paper format, the slip box and its prerequisite, the paper cutting machine3). Without the railway there would be no congress?, no ?General Association of German Historical and Antiquity Associations ...

Review: [Untitled] Intellectual history of ancient Christianity by Carl Schneider Review by:Peter Nober Biblica , Vol. 36, No. 4 (1955), pp. 537-539 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42619108

... very different areas, which is all the more astonishing since the author had to endure difficult fates in life at the same time (I, VII: loss of his library and all card boxes in Königsberg). The author has a lot of church history, patristic, archaeological, old classical, rabbinic and even Byzantine literature ...

Der Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in München Adolf Lumpe Journal of Philosophical Research , Vol. 7, H. 1 (1953), pp. 122-125 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20480611

... J. Rubenbauer, Dr. Ida Kap and Dr. O. Hiltbrunner and a large number of domestic and foreign employees. The thesaurus archive, which after various transit stations is now housed in Arcisstrasse (No. 8/III), currently includes around ten million slips of paper in around 7000 slip boxes . So far are complete ...

Review: [Untitled] Richard Dehmel Man and the Thinker; A Biography of His Mind in the Reflection of Time by Harry Slochower Review by:Friedrich Bruns The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Apr., 1931), pp. 319-320 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27703515

... who is passionate about this work and who has extensive knowledge, especially in the philosophical field. A restriction must be made. The hardest thing about collecting is throwing it away. Too much is offered to us from a very large slip of paper . From Laotse it goes to John Dewey and from Buddha ...

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?!

Review: [Untitled] Frontier areas of forensic psychology, especially on the theory of legal capacity. (Archive for legal and economic philosophy, vol. 21, pp. 213-219) by Karl Haff Review by:Rümel's Archive for Civilistic Practice , vol. 128, h. 3 (1928), pp. 366-372

... " than with semi-finished products, in which the author's whole list of papers is poured out on the unfortunate reader - quite apart from the cram-books and mnemonics, which still find an all too believing audience. A quote from be in place for Don Quixote ...

Wigent, William David, Burton David William Housel, and Edward Harry Gilman. Modern Filing and How to File: A Textbook on Office System. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1916. http://archive.org/details/modernfilingate02compgoog.

Original .pdf converted with docdrop.org for OCR annotation on 2023-03-24.

annotation target: urn:x-pdf:3c1f14d64c91cf4b513efa16df4ed90d

Annotations: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A3c1f14d64c91cf4b513efa16df4ed90d

Wigent, William David, Burton David William Housel, and Edward Harry Gilman. Modern Filing and How to File: A Textbook on Office System. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1916. http://archive.org/details/modernfilingate02compgoog.

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.

https://www.facebook.com/muskegonheritagemuseum/posts/browne-morse-companyin-1907-former-shaw-walker-executive-frank-morse-partnered-w/3640379512645950/

Attached image of the factory has a sign across two sides of the building that repeats the words: "Quality Cabinets Browne-Morse Company"

Frank Morse, a former Shaw-Walker executive, partnered with retired plumbing dealer Richard Browne in 1907 to form the Browne-Morse Company which would manufacture office equipment.

Shaw-Walker. Flexowriter File-Desks. Accessed March 24, 2023. http://archive.org/details/TNM_Flexowriter_File-Desks_-_Shaw-Walker_20171021_0001.

An interesting in-desk filing system for punched cards. Interesting I've not seen anything like this prior for a mini card index maintained in an office desk drawer.

Perhaps such a system wouldn't have been as easily accessible for use on a daily basis versus potentially more portable small systems that could have been transferred from desk to desk (person to person).

How to Run a War Chest Campaign. Rochester, N.Y.: Yawman & Erbe Mfg. Co., 1918. http://archive.org/details/howtorunwarchest00yawm.

Broadly a manual on how to do a big community fundraising effort. Emphasis on furniture and filing systems that could be purchased from the publisher of the piece.

Richards, Olly. Interview with Michel Thomas Publisher Sue Hart, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjrsATBc5A.

