- Feb 2023
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blay.se blay.se
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A Zettelkasten becomes uninteresting when 1) It does not grow, 2) it grows only with isolated notes, 3) it never produces an output.
Factors that will cause one to lose interest in the maintenance of their card index...
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In computer science, this is called “Separation of concerns” [1507211921].
Has the author accidentally included a zettelkasten identification number here?
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The core of the system is a collection of shorter notes with links between them.
anecdotal definition/summary of zettelkasten.
I like the "shorter notes" idea here which would have arisen before the "atomic notes" or "evergreen notes" ideas.
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implemented on index cards
Interesting to see a somewhat out of place link to Pile of Index Cards system here.
Given the 2015 date of the post this could be a part of the small distribution of the 2006 idea into the conversation a decade later.
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The term Zettelkasten comes from Luhmann’s note-taking system.
At least they don't say he invented it...
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www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
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"Prosperity is something created by businessmen for politicians to take credit for."
—Ronald Reagan
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The Zettelkasten Method is not a thing; it is a manual to productivity.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Writing has taken priority. My course assignment is to write a creative non-fiction essay modeled after the works we discussed in class. My Zk has been a joyous and surprising resource for ideas. I'm using my ZK by creating search queries and using the highlighting feature to find where I've already written answers to the query in my own voice. They become snippets directly into my essay. In a sense, I've already written my essay. I just have to find all the pieces and put them together. In truth, this is only a first draft and still needs work. What I've found to be key steps to creating a rough draft. 1. Write and outline 2. Craft queries following the outline 3. Spend time looking closely are all the returned results 4. Look for quotes and epigraphs relevant to the paper 5. Look through the draft for ideas that want expansion repeating steps 2-5
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Journal and zettelkasten.<br /> by flin
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One of the benefits of journaling on an index card is that the small space is much less intimidating than a large blank sheet, particularly when one isn't in the mood but feels like they ought to write. This is similar to the idea that many people find that microblogs (Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr) are much easier to maintain than a long form blog.
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I keep a wholly separate section of one of my boxes as a journal/diary as well, but it's less significant and is ordered only by date with very sparse indexing and an almost non-existent amount of linking. I have a bit of @Sascha's practice going on there, though certainly not as deep as his excellent description. I would caution newcomers to the practice of ZK to be very conscious of what, how, and why they're integrating a journaling practice into their workflow so that they don't risk what I call "zettelkasten overreach". Guarding against this sort of overreach can very easily be seen in my separate/distinct "journal on index cards" versus Sascha's more explicitly thought out "journal within a zettelkasten".
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One might have considered some of this part of his (Roland Barthes') fichier boîte (French for zettelkasten) as a journal/diary or what some might today consider a private microblog of thoughts and observations.
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reply lifted from my notes:
Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:
- Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.
Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
- Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
- Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
- Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.
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The reason is that the journaling is in part an accumulative method: There is a long period of low-structured input which benefits manifest first acutely (writing in itself seems to be healing through understanding). After you amassed a time-line of thoughts you can try to find throughlines and patterns which then gives you access to deep insights if you have the right tools. Most of the time people use psychologists which I think is in a similar way problematic that people use physical therapists for too much of their problems: Many problems are best solved by the person that has immediate access to the ego-perspective (phenomenological layer, subjective access, etc.) of the problem. This is of course dependent on self-education on basic concepts of what I call true self-care. Self-care seems to be associated with stuff like doing pleasant things (hot bath, nice walks in the sun) nowadays. If you take the antifragile nature of us humans into account this is just another way of the modern hedonist to keep stuck. (This is important for my approach to incorporate journaling into the Zettelkasten Method)
—Sasha Fast https://forum.zettelkasten.de/profile/Sascha
I love the deeper definition and distinction of self-care here.
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I am a journaler and a zettelnaut.
via Will
zettler is another common one used by Chritian Tietze
Tags
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- microblogging
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- zettelkasten overreach
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- psychology
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- microblogging vs. blogging
- blank page
- Sasha Fast
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- read
Annotators
URL
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petersmith.org petersmith.org
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://boffosocko.comБлог Криса Алдрича со множеством статей об управлении знаниями. Алдрич невероятно дотошный исследователь. Если вы заинтересованы в серьезном изучении истории вопроса, вам сюда.
translation:
Chris Aldrich's blog with many articles on knowledge management. Aldrich is an incredibly meticulous researcher. If you are interested in a serious study of the history of the issue, you are here.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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On Ahrens' shipping container analogy to the zettelkasten
@ZettelDistraction said Perhaps the shipping hub is a better analogy for the Zettelkasten than the shipping container (Ahrens, 40).
We should be careful to separate the ideas of analogy and metaphor. Analogies are usually more direct and well-defined in scope.
While there's an apt and direct correlation between shipping containers and zettelkasten as boxes, Ahrens was making the analogy with respect to the shift that shipping containers made to the overall system:
shipping containers : shipping industry and globalism :: zettelkasten : thinking and writing/content creation
As with many analogies, stretching it the way one might stretch metaphors isn't usually fruitful or even possible.
