It's annotations all the way down...

https://forum.toolsforthought.io/

Looking a bit sparse lately, but perhaps some interesting earlier content to sift through.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/w7ytto/we_could_literally_go_nuts_with_our_personal/

No new insight here...

The Outline of Knowledge appears in the Propædia volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is similar to various olther classification systems like the Dewey Decimal system or the Universal Decimal Classification.

https://archive.org/details/britannica_propaedia/mode/2up

The one-volume Propædia is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, the other two being the 12-volume Micropædia and the 17-volume Macropædia. The Propædia is intended as a topical organization of the Britannica's contents, complementary to the alphabetical organization of the other two parts. Introduced in 1974 with the 15th edition, the Propædia and Micropædia were intended to replace the Index of the 14th edition; however, after widespread criticism, the Britannica restored the Index as a two-volume set in 1985. ==The core of the Propædia is its Outline of Knowledge, which seeks to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge==; however, the Propædia also has several appendices listing the staff members, advisors and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica.

link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/ISNt8BBPEe2oTse1NiJv4w

Is anyone practicing sketchnotes like patterns in their notes?

I've noticed that u/khimtan has a more visual stye of note taking with respect to their cards, but is anyone else doing this sort of visualization-based type of note taking in the vein of sketchnotes or r/sketchnoting? I've read books by Mike Rohde and Emily Mills and tinkered around in the space, but haven't actively added it to my practice tacitly. For those who do, do you have any suggestions/tips? I suspect that even simple drollery-esque images on cards would help with the memory/recall aspects. This may go even further for those with more visual-based modes of thinking and memory.

For those interested in more, as well as some intro videos, here are some of my digital notes: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=sketchnotes

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wc63sw/is_anyone_practicing_sketchnotes_like_patterns_in/

u/0xKaishakunin I'm curious where you learned your system? And if you know, who taught them? Did you pick it up from book, teachers/professors, other? What age or grade level did you acquire it? How specific was the instruction? Was it described or demonstrated?

For those curious about the idea of what students might do with the notes and annotations they're making in the margins of their texts using Hypothes.is, I would submit that Dan Allosso's OER handbook How to Make Notes and Write (Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022) may be a very useful place to turn. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/

It provides some concrete advice on the topic of once you've highlighted and annotated various texts for a course, how might you then turn your new understanding, ideas, and extant thinking work into a blogpost, essay, term paper or thesis.

For a similar, but alternative take, the book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017) may also be helpful as well. This text however requires purchase via Amazon and doesn't carry the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (by-nc-sa 4.0) license that Dr. Allosso's does.

In addition to the online copy of the book, there's an annotatable .pdf copy available here: http://docdrop.org/pdf/How-to-Make-Notes-and-Write---Allosso-Dan-jzdq8.pdf/ though one can download .epub and .pdf copies directly from the Pressbooks site.

Allosso seems to be grasping for the idea of combinatorial creativity here, but doesn't make it concrete or name it the way other authors have in the past (though all different words)

"hot nodes"? I've not come across this as a thing... source?

Part of Allosso's definition of point notes: they should be making a point.

(No mention of "atomic notes"?)

Or maybe you were interested in color the way former British Prime Minister William Gladstone was? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_Homer_and_the_Homeric_Age

Or you noticed a lot of epithets (rosy fingered dawn, wine dark sea, etc.) and began tallying them all up the way Milman Parry did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milman_Parry

How might your notes dramatically change how we view the world?

Aside: In the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes (2009), Watson's dog's name was Gladstone, likely a cheeky nod to William Gladstone who was active during the setting of the movie's timeline.

This is similar to the IndieWeb and web standards ideas of looking back at history to see the actual patterns of work that were beneficial.

Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/HhAj3r1bEeyw9h_Pa4QNrA

Allosso points out some useful critiques of numbering systems, but doesn't seem to get to the two core ideas that underpin them (and let's be honest, most other sources don't either). As a result most of the controversies are based on a variety of opinions from users, many of whom don't have long enough term practices to see the potential value.

The important things about numbers (or even titles) within zettelkasten or even commonplace book systems is that they be unique to immediately and irrevocably identify ideas within a system.

The other important piece is that ideas be linked to at least one other idea, so they're less likely to get lost.

Once these are dealt with there's little other controversy to be had.

The issue with date/time-stamped numbering systems in digital contexts is that users make notes using them, but wholly fail to link them to anything much less one other idea within their system, thus creating orphaned ideas. (This is fine in the early days, but ultimately one should strive to have nothing orphaned).

