Or roughly 4 x 6".

This is the first time I've seen in the literature the suggestion to write notes on larger sheets and then fold them up. This is largely only recommended here because of the standardization of the paper sizes in such a way that folding an A4 makes an A5 and folding an A5 gives an A6 and so on...

Automatic reference cards!

When did they stop doing this!!!

The values of A6!

Heyde is putting more thought into the size of note paper than I've seen in much of the literature. Did Linnaeus have similar thoughts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Ackerknecht<br /> Influential historian of medicine

<ins datetime="2022-08-24T15:44:48+00:00"> Erwin Heinz Ackerknecht (1 June 1906, in Stettin – 18 November 1988, in Zurich), the historian of medicine, did some library related work, but didn't invent this handwriting style, his father Erwin Julius Ackerknecht did. see: https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erwin_Ackerknecht</ins>

What does this handwriting style look like?

the scrap heap problem

This alternating patter also has the appearance of Luhmann's numbering system and may have made him think, why use the other system(s)? Why not just file everything based on this method from the start?

We find here juxtaposed the suggestion to use an alphabetic indexing system and that of the Dewey Decimal System with the specific mention that one is grouping cards with similar related ideas.

Did Luhmann evolve his system out of these two ideas and instead of using Dewey, as was apparently not common in Germany, he used a version of the Aktenzeichen ("file numbers") stemming from the 1770s conscription numbers from Vienna?

Portions of Dewey's system as described here can definitely be seen in Luhmann's system in which he left some of the preceding numbers unwritten/unstated.

buckle up....

???

This works, but I'm a bit disappointed at this advice/revelation...

I wasn't expecting advice for creating multiple copies of cards with carbon paper...

Cards pictured on the page read:<br /> verantwortlichkeit willens freiheit<br /> vgl.: rehmke, johannes: die Willensfreiheit<br /> Leipzig: quelle and Meyer 1911 S. 137 f.

Translation:<br /> responsibility will- free<br /> cf.: rehmke, johannes: the freedom of will<br /> Leipzig: quelle and Meyer 1911 p. 137 f.<br /> 32.07.09

What's the story behind Leibniz' hand-written bequest? Apparently it was commonplace enough that it's not explained here.

following the commonplace tradition, the keyword gets pride of place...

Watch here the word "address" and double check the original German word in translation. What was it originally? Seems a tad odd to hear "address" applied to a keyword which is likely to be just one of many. How to keep them all straight?

Multi-user slip boxes anyone?

How common was this practice? in what areas?

the traditional advice

paper over card in terms of sheet thickness, particularly over time

A bold statement!!!

Was this Heye's innovation? How much and to what extent beyond earlier ties of note taking and accounting?

note the evolution here based on competition from practices in another field (accounting)

What was his experience within accounting and these traditions?

translation issue? this isn't clear to me...

the traditional echoes of Konrad Gessner's method here...

Look at this lovely explicit phrase "chain of thought" here!

This is not a well attested viewpoint from my research, but obviously happens, and Heyde calls out personal experience to underline his point.

Where is he going to place the work of creating this chain of thought? Will it be at the "traditional" writing (arranging) part of the process, or will the chain be created as one goes a la Luhmann's ultimate practice?!

A specific reference to the commonplace book tradition and in particular the practice of segmenting note books into pre-defined segments with particular topic headings. This practice described here also ignores the practice of keeping an index (either in a separate notebook or in the front/back of the notebook as was more common after John Locke's treatise)

A call back to the influences of accounting and waste books on the evolution of note taking.

Interesting choice of translation for "Die Kartei" by the translator. Some may have preferred the more direct "file".

Historically for this specific time period, while index cards were becoming more ubiquitous, most of the prior century researchers had been using larger sheets and frequently called them either slips or sheets based on their relative size.

Beatrice Webb in 1926 (in English) described her method and variously used the words “cards”, “slips”, “quarto”, and “sheets” to describe notes. Her preference was for quarto pages which were larger pages which were likely closer to our current 8.5 x 11” standard than they were to even larger index cards (like 4 x 6".