In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.
He's saying one needs to consider how one's note taking method fits into their work in a more integrative way. Without properly integrating it into one's workflow seamlessly the system will fail. This is also one of the most difficult problems many zettelkasten aspirants have. In addition to creating a zettelkasten, they're often also simultaneously trying to integrate new (digital) tools into their process at the same time and they get distracted by them rather than focusing on the move to increasing writing/creating and creativity overall (globalism).
To focus on Ahrens' analogy a bit, if Obsidian, for example, is your "ship", is it as custom built for your specific purpose the way a container ship would be for a cargo container? Might you be better off with something like The Archive, ZKN3, or simple index cards that help to limit you to only do the function you want rather than all the other possible functions (wiki, blog, to do list, calendar, journal, kanban, etc.)? Obsidian and many other applications can be a proverbial row boat, a yacht, a tugboat, a steamer, a cruise ship, and even a warship in addition to a container ship, so one has to be extra careful how they choose to use it.
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zettelkasting
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Perhaps the shipping hub is a better analogy for the Zettelkasten than the shipping container (Ahrens, 40).
Misreading of Ahrens. The shipping container wasn't a direct analogy to the zk. It was an analogy about process of building a system from the ground up to better effectuate a result.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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reply to Share the ideas dancing in your ZK with us. February 17, 2023
Congratulations @Will on the milestone! @ctietze's analogy with smithwork is fantastic. I might also liken it to the point in acquiring a new language when one begins dreaming in their new target language. So many talk about the idea of increased productivity associated with having a zk, but most spend an inordinate amount of time on shiny object syndrome or over complicating it and never get to the point of quickly writing things out, filing them, and being able to trust that their system will just work™. When you no longer notice it anymore and it has become second nature is when the real fun (and magic) begins to happen. It also seems easier and more natural to break the "rules" once you've internalized the basics. We should spend more time talking about the value of 'zettelkasten fluency'.
I'm excited this week to be doing some work in areas of the history of misinformation, cultural myths, and 'American exceptionalism' in preparation for Dan Allosso's upcoming book club on Kruse and Zelizer's new edited book. I suspect he'll announce it shortly at https://danallosso.substack.com/ if folks are interested in joining in the discussion/sensemaking.
Kruse, Kevin M., and Julian E. Zelizer. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Basic Books, 2023.
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Local file Local file
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Gershom Scholem’s card catalogue of mystical texts and termswhich has been furnished with its own reading room at the National Library of Israel;
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The two sections of the index, then, went different ways: when Marcus opened‘branches’ of his archive in Los Angeles, New York, and Jerusalem, he microfilmedportions of his archival collections and also the Americana part of Deutsch’s cards. Bycontrast, the remaining cards were left to languish at Hebrew Union College’s Cincinnatilibrary.
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Moststriking, though, was Marcus’ appropriation of Deutsch’s cards when he extracted thoserelating to America, installing them in the reading room of the American JewishArchives where they remain to this day.
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As a graduate student, hemaintained a card index of his own. When Marcus’s friends wrote of his travels abroad,they declared that ‘When we think of that card index by now we shudder. What propor-tions it must have assumed’. 18
Example of a student who saw/learned/new a zettelkasten note taking method from a teacher.
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Shortly after Deutsch’s death thealumni of the Hebrew Union College purchased his index for the seminary’s library.15
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As a result, hisindex is simultaneously a relic of research and a reminder of the pitfalls of all such effortsto create systematic knowledge, regardless of the underlying technology – paper, digitalor otherwise.
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One might then say that Deutsch’s index devel-oped at the height of the pursuit of historical objectivity and constituted a tool ofhistorical research not particularly innovative or limited to him alone, given that the useof notecards was encouraged by so many figures, and it crystallized a positivistic meth-odology on its way out.
Can zettelkasten be used for other than positivitistic methodologies?
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Fred Morrow Flingwrote effusively of the ‘manifest advantages’ of the ‘card system of note taking’
from<br /> Fling, F. M. (1920) The Writing of History: An Introduction to Historical Method. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Herbert Baxton Adams’ model of ahistorical seminar room suggested it have a dedicated catalogue;
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20th-century enterprises like Herbert Field’s‘Concilium Bibliographicum’, a system of zoological research
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in 1917 he celebrated his fifty-thousandth card with an article titled ‘Siyum’, referencing the celebration upon conclud-ing study of a tractate of Talmud (Deutsch, 1917b).
Did he write about his zettelkasten in this article?! Deutsch, G. (1917b) ‘Siyum’, American Israelite, 8 March, 15 March.
Gotthard Deutsch celebrated his fifty thousandth card in 1917. ᔥ
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The fact that Deutsch’s students saw their teacher’sindex as a monument to his historical genius
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At once intended as a foundationfor a systematic history of the Jews, it was deeply unsystematic; meant to be a means ofproductivity, in the end Deutsch was essentially unproductive.