The benefit of Luhmann's analog method was that by putting one idea behind its most closely related idea was that it immediately created that minimum of one link (to the thing it sits behind). It's only at this point once it's situated that it can be given it's unique number (and not before).

Luhmann's numbering system, similar to those seen in Viennese contexts for conscription numbers/house numbers and early library call numbers, allows one to infinitely add new ideas to a pre-existing set no matter how packed the collection may become. This idea is very similar to the idea of dense sets in mathematics settings in which one can get arbitrarily close to any member of a set.

link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/YMZ-hofbEeyvXyf1gjXZCg (Vienna library catalogue system) - https://hypothes.is/a/Jlnn3IfSEey_-3uboxHsOA (Vienna conscription numbers)

I like that there are a variety of potential contexts here which students might find themselves within (short term versus long term / big projects versus small). The broad advice can be useful to more people because they can pick and choose for their own needs.

This is similar to Umberto Eco's advice which is geared toward a longer thesis, though he mentions that one might continue on their system across additional topics or even an entire career.

Watch closely to see how Allosso's description of an index comes to the advice of John Locke versus the practice of Niklas Luhmann.

Alternately, is it closer to a commonplace indexing system or a shallowly linked, but still complex zettelkasten indexing system?

In shared digital systems, I still suspect that densely indexed notes will have more communal value.

Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/nrk0vgoCEe2y3CedssHnVA

What are the potential different affordances allowed by giving cards titles versus giving them topic keywords or other taxonomic links?

Card titles may be useful in analog settings, but they can be even more valuable in digital settings where one can transclude "cards" (read: ideas) into outlines.

Both of these two patterns have some similarities. Is Allosso differentiating between them? As his notes don't seem to have titles otherwise, one would presume that he's solely referring to topic categories.

Why not make this index card pictured fill up the entire width of the text? It could be more visually accessible...

In addition to deduction and induction, narrative, as identified by Aristotle, can be a form of argument.

The work of writing things down or transforming them into pictures, diagrams, song, art, other creates a context shift in the material which requires greater engagement within the brain and may help to improve understanding.

Compare/contrast the ideas of context shifting with desirable difficulty.

Note that this use of "context shifting" (within the pedagogy space) is dramatically different to that used by people like Cal Newport and others (within the productivity space).

Within mathematical contexts one of the major factors often at play is the idea of abstraction: how can one use a basic idea and then abstract it to other situations to see what results.

The idea of abstraction in mathematics is analogous to analogy and metaphor in literature.

Sometimes, though more rarely, the balance of a text may dramatically shift the ideas and context in which a particular idea is embedded.

A useful analogy here might be the idea of having a conversation with a text. Much the way you'd have dramatically different conversations with your family versus your friends, your teachers, or a stranger in line at the store, you'll approach each particular in a different way based on the various contexts in which both they exist and the contexts which you bring to them.

tabula rasa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

This might also include other forms of art including song and dance.

Link this to: - choreography notation (@remikalir's sister in ballet) - Caleb Deschanel's cinematography notation which he likened to musical notation

I love the distinction here between "taking notes" and "making notes". Too many focus on the "taking notes" portion and never get to the making part of the equation.

Within our own notes, connections allow the ideas we developing to survive by

There are several levels of "evolutionary" development of one's notes. One can compare and contrast two different notes to help determine the truth or falsity of each, but groups of linked notes may also evolve and survive against other groups by competing both for attention as well as their potential truth or falsity.

The explicit audience for this book.

A very meta annotation for this topic, but its worth noting that the writer here has synopsized the original quote from David Allen from page 155 of his book:

[...] you can't do a project, you can only do the action steps it requires.

Not only has he done an excellent job of rewriting it, I actually like Dan Allosso's version of the statement better than David Allen's.

Similar to Pliny's aphorism "There is no book so bad it does not contain something good.”

In the 1400s-1600s it was a common desire to excerpt all the value of books and attempts were made, though ultimately futile. This seems to be a commonly occurring desire.

Often having a simple synopsis and notes isn't as useful as it may not spark the same sort of creativity and juxtaposition of ideas a particular reader might have had with their own context.

Some have said that "content is king". I've previously thought that "context is king". Perhaps content and context end up ruling as joint monarchs.

Auden himself kept a commomplace book of his own notes which was published as A Certain World: A Commonplace Book #, so we can read some of his notes! :)

Writing and refining one's note about an idea can be key to helping one's basic understanding of that idea, but this understanding is dramatically increased by linking it into the rest of one's framework of understanding of that idea. A useful side benefit of creating this basic understanding and extending it is that one can also reuse one's (better understood) ideas to create new papers for expanding other's reading and subsequent understanding.