Thomas had a secretive nature and did most communication either over phone or in person. He didn't write letters. Sue Hart felt that it was the result of his experience in World War II. (Potentially relationship with spycraft?)

He was a bit of a showman and enjoyed dropping names. He enjoyed his fame and status. Thomas seemed to enjoy people listening to him and didn't appreciate confrontation and dealt with it by shutting people off and walking away.

Nothing deep here about his method really. All just background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjrsATBc5A

https://karaskustoms.com/

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.

Seems like from a historical perspective hierarchical databases were more prevalent in the 1960s and relational databases didn't exist until the 1970s. (check references for this historically)

Of course one must consider that within a card index or zettelkasten the ideas of both could have co-existed in essence even if they weren't named as such. Some of the business use cases as early as 1903 (earlier?) would have shown the idea of multiple storage and relational database usage. Beatrice Webb's usage of her notes in a database-like way may have indicated this as well.

9/8b2 "Multiple storage" as a necessity of<br /> storage of complex (complex<br /> evaluating) information.

Fascinating to see the English phrase "multiple storage" pop up in Luhmann's ZKII section on Zettelkasten.

This note is undated, though being in ZKII likely occurred more than a decade after he'd started his practice. One must wonder where he pulled the source for the English phrase rather than using a German one? Does the idea appear in Heyde? It certainly would have been an emerging question within systems theory and potentially computer science ideas which Luhmann would have had access to.

• Link to https://hypothes.is/a/WtB2AqmlEe2wvCsB5ZyL5A on multiple storage affordances

The researchers at the Niklas Luhmann-Archive studying Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten consider that "the collection can be understood as an intellectual autobiography" (translation mine) even though his slips were generally undated.

According to the Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, Luhmann began his first zettelkasten in 1952 likely when he was working as a legal trainee in Lüneburg or as a government councilor in the Ministry of Education in Lower Saxony.

This timeframe would have been just after Johannes Erich Heyde had published the 8th edition of Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens in 1951.

Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/Jn9elsk5Ee2hsLP5WWBEBw on dates of NL ZK - https://hypothes.is/a/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA aktenzeichen - https://hypothes.is/a/4wxHdDqeEe2OKGMHXDKezA Clemens Luhmann link

Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23. FAccT ’21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.

Would the argument here for stochastic parrots also potentially apply to or could it be abstracted to Markov monkeys?

reply to u/dotphrasealpha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11z08fq/what_type_of_note_did_niklas_luhmann_average_6/

The true insight you're looking for here is: Forget the numbers and just aim for quality followed very closely by consistency!

Of course most will ignore my insight and experience and be more interested in the numbers, so let's query a the 30+ notes I've got on this topic in my own zettelkasten to answer the distal question.

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 Luhmann produced approximately 90,000 slips which averages out to:

• 45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days
• 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true, this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays)

• 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 days
• 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated and often quoted 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes.

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Keep in mind that Luhmann worked at this roughly full time for decades, so don't try to measure yourself against him. (He also published in a different era and broadly without the hurdle of peer review.) Again: Aim for quality over quantity! If it helps, S.D. Goitein created a zettelkasten of 27,000 notes which he used to publish almost a third more papers and books than Luhmann. Wittgenstein left far fewer notes and only published one book during his lifetime, but published a lot posthumously and was massively influential. Similarly Roland Barthes had only about 12,500 slips and loads of influential work.

I keep notes on various historical practitioners' notes/day output over several decades using these sorts of practices. Most are in the 1-2 notes per day range. A sampling of them can be found here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day.

Anecdotally, I've found that most of the more serious people here and on the zettelkasten.de forum are in the 4-10 slips per week range.

<whisper>quality...</whisper>

Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten consists of a total of 27 sections/drawers each containing from 2,500 to 3,500 slips.

• ZK1 comprises 7 sections with about 23,000 notes written from about 1952 to 1961
• ZKII comprises 20 sections with approximately 67,000 slips written between 1961 to early 1997.