An example of a zettelkasten, meant for productivity in most settings, being called unproductive in Gotthard Deutsch's case.
Of course this calls to mind the definition of productivity and from who's perspective. From Deutsch's written output perspective it may have been exceptionally low in comparison to the outputs of others like Niklas Luhmann, S.D. Goitein, or Roland Barthes. But when viewed from the perspective of a teaching instrument and influence on his students, perhaps it was monumentally productive?
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Deutsch’s index and his ‘facts’, then, seemedto his students to embody a moral value in addition to epistemological utility.
Beyond their epistemological utility do zettelkasten also "embody a moral value"? Jason Lustig argues that they may have in the teaching context of Gotthard Deutsch where the reliance on facts was of extreme importance for historical research.
Some of this is also seen in Scott Scheper's religious framing of zettelkasten method though here the aim has a different focus.
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Deutsch’s index was created out of an almost algorith-mic processing of historical sources in the pursuit of a totalized and perfect history of theJews; it presented, on one hand, the individualized facts, but together also constitutedwhat we might term a ‘history without presentation’, which merely held the ‘facts’themselves without any attempt to synthesize them (cf. Saxer, 2014: 225-32).
Not sure that I agree with the framing of "algorithmic processing" here as it was done manually by a person pulling out facts. But it does bring out the idea of where collecting ends and synthesis of a broader thesis out of one's collection begins. Where does historical method end? What was the purpose of the collection? Teaching, writing, learning, all, none?
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one finds in Deutsch’s catalogue one implementation of what LorraineDaston would later term ‘mechanical objectivity’, an ideal of removing the scholar’s selffrom the process of research and especially historical and scientific representation (Das-ton and Galison, 2007: 115-90).
In contrast to the sort of mixing of personal life and professional life suggested by C. Wright Mills' On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952), a half century earlier Gotthard Deutsch's zettelkasten method showed what Lorraine Datson would term 'mechanical objectivity'. This is an interesting shift in philosophical perspective of note taking practice. It can also be compared and contrasted with a 21st century perspective of "personal" knowledge management.
Tags
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- Shelomo Dov Goitein's zettelkasten
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- On Intellectual Craftsmanship
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Annotators
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www.americanjewisharchives.org www.americanjewisharchives.org
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Deutsch (Gotthard) Papers. 1859-1922 (bulk 1900-1920). [MS-123]
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Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. [...] The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created.
Cytat: https://hypothes.is/a/uDIE9q70Ee2xxiszhAZGOQ Cytat w kontekście: https://hyp.is/uDIE9q70Ee2xxiszhAZGOQ/www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2p-1afdRA
Nadrzędny cel robienia notatek metodą Zettelkasten jest organizacja wiedzy, a nie organizacja notatek, stąd potrzeba odpowiedniego systemu łączenia informacji, a nie poszczególnych notatek.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2p-1afdRA
wrt: https://hypothes.is/a/uDIE9q70Ee2xxiszhAZGOQ<br /> I'll give him a little credit that he's at least aliasing his notes as he "files" them, but I suspect that over time he's making more work for himself than not. This seems unsustainable over time.
It also seems like he's doing a lot more make-work here than he otherwise ought to?
Notice that he's making this to sell a course: https://joshduffney.gumroad.com/l/take-smart-notes-obsidian
He doesn't directly link the GitHub repo as he indicated, but it can be found here: https://github.com/Duffney/smart-notes. In looking at it, the timestamped notes will become problematic.
This was from 2021-10-17. I'm curious what his "system" looks like today? Has it changed through time and experience?
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Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. Doubly so if it occurs at the beginning of the title. There are no affordances in this practice and it's more likely to cause problems at scale. Just say no! (Note this is not the same as using a Luhmann-esque identifier at the start of a title as a means of providing a sort order of one's notes held in an individual folder.)
Are there any reasons for someone to do this?! - perhaps for file name conflicts when digitally inserting notes into a system using third party clients with titles which may cause conflicts (though these could/should be removed later for easier reading); - counterexample: https://hypothes.is/a/Jux0pq7yEe2Uqj9mFXS3nQ - Another potential issue is in shared or collaborative note taking spaces where collision is more likely because others don't have the shared context. - perhaps for forcing sort orders on daily notes or recurring meetings MeetingA YYYY-MM-DD, etc., though these are probably in a separate area of one's box and not in their zettelkasten section.
The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. This will rarely (sans database-related use cases perhaps) provide any insight and digital systems have other easier and better ways of doing this if you need it.
Worse, some systems may not do autocompletion on words in the middle of titles, so starting a card with a datetime can hamper this functionality. One should check this against their particular system.
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www.amazon.com www.amazon.com
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https://www.amazon.com/Container-OakRidge-Products-Mailbox-style-Certified/dp/B00X6L1HFW/
Finally a physical zettelkasten box for your sharpest and most dangerous ideas!