This distinguishing factor is a more useful one than those in other systems.

Compare this with the idea of Beatrice Webb's "analytic notes" versus "synthetic notes" or "scientific notes" which she describes in My Apprentice (1926).

see: - https://hypothes.is/a/Fb3Y4Au1Ee2p_sdveWOJKw - https://hypothes.is/a/WGPrOAoOEe2WJV9yx2SVZg - https://hypothes.is/a/2gdRwgoMEe2mdccJDX6zTw

Web considers "analytic note taking" to be the raw data collection and arrangement (in the same vein of creating databases in the computer science space, which didn't exist when she did her work) upon which historical work is based.

She views "synthetic notes" as observations of behaviours and writings which probably more closely resembles the idea of "literature notes" (Ahrens) or "source notes" (Allosso). Some of the difference is that she's viewing her notes as a tool for her particular work (sociology) rather than as a broader enterprise which might be used in all fields.

Webb's synthetic notes are also likely bound up in her idea of Herbert Spencer's "synthetic philosophy" of thinking, which may require some more reading of these sections on my part to better distinguish her specific meaning.

Webb didn't seem to have a version of "permanent notes" in her conceptualization. Perhaps this is an indication that the evolution of the note really only occurred as it was placed into published writing. This may potentially preclude the reuse of the evolved ideas unless they are separately re-subsumed into one's note collection.

Ahrens' conceptualization of the zettelkasten has all the writing, revision, and evolution work occurring in the slip box itself so it's always available and reusable. Many modern note taking and writing systems would seem to elide this part. (Is this true in practice? Can we provide examples?)

Does this effect have a name? references?

Apparently called the recency bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recency_bias which may be entangled with availability bias or heuristic.

Are both recency and availability biases the foundations for causing the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or frequency bias?

What is the origin of this metaphor?

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

further elaboration on the idea of a point note

Dan Allosso's definition of a point note.

This is roughly equivalent to permanent notes or evergreen notes in Ahrens or Matuschak's frameworks respectively. Somehow I like what seems like a broader feel here, thought the name

Does this version contain within it the idea of growth or evolution over time? Evergreen note in Matuschak's version does, though the word evergreen stemming from the journalism space would indicate an idea that doesn't evolve over time but is simply reusable or republishable with little or no work. The linguistic link to evergreen articles in the journalism space creates cognitive dissonance for me in calling notes evergreen. Evergreen connotes reusability, which is useful, but ideas should have the ability to evolve and procreate with other ideas.

Dan Allosso's definition of a "source note".

This seems roughly equivalent to what Ahrens calls a "literature note".

This welcome point is not often seen in the broader literature on this subject! Thanks Dan!

A longer list I've been sporadically maintaining: - https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book#Platforms

Tiago Forte has a curated/downloadable list here: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/resources

bibnote is another I've seen

Do we really need another new sets of names?! ;)

One day all of these different types will eventually be canonical...

Has talking without thinking become worse with the advent of literacy and writing?

Talking, like writing, is also a form of thinking, but without a lot of work it doesn't have the instantaneous "memory" built into the process.

"Let's talk this out..."

Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/5Ct1LJqTEeyewcuZMx620Q<br /> - https://hypothes.is/a/xvqbambjEey2CKNBjNDhFg

I suspect there may also be a large audience who feels they've been assigned this and feel like they don't need it, because they've written "well" before. I was one of these at some point, but knowing where this is going, I'd recommend that they suppress that feeling like they know what they're doing and where they're going, because they'll be surprised at what they may find. They'll be doubly surprised when they've been practicing these methods for a while and see how much easier things become later on.

Or framed differently:

The art in writing is knowing that it is really a craft.

Possibly even more than three ways, depending on how many are participating in the margins here. ;)

Somehow there are more references to Luhmann in the literature as "The Sociologist from Bielefeld", almost the same what that everyone referred to Aristotle as "The Philosopher".

their

Perhaps better to indicate that he made some modifications to a pre-existing method as it's disingenuous historically to say he developed the broader idea which goes back at least as early as Konrad Gessner in 1548.

Academics, writers, and thinkers have been using variations on the general ideas of note taking, commonplacing, and slip boxing for centuries, which may also help to motivate students.

a.k.a. productivity porn

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

https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-kit

Sébastien Dubois selling an Obsidian Starter Kit for €19.99 on Gumroad.