Sections 15, 16, 17 were part of the beechwood zettelkasten and along with sections 18, 19, and 20 which were stored outside of the main boxes in individual slipcases contain the bibliographic portions of ZKII

Part of section 17 contains some of the index as well as an index of people for ZKII in addition to some other special portions along with the index of keywords, bibliographical slips, and an overview of topics from ZKI.

The primary wooden boxes frequently pictured as "Luhmann's zettelkasten" is comprised of six wooden four-drawer card index filing cabinets which were supplemented by three individual slipcases.

One would suspect the individual slipcases were like the one pictured on his desk here: Luhmann zuhause am Zettelkasten (vermutlich Ende der 1970er/Anfang 1980er Jahre)<br /> Copyright Michael Wiegert-Wegener<br /> via Niklas Luhmann Online: die Erschließung seines Nachlasses - Geistes- & Sozialwissenschaften

The Luhmann archive has a photo of the beechwood portion with 24 drawers and one of the additional slipboxes on top of it:

(via https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten)

Most of the photos from the museum exhibition and elsewhere only focus on or include the main wooden portion of six cabinets with the 24 drawers.

See also: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten

Over the 45 years from 1952 to 1997 this production of approximately 90,000 slips averages out to

45 years * 365 days/year = 16,425 days 90,000 slips / 16,425 days = 5.47 slips per day.

260 working days a year (on average, not accounting for leap years or potential governmental holidays) 45 years x 260 work days/year = 11,700 90,000 slips / 11,700 days = 7.69 slips per day

In a video, Ahrens indicates that Luhmann didn't make notes on weekends, and if true this would revise the count to 7.69 slips per day.

Compare these closer numbers to Ahrens' stated 6 notes per day in How to Take Smart Notes. <br /> See: https://hypothes.is/a/iwrV8hkwEe2vMSdjnwKHXw

I've counted from the start of '52 through all of '97 to get 45 years, but the true amount of time was a bit shorter than this in reality, so the number of days should be slightly smaller.

Book Pockets and Date Guides: The Intricacies of a Paper-Based Library System – Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?<br /> by Steven Johnson, art by Nikita Iziev

Johnson does a good job of looking at the basic state of artificial intelligence and the history of large language models and specifically ChatGPT and asks some interesting ethical questions, but in a way which may not prompt any actual change.

When we write about technology and the benefits and wealth it might bring, do we do too much ethics washing to help paper over the problems to help bring the bad things too easily to pass?

Is language acquisition a very complex method of pattern recognition?

This is certainly "a way", but history has shown, particularly in the United States, that government regulation is unlikely to get involved at all until it's far too late, if at all. Typically they're only regulating not only after maturity, but only when massive failure may cause issues for the wealthy and then the "regulation" is to bail them out.

Suggesting this here is so pie-in-the sky that it only creates a false hope (hope washing?) for the powerless. Is this sort of hope washing a recurring part of

ethics washing!

Who get's to make decisions?

A similar set of questions might be asked of our political system. At present, the oligopolic nature of our electoral system is heavily biasing our direction as a country.

We're heavily underrepresented on a huge number of axes.

How would we change our voting and representation systems to better represent us?

What features would be design society towards? Stability? Freedom? Wealth? Tolerance?

How might long term evolution work for societies that maximized for tolerance given Popper's paradox of tolerance?

What are the long term effects of fast breaking changes and gradual changes for evolved entities?

Johnson states that Alexa and Siri are breakout consumer hits, but Amazon is actively scaling back it's Alexa teams and products as the devices haven't been as popular as we might otherwise expect. Siri is fine, but it's bundled into the already popular iPhone without an explicit choice.

ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think<br /> by Ian Bogost

ChatGPT as an instrument that allows one to play text like an instrument.

example of information overload

We're already drowning in information overload, but ChatGPT wants to increase the tsunami! Where is the tool that compresses and concatenates?

"Why music causes memories to flood back"

Why music causes memories to flood back<br /> Marlene Cimons

reply to u/mouseVed at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/11xu4vh/what_do_you_guys_think_of_this_note_taking_style/

Looks a tad messy to me, but I'm not the audience for it, you are. Some additional empty space on the page could potentially help. If this style works for you, perhaps take a look at the sketchnotes space. This book might be a good place to start (especially the sections on Visual Direction, Headers, and Layouts:<br /> Mills, Emily. The Art of Visual Notetaking: An Interactive Guide to Visual Communication and Sketchnoting. Illustrated edition. Walter Foster Publishing, 2019.