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joshduffney.gumroad.com joshduffney.gumroad.com
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https://joshduffney.gumroad.com/l/take-smart-notes-obsidian
$2.99 for "How to Take Smart Notes in Obsidian"
(not a recommendation)
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kmltkc.medium.com kmltkc.medium.com
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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u/jwhco has ~5,000 index cards and 18,237 files (presumably mostly note-based text files, though some mentioned are papers, articles, etc.) over the span of 22 years.
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harleystagner.com harleystagner.com
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Digital Smart Notes Part 4: Creating Permanent Notes In Roam Research<br /> by Harley Stanger
Part 1: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-1-the-capture-toolkit/ - Part 2: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-2-exporting-highlights-to-roam-research-with-readwise/ - Part 3: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-3-creating-literature-notes-in-roam-research/ - Part 4: Digital Smart Notes Part 4: Creating Permanent Notes In Roam Research
synopsis of Ahrens
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Your Antinet Walkthrough
reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1132e2r/your_antinet_walkthrough/
Examples like this would certainly be useful/helpful, but you may be waiting a while. Until then some extant (if possibly longer or even written) examples are always helpful. Some may be a bit less Antinet in shape, but the examples are useful none-the-less: - See comment thread here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ - https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#historical-examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 with notes at https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ (though perhaps a deeper view into them is more illustrative: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm?stackedNotes=z4KZ9973AoHhvM9Pj5Qrds48JXNbMEwVJmVRw&stackedNotes=z8RTzukqNLKFXzqLwx25HrUrg5E5jiziGznWB&stackedNotes=z6UDDkom8Aifg6mLdjT1sPtbMBweCmpyTwmJT - Scott Scheper has a LOT here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSofW8L-FnU-Z8BFXqv8JZt5Cp0mj2_Eb - Ryan Holiday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk - Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0
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www.kunsthalle-bielefeld.de www.kunsthalle-bielefeld.de
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Zur Ausstellung ist ein Katalog im snoeck Verlag erschienen (29,80 Euro).
There's a catalog for this exhibition available:
Meschede, Friedrich, ed. Serendipity. Vom Glück des Findens. Snoeck Verlagsges, 2015. https://www.buecher.de/shop/buecher/serendipity-vom-glueck-des-findens/broschiertes-buch/products_products/detail/prod_id/43762021/.
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ᔥ[[Andreas Fasel]] in Niklas Luhmann: Ein Zettelkasten als zweites Gehirn at 2015-06-28<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-13 11:45:39)
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Fasel, Andreas. “Niklas Luhmann: Ein Zettelkasten als zweites Gehirn.” Die Welt, June 28, 2015, web edition, sec. North Rhine-Westphalia. (https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article143147819/Ein-Zettelkasten-war-Luhmanns-zweites-Gehirn.html.
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Der Zettelkasten wird in der Ausstellung „Serendipity – Vom Glück des Findens“ in der Kunsthalle Bielefeld gezeigt, 11. Juli bis 11. Oktober
google translate:
The Zettelkasten will be shown in the exhibition “ Serendipity – From the Luck of Finding ” at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, July 11 to October 11
In addition to having appeared in the Marbach zettelkasten exhibition in 2013, Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten also appeared in the exhibition "Serendipity: From the Luck of Finding" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld from July 11 - October 11, 2015.
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„Und?“, fragt Schmidt und macht eine Kunstpause, „enttäuscht?“
Coincidence that Schmidt shows a journalist Luhmann's zettelkasten in 2015 and asks if they're disappointed?
It's reasonably likely that he'd already read ZKII 9/8,3.
see: https://hypothes.is/a/GFj15IcbEe21OIMwT2TOJA
in the article which follows below, there's an explicit mention of this specific zettel, so the question on priority here is closed.
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Schade eigentlich, dass sich Schmidt für solche Privatheiten gar nicht interessieren soll. Denn das Ziel seines Forschungsprojekts, das von der NRW-Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste finanziert wird, ist es, den wissenschaftlichen Nachlass des Niklas Luhmann für dessen wissenschaftliche Nachfahren aufzubereiten. Wenn alles gescannt ist, muss Zettel für Zettel von der Handschrift in Maschinenschrift übertragen werden. Dann sollen sämtliche Querverweise, mit denen Luhmann seine Zettel untereinander vernetzt hat, auch digital verlinkt werden. „Und am Ende könnten vielleicht einzelne Abteilungen des Kastens auch in Buchform veröffentlicht werden“, erklärt Schmidt. Laufzeit des Projekts: 16 Jahre.
google translate:
It's a pity that Schmidt shouldn't be interested in such private matters. Because the aim of his research project, which is funded by the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts, is to prepare Niklas Luhmann's scientific estate for his scientific descendants.
When everything is scanned, note by note must be transferred from handwriting to typescript. Then all cross-references with which Luhmann has networked his slips of paper should also be linked digitally. "And in the end, individual sections of the box could perhaps also be published in book form," explains Schmidt. Duration of the project: 16 years.