Looks like it's got lots of support and description of many of the big buzz words in the personal knowledge management space. Not sure how it would work with everything and the kitchen sink thrown in.

found via https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalKnowledgeMgmt/comments/w8dw94/obsidian_starter_kit/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anneguionmccarthy/

WordPress Product Liaison at Automattic.

https://usefulcharts.com/

See also their book:

Timeline of World History by Matt Baker (Editor), John Andrews (Editor)<br /> October 20, 2020<br /> https://www.amazon.com/Timeline-World-History-Matt-Baker/dp/1645174174/

Mentioned by Mathew Lowry at [[Friends of the Link 2022-07-28]]; he's got the world history map on the wall of his office

https://remikalir.com/blog/sabbatical-annotated/

It was great seeing you in person yesterday @remikalir! Glad you could make the time to hang out. Do let me know if you need anything while you're here in the neighborhood or in your pending travels on sabbatical.

Congratulations again on all this news! I'm sure it's a bit overwhelming and a lot of change to adjust to, but I'm sure you'll come out far ahead.

I told Evie about your sister's choreography annotation work when I picked her up from ballet. She pulled a small pocket notebook out of her ballet bag that I didn't know she had full of some of her own choreography notes!! I was so proud...

Safe travels my friend!

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/tony-dow-dead-wally-cleaver-leave-it-to-beaver-1235326146/

They're drawing primarily from students with the following broad interests: - learning sciences / educational psychology - sociology of education (to influence policy/practice) - those with strong real-world experience (looking to apply it to a specific area)

tuition coverage & stipend<br /> must be based in Baltimore<br /> prefer one speaks to faculty members for alignment of research areas and mentorship prior to joining

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

CalStateTEACH https://www.calstateteach.net/

https://espanso.org/

https://www.vox.com/2022/7/25/23277211/supreme-court-gavin-newsom-sb-8-abortion-guns-california-assault-rifle-law

I'll push back on this a bit. I suspect that even though one might create multiple links to digital notes in all directions like this, it really doesn't happen happen at scale like this in practice.

I'd be willing to guess that very few people in the digital space are linking their ideas to more than two or three others. In fact, I suspect that if you looked at many digital ZKs you'd find a lot of orphaned notes floating around.

Separately, even in the analog space, the two links (down or forward) isn't always correct either. I cross link all over the place. The one constant benefit of the analog is that you're generally required to create at least one link because you have to place the card somewhere, and this isn't the case in most digital contexts/tools.

I'd posit that it's a lot of work to link a new idea into your system once much less in multiple places. Generally the more ideas you can link/cross-link it to, the more likely you'll run across it in the future and have potential to reuse it. I'd also suggest that the more links it's got, the better you'll "own" it. These addition links will also allow you to better compare/contrast various ideas by juxtaposing them in the future.

Theorem: more (good/great) links = more complexity which yields more "life", serendipity, and surprise to be found in your slip box for future use.

Another of the abounding examples of people thinking that writing and literacy are the first technology of thinking.

Is the disappearance of the Aristotelian final cause in modern science part of the reason for the rise of an anti-science perspective for the religious right in 21st century America?

People would seem to want or need a purpose to underlie their lives or they otherwise seem to be left adrift.

Why are things the way they are? What are they for?

Is the question: "why?" really so strong?

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

Comets in the 1680's were thought to be planet sized and not their current known size.

Edmund Halley gave a paper in the 1690's about a comet hitting the Earth. He posited that that event was the cause of the tilt of the axis of the Earth.

Because light of different colors refracts at different angles, attempting to focus light using curved lenses will cause the focus point of each to be slightly different and thus not focus in total.

This chromatic aberration means that one cannot build large functional refracting telescopes.

As a result of this discovery about chromatic aberration in optics, Isaac Newton built reflecting telescopes instead. A large mirror collects the light and reflects it through a very thin lens, which doesn't accentuate refraction the way very large and thick lenses would have in a refracting telescope.

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)

https://webbtelescope.org/

link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/mVBBYgvIEe22ej8FOn5Cqg

Sounds like his philosophy fit may have fit in with the broader prosperity gospel space, Napoleon Hill, Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, et al. Potentially worth looking into. Also related to the self-help movements and the New Thought philosophies.

fascinating that he wrote a book Copywriting and Direct Marketing. This may also tie him into the theses of Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy?

Link to: https://hyp.is/E4I_qgvCEe2rQO9iXvaTgA/www.goodreads.com/author/show/257221.Robert_Collier

Saw this yesterday at the front of an episode of of Season 8 of the History Channel series Alone (2021)

Seems fitting of some of the underlying philosophy of the zettelkasten note taking method.

and a sentence or two later

Hence, in describing the technique of a social investigator—for instance, the use of the “ interview ” and “ watching organisations at work ” [...]