While I have some dissonance, this translation makes a lot of sense for the specific time period. I also tend to translate the contemporaneous French word “fiches” of that era as “sheets”.

See also: https://hypothes.is/a/OnCHRAexEe2MotOW5cjfwg https://hypothes.is/a/fb-5Ngn4Ee2uKUOwWugMGQ

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/26/us/trump-search-affidavit-release.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

This might help:<br /> Zettelkasten Overreach https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/

https://www.ecfriedman.com/perusall-in-practice

I'm the first intellectual historian in line on this one, but there are certainly others. :) I haven't seen anything from Schmidt on this niche sub-topic, but I would suspect those in his group are highly curious about these specifics.

I've been reading portions of Heyde, but I'm not seeing anything new, innovative, or exciting in his suggestions that hadn't broadly existed in the prior literature for a century or more, though he does go into more depth on various areas than others before him. In fact, Heyde suggests making multiple copies of one's notes to file under a variety of commonplace subject headings, a practice which we specifically don't see Luhmann doing. The vast majority of the Zettelkasten space up until this time and even since is simply the commonplace book tradition using index cards instead of notebooks. Luhmann was doing several things subtly different than this prior tradition. Whether they are really important or not at scale really remains to be seen. It's reasonably obvious based on what I've seen thus far that he was following Heyde (and other precursors) in spirit, but definitely not in the "letter of the 'law'". There are very subtle pieces of Heyde which are uniquely and intriguingly suggestive of why Luhmann's practice was different than others, but the average reader is not likely to see them.

My German is dreadful at best, so I'll refrain from commenting further on specifics until I've seen a better/full translation in English. I'm definitely curious to hear the thoughts of others who've translated/read it.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/wrytqj/comment/ilax9tc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Index card systems were insanely popular in the early 1900's for note taking and uses of all other sorts (business administration, libraries, etc.). The note taking tradition of the slip box goes back even further in intellectual history with precedents including miscellanies, commonplace books, and florilegia. Konrad Gessner may have been one of the first to have created a method using slips of rearrangeable paper in the 1500s, but this general pattern of excerpting, note taking and writing goes back to antiquity with the concept of locus communis (Latin) and tópos koinós (Greek).

What some intellectual historians are hoping for evidence of in this particular source is a possible origin of the idea of the increased complexity of direct links from one card to another as well as the juxtaposition of ideas which build on each other. Did Luhmann innovate this himself or was this something he read or was in general practice which he picked up? Most examples of zettelkasten outside of Luhmann's until those in the present, could be described reasonably accurately as commonplace books on index cards usually arranged by topic/subject heading/head word (with or without internal indices).

Perhaps it was Luhmann's familiarity with Aktenzeichen (German administrative "file numbers") prior to his academic work which inspired the dramatically different form his index card-based commonplace took? See: https://hyp.is/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA/www.wikiwand.com/de/Aktenzeichen_(Deutschland)

Is it possible that he was influenced by Beatrice Webb's ideas on note taking from Appendix C of My Apprenticeship (1924) which was widely influential in the humanities and particularly sociology and anthropology? Would he have been aware of the work of historians Ernst Bernheim followed by Charles Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos? (see: https://hypothes.is/a/DLP52hqFEe2nrIMdrd4U7g) Did Luhmann's law studies expose him to the work of jurist Johann Jacob Moser (1701-1785) who wrote about his practice in his autobiography and subsequently influenced generations of practitioners including Jean Paul and potentially Hegel?

There are obviously lots of unanswered questions...

Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.