Schmidt's work on Niklas Luhmann's scientific estate is funded by the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the project is expected to last 16 years. The careful observer will notice that this duration is over half of Luhmann's own expected project length of 30 years. The cost of which is also significantly more than the "cost: none" that Luhmann projected at the time.
link to https://hypothes.is/a/zUjEIvfWEeykOiO1E8YAYw
Researchers ought to account for the non-insignificant archival cost of their work once it's done.
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Die Lebenswelt des Niklas Luhmann – die findet Schmidt jetzt manchmal auf den Rückseiten der Zettel. Denn Luhmann recycelte für seinen Kasten offenbar jeden Fetzen Papier, den er finden konnte. So kann es vorkommen, dass auf der Zettel-Vorderseite komprimierte Überlegungen zum Autopoiesis-Begriff stehen oder Zusammenfassungen unbekannter Traktate aus früheren Jahrhunderten, während auf der Rückseite erste Rechenübungen von Luhmanns Kindern zu finden sind. Oder Scheckabrechnungen. Oder Anweisungen an die Haushaltshilfe: „Kellertreppe gründlich fegen und wischen“, steht da zum Beispiel.
google translate:
The world of Niklas Luhmann – Schmidt now sometimes finds it on the back of the slip. Because Luhmann apparently recycled every scrap of paper he could find for his box. So it can happen that on the front of the note there are condensed reflections on the concept of autopoiesis or summaries of unknown treatises from earlier centuries, while on the back you can find the first arithmetic exercises by Luhmann's children. Or check statements. Or instructions to the household help: “Sweep and wipe the basement stairs thoroughly”, for example.
Luhmann adhered to the standard advice to write only on one side of his cards, though perhaps not just for the usual reasons, but in part because he recycled the papers he had at hand to make his slips. On the backs of his notes one can find instructions he'd made to his household help, his children's homework papers, bank statements, and other papers he happened to have at hand.
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Man kann zwar 50 Zettel auf einmal in den Scanner legen, doch für jeden einzelnen muss eine eigene Datei angelegt werden. Schmidt rechnet, dass es ein Jahr dauern wird, bis der ganze Kasten digital erfasst ist.
Schmidt estimated in 2015 that it would take at least a year to scan in the entire corpus of Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten, imaging 50 cards at a time.
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Doch als er richtig zu zählen begann, wurde ihm klar, dass es wohl weit mehr sind. Luhmann hatte für die Niederschrift seiner Gedanken keine festen Karteikarten benutzt, sondern normales Papier, das er in Din-A6-Stücke schnitt und dicht an dicht in die Kästen quetschte.
Instead of using pre-made stiff index cards, Luhmann used standard paper which he cut up into DIN A6 sized slips which he packed into his drawers. Schmidt had trouble removing slips from some of the boxes because they were packed so tightly.
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Exactly how much space would be saved writing on standard paper versus index cards in a collection as large as Luhmann's?
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Und doch fand er darin nie das, was er eigentlich suchte, sondern etwas Neues, Überraschendes.
google translate:
And yet he never found what he was actually looking for, but something new and surprising.
While you'll only find in your zettelkasten exactly what you placed there, you may be surprised to find more than you expected.
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Entsprechend groß war die Neugier seiner Schüler und Kollegen, die den Kasten analysieren wollten. Doch jahrelang stritten Luhmanns Kinder vor Gericht um den wissenschaftlichen Nachlass, an eine Aufarbeitung war lange nicht zu denken. Erst 2011 konnte die Universität Bielefeld Luhmanns geistige Hinterlassenschaften kaufen. Und nun, seit Anfang des Jahres, wird tatsächlich erforscht, was es auf sich hat mit diesem Kasten, der in Soziologenkreisen schon mal als Heiliger Gral bezeichnet wird.
google translate:
The curiosity of his students and colleagues, who wanted to analyze the box, was correspondingly high. For years, however, Luhmann's children fought in court about the scientific legacy, and for a long time there was no question of a reappraisal. It was not until 2011 that the University of Bielefeld was able to buy Luhmann's intellectual legacies. And now, since the beginning of the year, research has actually been going on into what this box, which sociologists have sometimes referred to as the Holy Grail, is all about.
Bielefeld University sued Luhmann's estate (his children) over his intellectual legacy. In 2011 they were finally able to purchase his papers, but research on his papers and zettelkasten didn't begin until early 2015.
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Als der so liebenswerte wie kauzige Universalgelehrte 1998 starb, hinterließ er nicht nur ein Werk von Weltrang, sondern eben auch jenen Zettelkasten, um den schon zu seinen Lebzeiten Legenden rankten.
google translate:
When the universal scholar, who was as lovable as he was odd, died in 1998, he not only left behind a work of world renown, but also that box of papers that was already the subject of legends during his lifetime.