Beatrice Webb's definition of synthetic notes (particularly from the perspective of a sociologist) includes recording of conversations, actions, gestures, interviews, and general behavior.

method of analytic note-taking from Beatrice Webb

Webb distinguishes synthetic note taking from analytic note taking.

While she leaves note taking specifically to Appendix C, Beatrice Webb mentions her "more elaborated technique of note-taking" in the second sentence of the book.

Indication that in July 1889, Beatrice Webb was developing her note taking methods and had a setback.

Beatrice Webb was using her custom note taking system in the lead up to the research that resulted in the publication of Industrial Democracy (1897).

Is there evidence that she was practicing this note taking/database practice earlier than this?

Beatrice Webb's note taking system here shows indications of being actively used as a database system!

Beatrice Webb's list of the types of notes one might include on their sheets.

Beatrice Webb's suggestions: - Use sheets of paper and not notebooks, specifically so one can re-arrange, shuffle, and resort one's notes - She uses quarto pages as most convenient (quarto sizes have varied over time, but presumably hers were in the range of 8.5 x 11" sheets of paper, and thus rather large compared to index cards

It takes some careful attention, but her description of her method and how she used it in a pre-computer era is highly indicative of the fact that Beatrice Webb was actively creating a paper database system which she could then later query to compile data to either elicit insight or to prove answers to particular questions.

She specifically advises that one keep one and only one sort of particular types of data on each card whether that be dates, locations, subjects, or categories of facts. This is directly equivalent to the modern database design of only keeping one value in a particular field. As a result, each sheet within her notes might be equivalent to a row of related data which might contain a variety of different types of individual data. By not mixing data on individual sheets one can sort and resort their tables and effectively search through them without confusing data types.

Her work and examples here would have been in the period of 1890 and 1910 (she specifically cites that this method was used for her research on the "principles of 1834" which was subsequently published as English Poor Law Policy in 1910) at a time after Basile Bouchon and Joseph Marie Jacquard and contemporaneously with Herman Hollerith who were using punched cards for some of this sort of work.

French notes:<br /> fiches - generally notes, specifically translates as "sheets"<br /> fichier - translates as "file"<br /> fichier boîte - translates as "file box" (aka zettelkasten in German)

Beatrice Webb studied the effects of the British "principles of 1834" and how they were carried out (differently) from area to area to see the overall effects through 1907. The result of her study apparently showed what a poor policy it had been to the point that no one mentioned the old "principles of 1834" again.

How might this sort of sociological study be carried out on the effects of laws within the United States now in terms of economics and equality for various movements like redlining, abortion, etc.? Is anyone doing this sort of work?

There is an example of the Eviction Lab at Princeton has some of this sort of data and analysis. https://evictionlab.org/map

Webb's use case here sounds like she's got the mass data, but that what she really desired was a database which she could more easily query to do her work and research. As a result, she took the flat file data and made it into a manually sortable and searchable database.

The broad description of Beatrice Webb's note taking system sounds almost eerily like the idea behind edge notched cards, however in her case she was writing note in particular locations on cards in an effort to help her cause rather than putting physical punch holes into them.

Compare this statement to the no less grandiloquence of Niklas Luhmann's mission statement: "Theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none”.

link to: -https://hyp.is/RyY9ZPfYEeytOHPQUhhzdQ/www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/vlape5/luhmanns_zettelkasten_use_case/

This quote would seem to indicate that Luhmann had read or seen this book.

Luhmann's zettelkasten (search on 2022-07-19) only shows one card referencing some of her other work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_33-1d1A4-1_V

How Aristotelian!

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

Beatrice Webb sees the primary uses of notes as a memory device and a discovery device.

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

Note the broad similarities as well as small differences to Konrad Gessner's approach in 1548:

1. When reading, everything of importance and whatever appears useful should be copied onto a good sheet of paper. 2. A new line should be used for every idea. 3.“ Finally, cut out everything you have copied with a pair of scissors; arrange the slips as you desire, first into larger clusters which can then be subdivided again as often as necessary.” 4. As soon as the desired order is produced, arranged, and sorted on tables or in small boxes, it should be fixed or copied directly. —Gessner, Konrad. Pandectarum sive Partitionum Universalium. 1548. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. Fol. 19-20"

Given that the original was in German, did the original text use the word zettelkasten?

Similar to Beatrice Webb's definition of synthetic notes in My Apprentice (1926), thought this also includes movement into actually drafting writing.

What year was this written?