If you're keen on location as a key to memory and learning, you should also take a look at the idea of the 'method of loci'/memory palaces/songlines. The best modern coverage of this and various methods can be found in:<br /> Kelly, Lynne. Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from around the World. Pegasus Books, 2019.

https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1067406555455389697 by Raul Pacheco-Vega

See also related blog post with most of the contents of this thread. (I just read it before this.)

https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1068651482331979776

https://www.pikeschool.org/uploaded/Library/Files/takingnotesusingnotecards.pdf

found via:

Here are a few links to resources (in PDF format) to different models, strategies and techniques to take notes in index cards: https://t.co/tIVaeRA5nS and https://t.co/1CLkiyekzq

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 26, 2018

Note-taking techniques I: The index card method<br /> by Raul Pacheco-Vega

What does his full collection look like? Does he have a larger filing cabinet or boxes or are they all smaller modular boxes?

How does he handle the variety of sizes here? Particularly the differences between 4 x 6 and 5 x 8 as it sounds like he may use them similarly outside of their size difference.

Pacheco-Vega uses 3 x 5, 4 x 6, and 5 x 8" index cards for various needs/purposes, meaning he breaks the guideline for using "cards of equal size". Though in his description it sounds like he files cards separately by size.

Raul Pacheco-Vega uses five different types of index cards (notes): - direct quotations - bibliographic references - one idea index card (a major idea or them in one or two sentences) - summaries - combined (or content) index card

Pacheco-Vega stores his card with plastic tabs labeled by the references rather than by keyword or topic.

He does recommend consistency in filing though.

Pacheco-Vega defines a "combined" or "content index card" or one might say a content note as a one with "direct quotations, draft notes and ideas, conceptual diagrams, etc. that are associated with" the work in question. These seem similar to Ahrens' fleeting notes, though seem a bit more fleshed out.

Some people recommend writing JUST ONE IDEA/quotation per index card. I don’t do this. I use 1 index card per article, and per book chapter. If a book has 9 chapters I write one for each chapter (more of chapter is very dense). via embedded tweet: https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1067406555455389697

Interesting to see a passing mention of Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards here in a note taking context rather than a productivity one.

Professor Raul Pacheco-Vega calls his note taking process the "Index Cards Method" and only subtly differentiates it from Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten method.

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (my reading notes)<br /> by Raul Pacheco-Vega

https://www.tiktok.com/@bronwenlewismusic/video/7103936171306142981<br /> Running up that Hill

How to Write a Thesis (Umberto Eco) - my reading notes<br /> by Raul Pacheco-Vega

perfunctory positive review; no great insight

Schiller, Melanie. “Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers.” Journal of Writing Research 9, no. 2 (October 15, 2017): 227–31. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2017.09.02.05.

Since Luhmann’s system of the slip box is well-known, Ahrens’ valuable contribution lies less in providing an innovative technique of note-taking and the organization of academic writing, but more in reflecting critically on the very nature of writing as a medium of knowledge generation.

I think that by saying "Luhmann's system of the slip box is well-known", Stephanie Schiller is not talking about his specific box or his specific method, but the broader rhetorical method of the ars excerpendi and note taking in general. There isn't a whole lot of evidence to indicate that, except for a small segment of sociologists who may have know his work, that Luhmann's slip box was specifically well known at all up to the point of Ahrens' book.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115727768658

The Shaw=Walker Card Systems catalogue from circa 1899.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155447667554

This Catalog has a page with the various sizes of card catalog boxes available from Cole Steel in 1950s. The external sizes can be useful for placing the individual card sizes for some of these boxes on the secondary market.

They also include approximate card capacities.

Raul Pacheco-Vega 2018-11-29 https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1068166332947021825

Some excellent references on writing and their strengths. Heavy focus on academic writing.