This article indicates that Luhmann's zettelkasten was legendary during his lifetime, but was this really the case? Luhmann indicated people's disappointment in his own writing (ZKII 9/8,3), but is there other anecdotal evidence that this wasn't the case?
What does the lawsuit between the family and the Bielefeld over his papers indicate?
Tags
- DIN A6
- 2015
- 2011
- Bielefeld University
- law suits
- German Literature Archive (Marbach)
- paper vs. index cards
- personal papers
- Johannes Schmidt
- zettelkasten
- open questions
- magic of note taking
- NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts
- surprise
- disappointment
- recycling
- index cards
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- productivity porn
- combinatorial creativity
- exhibitions
- Johannes F. K. Schmidt
- read
- write only on one side
- sum is greater than the parts
Annotators
URL
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www.dla-marbach.de www.dla-marbach.de
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Hennemann, Alexa. “Ausstellungseröffnung am 4. März: »Zettelkästen. Maschinen der Phantasie« Mit Navid Kermani, Norbert Miller und Meike Werner. Zum 250. Geburtstag von Jean Paul.” Deutches Literatur Archiv Marbach, February 13, 2013. https://www.dla-marbach.de/presse/presse-details/news/pm-11-2013/.
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www.pearltrees.com www.pearltrees.com
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http://www.pearltrees.com/barockschloss/knowledge-management-germany/id12863560
Knowledge Management in Germany by Barockschloss
Example of someone using the social bookmarking application Pearltrees as a form of digital zettelkasten. They've created a collection of cards about zettelkasten.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com
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Writers struggled with the fickle nature of the system. They often spent a great deal of time wading through Wordcraft's suggestions before finding anything interesting enough to be useful. Even when writers struck gold, it proved challenging to consistently reproduce the behavior. Not surprisingly, writers who had spent time studying the technical underpinnings of large language models or who had worked with them before were better able to get the tool to do what they wanted.
Because one may need to spend an inordinate amount of time filtering through potentially bad suggestions of artificial intelligence, the time and energy spent keeping a commonplace book or zettelkasten may pay off magnificently in the long run.
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groktiddlywiki.com groktiddlywiki.com
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If you want to share your wiki with someone, you can just email them the file and be virtually assured they can open it.
... which is not a bad implementation of mind uploading given current technical constraints.
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TiddlyWiki is free as in freedom. Unlike proprietary tools like Evernote, Roam Research, and OneNote, you have complete freedom to use TiddlyWiki for any purpose you want, share it with others, and modify it if you need or want to. You will never lose access to your notes because a company decided the service wasn't profitable anymore. If you're planning to write a lot of notes, this should be non-negotiable.
This is the key feature you should consider before deciding how to implement your ZettelkastenIsForLifeNotJustForChristmas.
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Most notes systems fail at the seemingly elementary requirement of matching the way you think.
This makes me want to create RoundPegRoundHole. But then I'm not sure whether this should be in h. or tw. I would lean towards a public tw which has the feeling of TV Tropes in that it's a database of patterns. Perhaps that's the use case of publishing a subset of a tw/Zettelkasten.
The other (meta) thought this generated was how the decision of whether to be public or private interrupts the pleasant flow that comes from knowing exactly where to put a note and how to divide a thought. This is what experience tiddlywiki fluency is trying to capture.
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texnicalstuff.blogspot.com texnicalstuff.blogspot.com
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Zettelkasten workflow<br /> by pqnelson
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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Arbeiten mit Zettelkästen<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke
at this time in 2013-08-29, Christian Tietze was hosting zettelkasten.de on his personal domain before it moved later that year to its ultimate site, thus the reason that the Twitter link here resolves to Christian's site https://christiantietze.de/ now.
At the time, Daniel was obviously aware of both Christian and Manfred Kuehn's Taking Note blog.
He was also aware of Kuehn's original translation of Luhmann's essay in it's original location at http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm/post/2012-12-22-111621 before it moved. (I remember spending ages puzzling out the original location via the Internet Archive).
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zettels.info zettels.infoImprint1
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Imprint Zettels® Muna Awaragi Ohmstrasse 4 50677 Cologne Germany Phone +49-221-387324 info@zettels.info https://zettels.info
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zettels.info zettels.info
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https://zettels.info/en/int/default.asp
A digital note taking product
ᔥ[[Frank Berzbach]] in Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz - sciencegarden - Magazin für junge Forschung at 2002-06-30<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:59:08)<br /> where he referred to it as "A free online Zettelkasten by Joachim Richter"
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sciencegarden.net sciencegarden.net
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A Luhmann web article from 2001-06-30!
Berzbach, Frank. “Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz.” Online magazine. Magazin für junge Forschung, June 30, 2001. https://sciencegarden.net/kunstliche-intelligenz-aus-holz/.
Interesting to see the stark contrast in zettelkasten method here in an article about Luhmann versus the discussions within the blogosphere, social media, and other online spaces circa 2018-2022.