Annotatable .pdf copy for Hypothes.is: https://docdrop.org/pdf/How-to-Make-Notes-and-Write---Allosso-Dan-jzdq8.pdf/

Nota Bene:

These annotations are of a an early pre-release draft of the text. One ought to download the most recent revised/final/official draft at https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.

https://typeshare.co/chrisaldrich

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1562442998717509635.html

https://www.hastac.org/blogs/allisonhitt/2014/02/04/01-collaborative-note-taking

https://remikalir.com/blog/annotate-your-syllabus-4-0/

Oh dear god, it's worse, the writer seems to be affiliated with bundleIQ, a product that's an AI applied to the knowledge space. It's a major mistake for AI people to be playing in spaces in which they have absolutely no founding in the history of...

https://www.bundleiq.com/post/the-history-of-pkm

I positively don't recommend this article... good example of someone "trying on" information they've been reading about, but haven't quite mastered or gone deep enough on yet. Also potentially a good example of the sort of issues that can be seen when learning in public and potentially attempting to be an influencer in a space in which one is not an expert.

This is NOT what a memory palace is... ugh.

https://lithub.com/what-five-years-with-a-predatory-vanity-press-taught-me-about-art-and-success/

https://lithub.com/what-working-at-a-used-bookstore-taught-me-about-literary-rejection/

What scholar is being referenced here as using larger slips and suggesting others do likewise?

I've seen references to the attribution problem in the 2020s, but I haven't seen references in older literature about the difference of representing one's own thoughts versus that of others in their notes.

Dow is definitely across the spectrum on note paper sizes and leaves the choice up to the writer based on their particular needs.

cutting out portions of books to place directly into notes rather than writing them out

A benefit of 4 x 6" cards is that clippings and other items can often be more easily filed along with them as opposed to the smaller 3 x 5" cards.

After suggesting consistency on slip size, Dow waffles on the use of multiple sizes. He does indicate that one might want to use the size as an indicator of the type of note, though he doesn't give a specific example

Dow indicates in 1924 that 3 x 5" and 4 x 6" are both commonly had in a range of materials the US as well as boxes or cases to keep them in. He does mention that one can also cut their own paper, indicating that this is a possibility.

I haven't seen 2 x 4" slips suggested before!

Dow suggests the possibility of various small sizes based on the individual researchers' needs. Linguists might have very little and benefit from a 2 x 4" slip. Though once chosen, he does caution consistency of that size for easy manipulation.

Like many, Dow questions the appropriate size for one's slips.

Historian Edward Gibbon made all of his notes "in books of fast-bound leaves".

clear for growth on any matter

sheets / slips

Dow's methods were profited by advice from historians Andrew C. Mclaughlin and August C. Krey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_C._McLaughlin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_C._Krey

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

Jones, Christopher P. “Zettelkasten.” Edited by R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber. The Classical Review 50, no. 1 (2000): 170–72.

Nothing at all about the titular word zettelkasten, but rather a negative review of a book on inscriptions...

Syndication as a selling point.

https://typeshare.co/

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wv9hvq/digitizing_and_compressing_notes_question/

I've got a process I still use, though less frequently, that does both photos as well as optical character recognition (OCR) to digitize the words: https://boffosocko.com/2021/12/20/handwriting-my-website-with-a-digital-amanuensis/ The comments have some rich commentary with related ideas as well.

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wvn38a/using_notebooks_with_your_antinet/

Ross Ashby, a systems theorist like Luhmann, had a sophisticated hybrid notebook/index card system that some here might find an interesting and usable model, particularly if they're enamored of the notebook format. It's been digitized and is online for perusal: http://www.rossashby.info/

https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/710585052769157141/990296615053049926

https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/710585052769157141/990295586664243250

Context: influencers in the PKM space telling you the "one true way"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin

Machine translation (Google):

While there were already plans in the first decade of the 20th century for a further rationalization of cataloging by introducing label printing in the Prussian (academic) libraries, from 1919 the “German library handwriting” was created on the part of the public libraries. The writing instructions designed by Erwin Ackerknecht primarily served to give handwritten catalogs a uniform, legible typeface. He therefore chose the “Latin cursive” as his starting script, which was easier to read than the Sütterlin cursive script that was common at the time.