The idea here seems to be less discrete in the steps of the writing process and subsumes multiple things instead of breaking them into discrete conceptual parts. Has this been some of what has caused issues in the note taking to creation process in the last century?

https://news.yahoo.com/mathematician-tiktok-gives-example-insane-192823997.html

A sad, but subtle bit of math shaming going on here. Worse it's indicating that math is hard for even the elite without providing proper context.

https://www.obsidianroundup.org/2022-07-23/

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

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-24/6th-street-viaduct-shut-for-second-night-in-a-row

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/23/1113008177/southwest-china-dinosaur-footprint-restaurant-discovery-sauropod-development

Ancient statuary wasn't white as we often see now in museums, but was brightly colored. Statuary that was outside would have been sun bleached over time as well as subject to other weathering to mute or entirely remove color.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1109995973/we-know-greek-statues-werent-white-now-you-can-see-them-in-color

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.241504/page/n247/mode/2up

I can't tell what the publication date is on this (the original book was 1926, but this edition appears to be 1940s+) but there's a fantastic advertisement for Pelmanism in the back of this Pelican edition of Beatrice Webb's My Apprenticeship.

Addendum:<br /> A few pages before this in the advertisements is a mention that the list of Pelican books listed is only to 1938, so this was likely a 1938 publication, which also puts it into a time period in which Bruno Furst was operating.

The publication of this advertisement in a text which may have been read by students and academics is a fascinating link of these practices, though her appendix on note taking was not included in this particular volume (1 of 2 apparently).

Christof Ludwig Poehlmann aka Christopher Louis Pelman (Anglicized) aka Ludwig Poehlmann (as known to Bruno Furst in Germany)

Link to: - http://tw.boffosocko.com/#Christof%20Ludwig%20Poehlmann

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_001_V

One may notice that Niklas Luhmann's index within his zettelkasten is fantastically sparce. By this we might look at the index entry for "system" which links to only one card. For someone who spent a large portion of his life researching systems theory, this may seem fantastically bizarre.

However, it's not as as odd as one may think given the structure of his particular zettelkasten. The single reference gives an initial foothold into his slip box where shuffling through cards beyond that idea will reveal a number of cards closely related to the topic which subsequently follow it. Regular use and work with the system would have allowed Luhmann better memory with respect to its contents and the searching through threads of thought would have potentially sparked new ideas and threads. Thus he didn't need to spend the time and effort to highly index each individual card, he just needed a starting place and could follow the links from there. This tends to minimize the indexing work he needed to do regularly, but simultaneously makes it harder for the modern person who may wish to read or consult those notes.

Some of the difference here is the idea of top-down versus bottom-up construction. While thousands of his cards may have been tagged as "systems" or "systems theory", over time and with increased scale they would have become nearly useless as a construct. Instead, one may consider increasing levels of sub-topics, but these too may be generally useless with respect to (manual) search, so the better option is to only look at the smallest level of link (and/or their titles) which is only likely to link to 3-4 other locations outside of the card just before it. This greater specificity scales better over time on the part of the individual user who is broadly familiar with the system.

Alternatively, for those in shared digital spaces who may maintain public facing (potentially shared) notes (zettelkasten), such sparse indices may not be as functional for the readers of such notes. New readers entering such material generally without context, will feel lost or befuddled that they may need to read hundreds of cards to find and explore the sorts of ideas they're actively looking for. In these cases, more extensive indices, digital search, and improved user interfaces may be required to help new readers find their way into the corpus of another's notes.

Another related idea to that of digital, public, shared notes, is shared taxonomies. What sorts of word or words would one want to search for broadly to find the appropriate places? Certainly widely used systems like the Dewey Decimal System or the Universal Decimal Classification may be helpful for broadly crosslinking across systems, but this will take an additional level of work on the individual publishers.

Is or isn't it worthwhile to do this in practice? Is this make-work? Perhaps not in analog spaces, but what about the affordances in digital spaces which are generally more easily searched as a corpus.

As an experiment, attempt to explore Luhmann's Zettelkasten via an entryway into the index. Compare and contrast this with Andy Matuschak's notes which have some clever cross linking UI at the bottoms of the notes, but which are missing simple search functionality and have no tagging/indexing at all. Similarly look at W. Ross Ashby's system (both analog and digitized) and explore the different affordances of these two which are separately designed structures---the analog by Ashby himself, but the digital one by an institution after his death.