(via longer thread starting with https://twitter.com/raulpacheco/status/1325630582894850048?lang=en)

reply to u/jaybestnz https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11xcnqg/if_i_have_many_notes_is_it_more_effective_to_load/

Part of the benefit of having a Luhmann-esque structured ZK, which is what I'm presuming your definition of a zettelkasten is, is that you're doing some of the interconnecting and building links and structures along the way. Instead, you'll now be doing that work after the fact and en-masse.

The underlying question is: do you plan on keeping and maintaining a more Luhmann-esque zettelkasten after your book? If you do, then it may be useful to take that step, otherwise, you're likely doing additional work that you may not see benefit from.

Making some broad assumptions about what you may have so far... If you've got physical index cards, things will be easier to collate and arrange. In your case, the closest (easy) workflow is that of Ryan Holiday who outlines his process in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk

Beyond this, your next best bets might be informed by:

• Dustin Lance Black: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrvawtrRxsw
• Victor Margolin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

If you prefer your writing structural advice in written form, then perhaps you're already in the latter part of the process broadly described by Umberto Eco in How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015).

In re: Last lines of: https://www.nb.admin.ch/snl/en/home/about-us/sla/insights-outlooks/einsichten---aussichten-2012/aus-dem-nachlass-von-james-peter-zollinger.html

Google translate does a reasonable job on translating it as 'getting bogged down' but the original sich ‹verzettelt› would mean roughly to "get lost in the slips", perhaps in a way similar to Anatole France's novel Penguin Island (L’Île des Pingouins. Calmann-Lévy, 1908) but without the storm or the death.

A native and bi-lingual German speaker might be better at explaining it, but this is a useful explanation of the prefix (sich) ver- : https://yourdailygerman.com/german-prefix-ver-meaning/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11uibsm/zettelkasten_or_hopeless_paper_chaos/

Don't be blinded by availability bias. It was historically almost always thus! Especially in Germany. (The French have traditionally called it a fichier boîte and in English it's the card index.) It's only been since the rise in popularity of the use of the German word in English (beginning in late 2013 with zettelkasten.de) where it has almost always been associated with Niklas Luhmann that has has most people now associating Luhmann's method with the word Zettelkasten.

If you look back at the 2013 exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, you'll notice that there were six zettelkasten featured there including those of Arno Schmidt, Walter Kempowski, Friedrich Kittler, Aby Warburg, Paul, Blumenberg, and Luhmann. Of those, the structure of Luhmann's was the exception which wasn't primarily organized broadly by subject heading. You'll also find some historians and sociologists organizing theirs by date or geographic regions as well as other custom arrangements as their needs and work might dictate.

The preponderance of books talking about these note taking methods suggest a topic heading arrangement for filing, including the book by Johnannes Erich Heyde from which Luhmann's son has indicated he learned an old technique from which he evolved his own practice.

See also:

• The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/

• Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

Rarely does a week go by that I don't run across another new/significant example of a zettelkasten. Thanks u/atomicnotes for keeping up the pace with James Peter Zollinger. (Though this week may be a twofer given my notes on Ludwig Wittgenstein's over the last few days.)

Aus dem Nachlass von James Peter Zollinger<br /> Swiss National Library NL

ᔥ u/atomicnotes in r/Zettelkasten - Zettelkasten, or "hopeless paper chaos"? <br /> (accessed:: 2023-03-20 04:49:15)

Not sure of the truth of the story either @Josh, but thanks for the trip down memory lane. My math teacher gave me that article when I was in the 12th grade because he knew I had been variously killing time in his math classes since 9th grade memorizing the first 8,000 digits of pi and reading for fun.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/opinion/college-learning-students-success.html

ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving<br /> by John Warner

Good writing is often about practices and process to arrive at an end product and not just the end product itself.

Writing is a means to an end, but most don't have the means to begin with.

Writing with a card index, zettelkasten, commonplace book or other related tools can dramatically help almost any writer because it provides them with a means from the start rather than facing a blank page and having to produce whole cloth in bulk.

Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning

https://openai.com/product/dall-e-2

DALL·E 2 is an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.

History Wars

See also: https://www.moreincommon.com/

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Zettel. Edited by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright,. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Second California Paperback Printing. 1967. Reprint, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2007.

annotation target: urn:x-pdf:15f4a1e48274f28b55eb6f8411c1ff1c

Important caveat here....

Nachlass<br /> : a German word, used in academia to describe the collection of manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and so on left behind when a scholar dies.

compounding of nach as "after", and the verb lassen meaning "to leave".

This section makes me question whether or not the editors of this work were aware of the zettelkasten tradition?!?

This brings up the question of how Ludwig Wittgenstein arranged his own zettelkasten...

Peter Geach made an arrangement of Wittgenstein's zettels which was broadly kept in the edited and published version Zettel (1967). Apparently fragments on the same topic were clipped together indicating that Wittgenstein's method was most likely by topical headings. However there were also a large number of slips "lying loose in the box." Perhaps these were notes which he had yet to file or which some intervening archivist may have re-arranged?

In any case, Geach otherwise arranged all the materials as best as he could according to subject matter. As a result the printed book version isn't necessarily the arrangement that Wittgenstein would have made, but the editors of the book felt that at least Geach's arrangement made it an "instructive and readable compilation".

This source doesn't indicate the use of alphabetical dividers or other tabbed divisions.

Based on the dating provided by Anscombe and von Wright, Wittgenstein's zettelkasten slips dated from 1929 to 1948.

for reference LW's dates were 1889-1951

Supposing that the notes preceded the typescripts and not the other way around as Anscombe and von Wright indicate, the majority of the notes were turned into written work (typescripts) which were dictated from 1945-1948.

What was LW's process? Note taking, arranging/outlining, and then dictation followed by editing? Dictating would have been easier/faster certainly if he'd already written down his cards and could simply read from them to a secretary.

Some of the manuscript notes in Wittgenstein's zettelkasten were "apparently written to add to the remarks on a particular matter preserved in the box".ᔥ So much like Niklas Luhmann's wooden conversation partner, Wittgenstein was not only having conversations with the texts he was reading, he was creating a conversation between himself and his pre-existing notes thus extending his lines of thought within his zettelkasten.

In Zettel, the editors indicate that many of Wittgenstein's zettels "were for the most part cut from extensive typescripts of his, other copies of which still exist." Perhaps not knowing of the commonplace book or zettelkasten traditions, they may have mistook the notes in his zettelkasten as having originated in his typescripts rather than them having originated as notes which then later made it into his typescripts!

What in particular about the originals may have made them think it was typescript to zettel?

In 1967, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright published a collection of notes from Ludwig Wittgenstein's zettelkasten which they aptly titled Zettel.

http://www.oldtimeconversations.com/banjo-builders.html

from issue #4: ‘The Crate-Diggers’ Symposium’ (3: Marshall Wyatt)

Medicine shows became popular after the Civil War when patent medicine salesmen traveled the "kerosene circuit" in rural America. Flourishing until the passage of 1906 Fair Food and Drug Act made them obsolete, medicine shows provided entertainment to attract audiences and then used their intermissions to sell their products.

This pattern would later be seen in later radio and television when product pitchmen sponsored entertainment in return for commercial time.

(Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour, "Doctors," February 20, 2008 via http://www.oldhatrecords.com/)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_show

Also related to tent revival shows which featured music and religion as entertainment and socializing.

Example in music: Neil Diamond's song: Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show

I love the fact that the image for "Research & History" here is a six drawer card index!

http://www.oldhatrecords.com/

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17617#Comment_17617

There is definitely something here from a usability (and reusability) perspective when notes are broken down into smaller pieces the way that is encouraged by Hypothes.is or by writing on index cards.