Fickert, Kevin-Steven. “Die Geschichte des Zettelkatalogs : eine historisch-kritische Betrachtung eines Verzeichnismediums und seiner Regelwerke.” Fachhochschule Stuttgart Hochschule der Medien, 2003. https://hdms.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/141

via Ton Zijlstra

Deutsche Büchereihandschrift looks very familiar to me. I've seen this loopy sort of script in many early 20th Century library card catalogs, including many cards at the Library of Congress

https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erwin_Ackerknecht&stable=1

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

With the standardization of index cards for the filing boxes of his own manufacture, Dewey earned himself the further development of the routing techniques without earning anything with it. In order to prevent economic ruin, the Library Bureau switched its own bookkeeping from the traditional accounting system to the faster and more cost-effective system of the "card index" in 1888. The "technology transfer between library and office" (Krajewski), namely bookkeeping in card boxes, is a hit: banks and insurance companies, steel and railway companies take over the card system and thus also the card boxes from Dewey's company.

This is a fascinating way of making one's product indispensable. Talk about self-dogfooding!

Sounds similar to the way that some chat messaging productivity apps were born (Slack was this way?). The company needed a better way to communicate internally and so built it's own chat system which they sold to others.

For the production of knowledge, the scholar only resorted to the volatile memory of the excerpt collections, the [[loci communes]] contained: the "platitudes" that we still literally call that today. Gesner called these collections "chartaceos libros", that is, index books. He invented his own method with which the individual notes could be rearranged at any time and thus rearranged in order to take account of the flood of information and to be able to constantly add new entries. "You know how easy it is to collect facts and how difficult it is to organize them," wrote the Basel scholar [[Caspar Wolf]], editor of Gesner's works.

Is this translation of platitudes correct/appropriate here? Maybe aphorisms or the Latin sententiae (written wisdom) are better?

I'd like to look more closely at his method. Was he, like Jean Paul, using slips of paper which he could move around within a particular book? Perhaps the way one might move photos around in a photo album with tape/adhesive?

Swiss humanist Conrad Gesner. Gesner's Bibliotheca Universalis, which appeared between 1545 and 1548 in two folio volumes with over 1000 pages each, was supposed to list all the books that had appeared since Gutenberg.

In Bibliotheca Universalis, Conrad Gesner collected a list that was supposed to list all the books which had appeared since Gutenberg's moveable type.

the master of which his contemporary Johann Jacob Moser (1701-1785) proved to be. The technique used by the Swabian lawyer and writer to scramble is emphatic evidence of how you can turn excerpts from old books into new ones just by re-addressing them. According to his own admission, Moser would not have been able to manage his publication list, which is estimated at over 500 titles, without the aid he had created. Moser was also one of the first theorists of the card box. Under the heading "My way of collecting materials for future writings", he himself described the algorithms with which he filled his "card boxes".

Johann Jacob Moser was a commonplace book keeper who referenced his system as a means of inventio. He wrote about how he collected material for future writing and described the ways in which he filled his "card boxes".

I'm curious what his exact method was and if it could be called an early precursor of the zettelkasten?

What edition of this book did Luhmann have/use?

His edition will establish a potential lower threshold for the point in his life at which he used it (ie college, law school, other).

What differences are there between the edition I've read portions of and this 10th edition exist? Did Luhmann's edition have this same outline/contents page in this form? Does my analysis still stand if this changes?

While Heyde outlines using keywords/subject headings and dates on the bottom of cards with multiple copies using carbon paper, we're left with the question of where Luhmann pulled his particular non-topical ordering as well as his numbering scheme.

While it's highly likely that Luhmann would have been familiar with the German practice of Aktenzeichen ("file numbers") and may have gotten some interesting ideas about organization from the closing sections of the "Die Kartei" section 1.2 of the book, which discusses library organization and the Dewey Decimal system, we're still left with the bigger question of organization.

It's obvious that Luhmann didn't follow the heavy use of subject headings nor the advice about multiple copies of cards in various portions of an alphabetical index.

While the Dewey Decimal System set up described is indicative of some of the numbering practices, it doesn't get us the entirety of his numbering system and practice.

One need only take a look at the Inhalt (table of contents) of Heyde's book! The outline portion of the contents displays a very traditional branching tree structure of ideas. Further, the outline is very specifically and similarly numbered to that of Luhmann's zettelkasten. This structure and numbering system is highly suggestive of branching ideas where each branch builds on the ideas immediately above it or on the ideas at the next section above that level.