Niklas Luhmann cites Langlois and Seignobos' Introduction to the Study of History (1898) at least once, so there's evidence that he read at least a portion of the book which outlines some portions of note taking practice that resemble portions of his zettelkasten method.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H2H3hvmrNQ

Pretty good short description of how to start an (antinet) zettelkasten.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/vzv2ov/the_importance_of_the_handwriting_bottleneck/

Why is memory for online pieces weaker for most?

Is it the lack of sense of "physical" location for helping to store it? What about the seemingly ephemeral character of online data?

It's a reasonable assumption that with the rise of digital contexts and the ease of cut and paste that people excerpting or quoting material are more likely to excerpt and quote longer passages because it is now easier to do.

Has anyone done research on showing that this is the case?

https://illusionofmore.com/internet-archive-the-racket/

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

L.A.T.C.H. (five ways to organize information) 1. Location 1. Alphabet 1. Time 1. Category 1. Hierarchy

from the book Information Anxiety by Richard S. Wurman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0exK-xFP3k

Lima, Manuel. The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, 2014. https://papress.com/products/the-book-of-trees-visualizing-branches-of-knowledge.

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

Originated the treemap within the computer interface.

Iris Origo, Leopardi: A Study in Solitude. Helen Marx Books. 1999. pp. 142-3.

One of the best methods for technical reading is to create progressive summarizations of what one has read.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/07/republicans-expose-their-hypocrisy-on-abortion/670562/

https://rekonect.com/

Rekonect magnetic notebooks.

Clever though expensive. Not sure this is worth it unless you had a very specific use case.

Historically, following a tradition from accounting ledgers, people kept small, convenient pocket notebooks called "waste books" for quickly capturing notes and ideas in daily life. Later, they'd either expand on them or copy them out in better detail and usually in a nicer hand with sources/citations, and indexing/cross referencing in their permanent commonplaces. When you're done with it, you'd simply dispose of or throw away the waste book.

As for arrangement or organization, it's been common for people to use something roughly similar to John Locke's indexing method from 1706 for arranging and finding material. Others use a card index file and index cards to be able to rearrange pieces or to more easily index and cross reference portions.

I often recommend https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book as a pretty solid resource with some history, books, articles, and lots of examples (both digital and analog/paper-based) one might look at to find what they think would be best for themselves.

👋🏼@carterb5 ! I learned all my best tricks from @jgmac1106. And out of nostalgia, it's sometimes fun revisiting all my old notes: boffosocko.com/tag/edu52... Has it already been 4 years?!

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/te80rv/how_do_you_capture_fleeting_notes_in_your_workflow/

I broadly take most of my (online) notes using Hypothes.is for web pages and .pdf files. I then use the Hypothesidian set up with Templater to import all the pieces: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225

So far it's been pretty helpful and I spend a huge amount of time in Hypothes.is.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fleeting-notes/gcplhmogdjioeaenmehmapbdonklmdnc/

Saw via: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/t5242z/zettelkasten_for_internet_learning/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/agora/

https://fraidyc.at/blog/wakey-wakey/

Updates to Fraidyc.at! 🎉

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

via Muggeridge and Adam, Beatrice Webb: A Life, 1967, p.225.

https://evictionlab.org/

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

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

Link to Beatrice Webb's use of note taking methods as a means of data storage, search, and sort in the early 1900s.

roughly 8.46 inches x 10.8 inches or about the size of an 8.5 x 11" sheet

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.

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.

Suggested by footnote in Beatrice Webb's My Apprenticeship.

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.

Je nach der Beschaffenheit des Themas und des Materials wird es oft praktisch sein, von sachlicher Ordnung abzusehen und nur die äußerlich chronologische anzuwenden. Gerade dann ist es von größtem Wert, die Eintragungen auf lose Blätter zu machen, damit man dieselben nach den verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten der Zusammengehörigkeit zeitweilig umordnen und dann wieder in die Grundordoung zurücklegen kann. Um die einzelnen Notizen leicht auffinden zu können, ist es ratsam, die Daten oder Schlagwörter oben darüberzuschreiben; und die Blätter oder Zettel müssen von nicht zu dünnem Papier sein, damit man sie schnell durchblättern kann.