ᔥ[[Daniel Lüdecke]] in Arbeiten mit (elektronischen) Zettelkästen at 2013-08-30 (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:15:58)
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Wer sich also solch einen hölzernen Lebenspartner aufzieht, wird nach einigen Jahren immer interessantere Antworten auf seine Fragen bekommen …
google translate:
So if you raise such a wooden life partner, you will get more and more interesting answers to your questions after a few years...
I love the idea of rearing a zettelkasten as a "wooden life partner".
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Der Zettelkasten weiß tendenziell immer weniger als man selbst, aber immer soviel, wie wir auf Karten geschrieben haben.
google translate:
The Zettelkasten always tends to know less than you do, but always as much as we have written on cards.
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Neben den Methoden herkömmlicher Recherche werden daher normalerweise Zettelkästen angelegt, in denen auf Karteikarten notiert ist, was ständig zitiert werden muss. Studenten erproben dies oft zum ersten mal intensiv für ihre Diplomarbeit. Nach Schlagworten und Autoren werden Notizen alphabetisch geordnet und was in den Kasten einsortiert wurde, kann man auch wieder herausholen.
Google translate:
In addition to the methods of conventional research, card boxes are usually created in which index cards are used to record what needs to be constantly quoted. Students often try this out intensively for their diploma thesis for the first time. Notes are sorted alphabetically according to keywords and authors, and what has been sorted into the box can also be taken out again.
An indication from 2001 of the state of the art of zettelkasten written in German. Note that the description is focused more on the index card or slip-based version of a commonplace book sorted alphabetically by keywords and authors primarily for quoting. Most students trying the method for the first time are those working on graduate level theses.
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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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Luhmanns Arbeitsweise im elektronischen Zettelkasten<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke
translation: Luhmann's way of working in the electronic zettelkasten
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Lüdecke, Daniel. “Introduction to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten - Thinking and Its Technical Implementation.” Presented at the Trier Digital Humanities Autumn School 2015, Trier University, October 1, 2015. https://strengejacke.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/introduction-into-luhmanns-zettelkasten-thinking.pdf..
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“The Zettelkastenis much more effortand time consumingthan writing books.”Niklas Luhmann, Shortcuts, p.26
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Branching and note sequences allow “story telling”
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Categories mean determination of internal structure less flexibility, especially “in the long run“ of knowledgemanagement and storage
The fact that Luhmann changed the structure of his zettelkasten with respect to the longer history of note taking and note accumulation allowed him several useful affordances.
In older commonplacing and slip box methods, one would often store their notes by topic category or perhaps by project. This mean that after collection one had to do additional work of laying them out into some sort of outline to create arguments and then write them out for publication. This also meant that one was faced with the problem of multiple storage or copying out notes multiple times to file under various different subject headings.
Luhmann overcame both of these problems by eliminating categories and placing ideas closest to their most relevant neighbor and numbering them in a branching fashion. Doing this front loads some of the thinking and outlining work which would often be done later, though it's likely easier to do when one has the fullest context of a note after they've made it when it is still freshest in their mind. It also means that each note is linked to at least one other note in the system. This helps notes from being lost and allows a simpler indexing structure whereby one only needs to use a few index entries to get close to the neighborhood of an idea as most other related ideas are likely to be nearby within a handful or more of index cards.
Going from index to branches on the tree is relatively easy and also serves the function of reminding one of interesting prior reading and ideas as one either searches for specific notes or searches for placing future notes.
When it comes to ultimately producing papers, one's notes already have a pre-arranged sort of outline which can then be more easily copied over for publication, though one can certainly still use other cross-links and further rearranging if one wishes.
Older methods focused on broad accretion of materials into subject ordered piles while Luhmann's practice not only aggregated them, but slowly and assuredly grew them into more orderly trains of thought as he collected.
Link to: The description in Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (section 1.2 Die Kartei) at https://hypothes.is/a/-qiwyiNbEe2yPmPOIojH1g which heavily highlights all the downsides, though it doesn't frame them that way.
Tags
- Trier University
- card index for writing
- aggregation
- trains of thought
- Daniel Lüdecke
- quotes
- Trier Digital Humanities Autumn School 2015
- zettelkasten
- topical headings
- Niklas Luhmann
- commonplace books
- accretion of information
- knowledge development
- references
- ZKN3
- categorization
- storytelling
- digital humanities
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- growth of information
- note taking maintenance
- read
Annotators
URL
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fremdlesen.de fremdlesen.de
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Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten<br /> http://fremdlesen.de/?p=297
Zettelkasten: Niklas hol' mir 'n Bier!<br /> Niklas Luhmann: Hatte ich doch bloss nie diessen ver-fluchten zettelkasten erfunden!
translation:
Niklas get me a beer!<br /> If only I had never invented that damn note box!
Link to: Effort of maintaining a zettelkasten: https://hypothes.is/a/ahU8YqmoEe2tL79vZF9PvQ
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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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I think it would be massively helpful if users had stronger examples of what these explicit creation workflows looked like, particularly at the longer end of creation of chapters or even book length spaces.