Just as one can add an infinite number of books into the Dewey Decimal system in a way that similar ideas are relatively close together to provide serendipity for both search and idea development, one can continue adding ideas to this branching structure so they're near their colleagues.

Thus it's highly possible that the confluence of descriptions with the book and the outline of the table of contents itself suggested a better method of note keeping to Luhmann. Doing this solves the issue of needing to create multiple copies of note cards as well as trying to find cards in various places throughout the overall collection, not to mention slimming down the collection immensely. Searching for and finding a place to put new cards ensures not only that one places one's ideas into a growing logical structure, but it also ensures that one doesn't duplicate information that may already exist within one's over-arching outline. From an indexing perspective, it also solves the problem of cross referencing information along the axes of the source author, source title, and a large variety of potential subject headings.

And of course if we add even a soupcon of domain expertise in systems theory to the mix...

While thinking about Aktenzeichen, keep in mind that it was used in German public administration since at least 1934, only a few years following Heyde's first edition, but would have been more heavily used by the late 1940's when Luhmann would have begun his law studies.

https://hypothes.is/a/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA

When thinking about taking notes for creating output, one can follow one thought with another logically both within one's card index not only to write an actual paper, but the collection and development happens the same way one is filling in an invisible outline which builds itself over time.

Linking different ideas to other ideas separate from one chain of thought also provides the ability to create multiple of these invisible, but organically growing outlines.

Heyde, Johannes Erich, and Heinz Siegel. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (Inhalt). 10th ed. Berlin: Kiepert, 1970. oclc/1075391218

The table of contents of the 1970 10th Edition

A later edition of the text from which Niklas Luhmann ostensibly learned the methods behind his zettelkasten.

reread this summary of the chapter.

which?

surface structure vs. deep structure

Does this point to different classes of verbs based on their replaceability or not?

What are the simple building blocks of thought and speech that make it so complex in aggregate?

Fish in water effect

There seem to be fewer surprises in psychology than in physics.

https://lingo.360.cymru/lingo-newydd/

https://360.cymru/

https://www.abebooks.com/books/top-rare-collectors-valuable-inexpensive/affordable-collectible.shtml?cm_mmc=nl--nl--C220823-MRC-tolkieAATRADE-_-b2img&abersp=1

Here Blair quotes Chavigny and Heyde, but crucially leaves out Bernheim, Langlois & Seignobos, and Beatrice Webb.

Check the others, specifically for index card references, but Webb uses slips or sheets (and often larger ones).

Further to [[User:Biogeographist|Biogeographist]]'s comments about what defines a zettelkasten, someone has also removed the Eminem example (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zettelkasten&type=revision&diff=1105779799&oldid=1105779647) which by the basest of definitions is a zettelkasten being slips of paper literally stored in a box. The continually well-documented path of the intellectual history of the tradition stemming out of the earlier Commonplace book tradition moved from notebooks to slips of paper indicates that many early examples are just this sort of collection. The optional addition of subject headings/topics/tags aided as a finding mechanism for some and was more common historically. Too much of the present definition on the page is dominated by the recently evolved definition of a zettelkasten as specifically practiced by Luhmann, who is the only well known example of a practitioner who heavily interlinked his cards as well as indexed them (though it should be noted that they were only scantly indexed as entry points into the threads of linked cards which followed). The broader historical perspective of the practice is being overly limited by the definition imprinted by a single example, the recent re-discovery of whom, has re-popularized a set of practices dating back to at least the sixteenth century.

It seems obvious that through the examples collected and the scholarship of Blair, Cevollini, Krajewski, and others that collections of notes on slips generally kept in some sort of container, usually a box or filing cabinet of some sort is the minimal definition of the practice. This practice is often supplemented by additional finding and linking methods. Relying on the presence of ''metadata'' is both a limiting (and too modern) perspective and not supported by the ever-growing numbers of historical examples within the space.