Soweit es sich um Abschriften ganzer Akten oder Nachrichten handelt, bedarf es keiner besonderen Erörterungen. Doch solche völlige Abschriften wird man nur machen, wo es sich um archivalische Quellen oder entlegenere Drucke handelt, die man nicht so leicht wieder erreichen kann. Im übrigen wird man sich mit Auszügen und Notizen begnügen, welche entweder das aus den Quellen ausheben, was für das Thema in Betracht kommt, oder nur im allgemeinen auf die Quellenstellen hinweisen. Im ersteren Falle kommt es darauf an, das Brauchbare und Wichtige scharf zu erkennen und präzis zu notieren; im letzteren Falle muß die Hindeutung wenigstens derart präzisiert sein, daß man beim späteren Durchsehen der Notizen gleich ersieht, was in der betreffenden Quellenstelle zu erwarten ist, und daß die Identität der Notiz mit dem Inhalt der Quellenstelle nicht zweifelhaft sein kann; bei Urkunden erfordert letzteres besondere Sorgfalt, da nicht selten über den-selben (tegenstand zur selben Zeit mehrere ähnliche Dokumente ausgestellt worden sind: man tut daher gut, die Identität jedes Stückes durch Aufnotierung des Anfanges und Schlusses (Incipit und Explicit) sicherzustellen, wobei zu bemerken ist, daf hier als Anfang und Schluß nicht die formelhaften Teile, die sogenannten Protokolle, welche eben als feststehende Formeln nicht für die einzelne Urkunde unterscheidend sind, gelten, sondern daß man Anfang und Schluß des individuellen Textes notiert, eine Art der Bezeichnung, die allgemein bei den päpstlichen Bullen angewandt wird, indem man von der Bulle Unam sanctam oder Ausculta fili usw. spricht.

Google translation:

Depending on the nature of the subject and the material, it will often be practical to dispense with factual order and use only the outwardly chronological one. It is precisely then that it is of the greatest value to make the entries on loose sheets of paper, so that they can be temporarily rearranged according to the various aspects of belonging together and then put back into the basic order. In order to be able to easily find the individual notes, it is advisable to write the dates or keywords above them; and the sheets or slips of paper must be of paper that is not too thin so that they can be leafed through quickly.

As far as copies of entire files or messages are concerned, no special discussion is required. But such complete copies will only be made from archival sources or more remote prints that cannot easily be accessed again. For the rest, one will be content with excerpts and notes, which either extract from the sources what comes into consideration for the subject, or only refer to the sources in general. In the first case it is important to clearly recognize what is useful and important and to write it down precisely; in the latter case, the indication must at least be specified in such a way that, when looking through the notes later, one can immediately see what is to be expected in the relevant source and that the identity of the note with the content of the source cannot be in doubt; for certificates the latter requires special care, as it is not uncommon for same (te, several similar documents existed at the same time have been issued: one does therefore well, the identity of each piece by notating the beginning and end (Incipit and explicit), noting that here as beginning and end not the formulaic parts that so-called protocols, which are simply fixed formulas are not distinctive for the individual document, apply, but that one sees the beginning and end of the individual text noted, a form of designation commonly applied to the papal bulls, speaking of the bull Unam sanctam or Ausculta fili, etc.

Continuing on in his advice on note taking, Bernheim tells us that notes on loose sheets of paper (presumably in contrast with the bound pages of a commonplace book or other types of notebooks), "can be temporarily rearranged according to the various aspects of belonging together and then put back into the basic order". He recommends giving them dates (presumably to be able to put them back into their temporal order), as well as keywords. He also suggest that "the sheets or slips of paper must be of paper that is not too thin so that they can be leafed through quickly." (translated from German)

Note that he doesn't specify the exact size of the paper (at least not in this general section) other than to specify either "die Blätter oder Zettel" (sheets or slips) . Other practices may be more indicative of the paper size he may have had in mind. Are his own papers extant? Might those have an indication of his own personal practice as it may have differed from his published advice?

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.

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

19 February 1850 – 9 July 1942

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/humanities%E2%80%99-scholarly-infrastructure-utter-disarray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv60-oWTrWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtFukevCE9I

Peirce, Charles Sanders. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Popular Science Monthly 12, no. Jan. (January 1878): 286–302.

see also: - https://cspeirce.omeka.net/items/show/3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtFukevCE9I

Glad I'm not the only one...

Depending on my particular mood, I'll call mine "Konrad" after Gessner, "Beatrice" after Webb, or "Bruce" (a quirky hat tip to The West Wing S7 E2: "His name is Bruce. He's a flight attendant on Aer Lingus. They've got a connecting hub out of Hamburg. You know, at first it was long walks along the Reeperbahn...")

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/w0x1m6/give_your_antinet_a_pen_name/

footnote:

Webb 1926, p. 363. The number of scholars who have used the index card method is legion, especially in sociology and anthropology, but also in many other subjects. Claude Lévy-Strauss learned their use from Marcel Mauss and others, Roland Barthes used them, Charles Sanders Peirce relied on them, and William Van Orman Quine wrote his lectures on them, etc.