Compare: - ://www.evernote.com/shard/s170/sh/d69cf793-1f14-48f4-bd48-43f41bd88678/DapavVTQh954eMRGKOVeEPHm7FxEqxBKvaKLfKWaSV1yuOmjREsMkSHvmQ - https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/

The first may be most useful for a note taker who is personally trying to make sense of material, but it becomes a massive wall of text that one is unlikely to re-read or attempt to reuse at a later date. If they do attempt to reuse it at a later date, it's not clear which parts are excerpts of the original and which are the author's own words. (This page also looks like it's the sort of notes, highlighting, and underlining recommended by Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain text using progressive summarization.)

The second set, are more concrete, more atomic, more understandable, and also as a result much more usable.

reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit

I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).

Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.

Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.

Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.

As if by magic<br /> by Helen Davies on 2000-05-08

Sue Hart at Hodder & Stoughton was able to persuade Michel Thomas to create a series of language courses on cassettes and CDs following his BBC2 broadcast of The Language Master.

Michel Thomas Method Review

Michel Thomas method also includes: - atomic pieces built up as building blocks into larger pieces - lots of encouragement to prevent the feeling of failure

Downsides: - there is no failure mode which can nudge people into a false sense of performance when using their language with actual native speakers

This reviewer indicates that there is some base level of directed mnemonic work going on, but the repetition level isn't such that long term retention (at least in the space repetition sort of way) is a specific goal. We'll need to look into this piece more closely to firm this up, however.

The Michel Thomas Method in a nutshell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Xh-by50pI

This video indicates that small mnemonic hooks are inserted for some words in the Michel Thomas method. This was not immediately apparent or seen in the 1997 BBC documentary about his method and wasn't immediately apparent in Harold Goodman's discussion.

Is it apparent in Goodman's session with his nephews? Was it part of Thomas' method originally or was it added later? Is it truly necessary or does it work without it as in the SSiW method which doesn't use it.

It will take some deeper dives, but ostensibly this method seems to look like that of Pimsleur, Mormon Church, SSiW, and other methods.

The Language Master<br /> BBC - Michel Thomas<br /> [English CC]<br /> [Leg. PT-BR]

Michel Thomas is one of the most brilliant language teachers in the world. His usual clients are movie stars and business leaders. This programme takes him to a Sixth Form College in London to work with school pupils, to test his claim that he can teach anyone a language in a week - with no reading, writing or homework. The film also explores his personal history - as a hero of the French Resistance during WW II.

The Michel Thomas method involves: - slow build up of words, phrases, natural grammar - forced production of the language through practice - positive interaction - patience - no stress - no judgement - encouragement - constant evidence of progress

How does "understanding" of the language evolve out of this method? It's more like revelation rather than understanding...

This method appears much more atomic than that of SSiW (Aran Jones), but some of this is down to the fact that there's a live person who is able to unjudgementally prompt one with pieces which they've missed. The teacher has the context whereas the taped instructors do not. Presumably this sort of interpersonal prompting and context isn't necessarily required, but it can help to better lower the learner's stress and potentially speed up the learning process. It would require some standardization to set up a specific experiment to test between these two modes to tease this data out.

Reference key: [[Levy1997]]<br /> “The Language Master.” 1:33 : 1, color. London, UK: BBC 2, March 23, 1997. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w_uYPAQic.

I thought Ebbinghaus did this in the late 1800s?! 😜

WordPress Community on Mastodon

Don't Dehorsify the Horse<br /> by Sasha Fast

Perhaps apropos from Wittgenstein's own zettelkasten? 🐎

1. ''Putting the cart before the horse" may be said of an explanation like the following: we tend someone else because by analogy with our own case we believe that he is experiencing pain too.—Instead of saying: Get to know a new aspect from this special chapter of human behaviour—from this use of language. (p96)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Zettel. Edited by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright,. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. Second California Paperback Printing. 1967. Reprint, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2007.

If we believe as previously indicated by Luhmann's son that Luhmann learned the basics of his evolved method from Johannes Erich Heyde, then the point of the original was all about categories and subject headings. It ultimately became something which Luhmann minimized, perhaps in part for the relationship of work and the cost of hiring assistants to do this additional manual labor.

The hilarious part of this is that within a much broader tradition of Western intellectual history, Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten is one of the most heterodox approaches on the map.

Zibbaldone With It All

meh...