Beyond this there's also a modern over-reliance (especially in English speaking countries beginning around 2011 and after) on the use and popularity of the German word Zettelkasten which is not generally seen in the historically English and French speaking regions where "card index" and "fichier boîte" have been used for the same practices. This important fact was removed from the top level definition with revision https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zettelkasten&type=revision&diff=1105779647&oldid=1105766061 and should also be reverted to better reflect the broader idea and history.

In short, the definition, construction, and evolution of this page/article overall has been terribly harmed by an early definition based only on Niklas Luhmann's practice as broadly defined within the horribly unsourced and underinformed blogosphere from approximately 2013 onward. ~~~~

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-62649209

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-wales-62438410

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-wales-62483610

A powerful fuckin' poem here.

https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/next-step-from-lingo-newydd/36466

Suggestions for active reading to learn Welsh

Lingo Newydd: https://lingo.360.cymru/lingo-newydd/

Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.

Videos of Dan reading the book if you prefer audio format:

Introduction: https://vimeo.com/733674146

Chapter 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UOHIU6-w6A

Chapter 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn6Iar4FYhk

Chapter 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACSyullMgZg

The razor thin margins argument only works from the bookseller's perspective, and this is primarily due to excessive competition from Amazon. Beyond this, sure the product would be slightly more expensive, but (pun intended) only marginally so. Revenue margins on classics written before 1924 (which most of this class of books is) are also significantly higher because they're public domain and the company isn't paying royalties on them. Additionally, at scale, a company with a series like Penguin Classics has a pretty solid understanding of print runs and demand to more easily allow them to innovate like this. Take the Penguin Classics copy of Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War which lists for $20 in paperback and sells for $12.00 on Amazon. (You'll notice that Amazon is essentially giving away their entire discount (aka margin, usually a 40% discount on the list price) here. At a 10,000 copy print run, the cost of the print/paper/print run is in the $2.00 per copy range or lower. Amazon is taking a razor margin for the sale, but Penguin is pocketing almost $10 in pure profit as I'm sure their marketing budget is very near zero here.<br /> They could easily still do very close to this with either larger book margins or even the same text printed on 6 x 9" instead of 5 x 8.25 (or even smaller pulp sizes) so they don't have to reset the entire book for pennies on the dollar at the publisher level. Given that the majority of this market is targeted at students, who could directly use these affordances (and often do but in more cramped space) for the small mark up (particularly in comparison to the $80 copies, which still don't fit the bill, when they exist), I would attribute their non-existence to laziness and lack of imagination on the part of the publishers. Perhaps a smaller publishers like Dover might take on such a project as a means of cheaply, but profitably improving their position in the market? Those making the argument for not marking up these sorts of copies to keep the book pristine for the next reader are missing the point. I also suspect that they haven't recently purchased these sorts of used copies that often go for under $4 on the used market. Even when treated well and not heavily annotated by the first reader, these books are not in good shape and really aren't designed to be read by more than three people. It's also the reason that most libraries don't purchase them. I might buy their argument for the more expensive hardcover collector's market, but not for the pulp mass market books which hold almost no value on the secondary market. Additionally the secondary market for this class of books doesn't usually reflect large value differences between heavily annotated/highlighted texts and those that aren't. Whether they mark them up or not, the first owner is responsible for the largest proportion of depreciated value. Tangentially, I find myself lamenting the cultural practices of prior generations who valued sharing annotated copies of texts with friends and lovers as tokens of their friendship and love. I'm guessing those who vitiate against annotation have never known these practices existed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/wue2ex/looking_for_books_with_wider_margins_for/

Not long after I posted this it had about 3 upvotes, including my automatic 1. It's now at 0, and there are several responses about not writing in books at all. It seems like this particular book community is morally opposed to writing in one's books! 🤣

Why though? There's a tremendously long tradition of writing in books, and probably more so when they were far more expensive! Now they're incredibly inexpensive commodities, so why should we be less inclined to write in them, particularly when there's reasonable evidence of the value of doing so?

I might understand not writing in library books as part of their value within the commons, but https://booktraces.org/ indicates that almost 12% or more of the books they've tracked prior to 1924 have some sort of mark, writing, or evidence that it was actively read.

Given what I know of the second hand markets, it's highly unlikely that my books (marked up or not) will ever be read by another person.

There's so much more to say here, but I just haven't the time today...

http://www.nationalgreatbooks.com/cirriculum/background.html

Louis Menand had an interesting article on great books courses recently: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-montas-rescuing-socrates.

If you look closely at those photos of Adler, you'll notice that one is in context and the other is the same image of him cut and pasted onto a set of books.

Those who are into this broader topic may also appreciate Alex Beam's book "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books". A while back I remember going though Lawrence Principe's Great Courses lecture series on the History of Science to 1700 which I suspect might help contextualize a tour through the great courses.

I'm curious if you're adding any other books that Adler et al left off their list?

https://occidental.substack.com/p/the-adlernet-guide-for-intelligent

If you've not come across the examples, one of the precursors of the slip box tradition was the widespread use of florilegia from the 8th through the 13th centuries and beyond, and they were primarily used for religious study, preaching, and sermon writing.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florilegium
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
• https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3Aflorilegium

A major example of early use was by Philip Melanchthon, who wrote a very popular handbook on how to keep a commonplace. He's one of the reasons why many Lutheran books are called or have Commonplace in the title.

A fantastic example is that of American preacher Jonathan Edwards which he called by an alternate name of Miscellanies which is now digitized and online, much the way Luhmann's is: http://edwards.yale.edu/research/misc-index Apparently he used to pin slips with notes on his coat jacket!

If I recall, u/TomKluender may have some practical experience in the overlap of theology and zettelkasten.

(Moved this comment to https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wth5t8/bible_study_and_zettelkasten/ as a better location for the conversation)

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wuey71/when_taking_bib_notes_what_do_you_do_with_quotes/

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wuey71/when_taking_bib_notes_what_do_you_do_with_quotes/

This is a clever use of color in a zettelkasten.

What other uses of color as indicators or for memory would be useful?

The use of color to distinguish the word of God over his own drivel is particularly hilarious!

I've got a few slips/references to Wittgenstein's practice available here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=Wittgenstein

Heavily quoted in chapter 4 with respect to his own zettelkasten/excerpting practice.

Is there an extant English translation of this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49C8jQIsvs

Video about the Double-Bubble Map: https://youtu.be/Hm4En13TDjs

The double-bubble map is a tool for thought for comparing and contrasting ideas. Albert Rosenberg indicates that construction of opposites is one of the most reliable ways for generating ideas. (35:50)

Bluma Zeigarnik - open tasks tend to occupy short-term memory.

I love his compounding interest graphic with the steps moving up to the right with the quote: "Even groundbreaking paradigm shifts are most often the consequence of many small moves in the right direction instead of one big idea." This could be an awesome t-shirt or motivational poster.

Watched this up to about 36 minutes on 2022-08-10 and finished on 2022-08-22.

https://mycorrhiza.wiki/

https://web.hypothes.is/blog/say-hello-to-anno/

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

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

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

Thanks for this additional piece of Data Matthias! I have a feeling that some of the benefit will also come down to the level of quality of the notes and how well interlinked they may be. Those doing massive dumps of raw, unelaborated, and unlinked data using services like Readwise into their collections will certainly take longer than those who have more refined ideas well linked. My number is presuming something closer to the former while something along the lines of a tenth of that (an order of magnitude) would seem to fall in line with my current working model. It would be nice to have a larger body of data to work with though.

syndication link

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1558759168659554304.html

Allosso, Dan. US History and Primary Source Anthology, Vol. 1. 2 vols. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/

Annotations across the text: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&wildcard_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fminnstate.pressbooks.pub%2Fushistory1%2F*

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

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

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/welcome-to-us-history-and-primary

Fascinating!

https://github.com/sajjad2881/NewSyntopicon

Someone's creating a new digitally linked version of the Syntopicon as text files for Obsidian (and potentially other platforms). Looks like it's partial at best and will need a lot of editing work to become whole.

found by way of

Has anyone made a hypermedia rendition of the Syntopicon, i.e. with transcluded windows or "parallel pages" into the indexed texts?<br><br>Many of Adler's Great Books are public domain, so it wouldn't require *so* titanic a copyright issue… pic.twitter.com/UmWiyn5aBC

— Andy Matuschak (@andy_matuschak) August 17, 2022

Jahraus, Oliver, Armin Nassehi, Mario Grizelj, Irmhild Saake, Christian Kirchmeier, and Julian Müller, eds. Luhmann-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Springer, 2012. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-476-05271-1

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1478766408691556353

a publisher that takes having wider margins seriously!

This is what we want to see!! The publishing company Annotate Books is republishing classic texts with a roomier 1.8" ruled margin on every page to make it easier to annotate texts.

It reminds me about the idea of having print-on-demand interleaved books. Why not have print-on-demand books which have wider than usual margins either with or without lines/grids/dots for easier note taking and marginalia?

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/C5WcYFhsEeyLyFeV9leIzw

Poe used the book itself as his "slip box".

Just as physics and engineering professors don't always rely on the mathematics department to teach all the mathematics that students should know, neither should any department rely on the English department to teach students how to take notes.

And here I was not knowing who Carlyle was just a day or two ago and now I'm seeing advertisements for collections of his work! 😁

Apparently I've just been reading the wrong things and jumping back to the early 21st century is where it's all at.

Seward, Samuel Swayze. Note-Taking. Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1910. http://archive.org/details/cu31924012997627

https://jhiblog.org/reading-lists/

https://jhiblog.org/lesson-plans/

Zettelkasten history: Johann Siegmund Stoy and The World in a Box

For those interested in the history of the zettelkasten, you're sure to appreciate The World in a Box: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Picture Encyclopedia by Anke te Heesen.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_World_in_a_Box/OXhsE2zYigkC?hl=en&gbpv=0

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, glue them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments—the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with the creation and maintenance of an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares the Academy with other aspects of Enlightenment material culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by the Academy shaped both the developing middle class in Germany and Enlightenment thought. The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy's Academy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/wrytqj/the_secret_book_luhmann_read_that_taught_him/

The book referenced here is Technik des Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens by Johannes Erich Heyde

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wryt4t/the_secret_book_luhmann_read_that_taught_him/

Heinen, Armin. “Wissensorganisation.” In Handbuch Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft, edited by Stefan Haas, 1–20. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27798-7_4-1

Will have to order or do more work to track down a copy of this and translate it.

Has a great bibliography to mine for some bits I've been missing.

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

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

I was doing some random searches for older material on zettelkasten in German and came across this.

Apparently I've come across this before in a similar context: https://hypothes.is/a/CsgyjAXQEeyMfoN7zLcs0w

The description now makes me want to read it all the more!

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, glue them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments—the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with the creation and maintenance of an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares the Academy with other aspects of Enlightenment material culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by the Academy shaped both the developing middle class in Germany and Enlightenment thought. The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy's Academy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

Given the portions about knowledge and control, it might also be of interest to @remikalir wrt his coming book.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/women-pigtails-tips

Anecdotal evidence that pigtails garner women in the service industry more tips, presumably because of the sexualization of little girls in society.

It would be interesting to do a larger study on this to go along with studies I've seen on restaurant music and giving guests extra mints as ways to nudge tips and experience.

The transcription on this from .pdf via Hypothesis is dreadful! In particular for the card sizes. The actual text reads as:

1. Devices for note-taking. In taking notes of reading, use slips of paper the size of the standard library card (3 x5 in.). For more extended notes and for typewritten notes, the standard half-sheet (5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.) is usually the most satisfactory size. For special purposes still larger sheets are sometimes essential. In any extended investigation the use of different colored slips or different colored inks for certain classes of notes will often prove a convenient and time-saving device. It is especially desirable, thus, to distinguish bibliographical data from subject matter. Each slip should contain only a single note. Put a topical heading at the top of each slip of subject notes and a reference to the volume and page of the authority quoted.