This is the acid test of whether the process is working.
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www.thesing-online.de www.thesing-online.de
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A Zettelkasten is hypertext plus a hierarchical tree structure and keywords.
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A Zettelkasten is hypertext plus a hierarchical tree structure and keywords.
an elegant little statement
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www.edwinwenink.xyz www.edwinwenink.xyz
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https://www.edwinwenink.xyz/posts/59-writing_not_collecting/
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Zettelkasten and the big picture .t3_10xqd30._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
This question calls to mind that I haven't seen the word consilience in this space at all. Search pulls up only one post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zg80qc/comprehensible_texts_productivity_and_again/
Where does consilience sit with respect to the use of a zettelkasten?
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Rookie question: Part of my knowledge database is based on the Zettelkasten method, i.e. I have concept-oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other. I don't, however, however use IDs and neither the Folgezettel method.
Example of someone (u/HerrRey) who defines zettelkasten as "concept oriented, atomic notes that are linked to each other", but who doesn't use or exclude "IDs or the folgezettel method". Interestingly they feel like they're not getting the "big picture" of their work.
Is there an affordance in these missing pieces that prevents them from seeing the big picture because of what they're missing? Is it just neurodiversity? Are they not creating outputs which connect the small to the big, and thus missing it that way?
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zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de
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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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Should you copy a method just because Luhmann used it? No, indeed it doesn’t make sense to copy a method just because it appears sexy. One should find the best fitting method for himself.
Some in the current zettelkasten space come close to this (Bob Doto comes to mind) while others seem to be more dogmatic. I think people generally ultimately do this in practice, but there is still a lingering sense of orthodoxy.
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I recently was invited by the Niklas-Luhmann-Archiv research group, to give an overview of my Zettelkasten and discuss aspects of the technical implementation of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method.
So nice to see a blog post specifically talk about "Luhmann's Zettelkasten method" rather than a more generic zettelkasten method as being Luhmann's. Notice the 2015 date before the "fame" had caught on in the blogosphere's productivity porn space closer to 2018.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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What are your two favourite articles, videos or books on the zettelkasten process?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/what_are_your_two_favourite_articles_videos_or/
My favorite video for its utter brevity and compactness combined with complexity and trueness to the historical record, not to mention the spectacular production value - The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Runner up video, which I love for the supreme simplicity of the method—literally slips and a box - “The Speed Traders/Mandela/Eminem.” 60 Minutes. CBS, October 10, 2010. https://youtu.be/pPXBwy3JgVo?t=64
My favorite article for its practicality and some studied perspective - Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
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groups.google.com groups.google.com
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For those who have been interested in my public Zettelkasten wiki in the past (or might be interested in it now), I've just put up an extensive discussion of Zettelkasten and how I've implemented it in my TiddlyWiki on my YouTube channel
Origin story of TW implementation.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Introduction to tzk (Zettelkasten in TiddlyWiki)
Route 1 to pragmatic Zettelkastening!
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zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com zettelkasten.sorenbjornstad.com
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Zettelkasten example using my preferred toolchain.
Possibly the quickest way to get the technique under your fingers by browsing the author's example.
Tags
Annotators
URL
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Zettelkasten can be described as a collection of conceptual maps in a written format.
What are the connections between zettelkasten and conceptual maps?
How are they different/similar to Tony Buzan's mind maps?
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www.srf.ch www.srf.ch
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Stettler, Lucia. “Geheime Gästekartei überlebt Hotelbrand – und birgt Zündstoff.” Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), April 8, 2021, sec. Kultur. https://www.srf.ch/kultur/gesellschaft-religion/brisanter-fund-geheime-gaestekartei-ueberlebt-hotelbrand-und-birgt-zuendstoff.
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>ManuelRodriguez331</span> in Advantages of Analog note taking : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>02/07/2023 08:33:25</time>)</cite></small>
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Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (Hrsg.): «Keine Ostergrüsse mehr! Die geheime Gästekartei des Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera». Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.Der reich bebilderte Band bietet eine spannende Reise in ein Stück Schweizer Tourismusgeschichte: Die Herausgeber haben die 20'000 Karteikarten aus den Jahren 1920-1960 sehr sorgfältig kuratiert, nach Themen gegliedert und in einen grösseren, gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt.Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren viel über die Klientel im Hotel Waldhaus, zum Teil sogar in kleinen biografischen Porträts; und sie können an konkreten Beispielen verfolgen, wie sich der Sprachgebrauch der Concierges im Laufe der Zeit verändert – gerade zum Beispiel im Zusammenhang mit jüdischen Gästen.
Google Translate:
Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.
The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.
The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.
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www.ricklindquist.com www.ricklindquist.com
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How to Take Smart Notes
Which edition did you read?
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How to use the slip box system to write bottoms-up
This is the second time I've seen people refer to "the 8 point summary". I don't recall seeing this in the 2017 edition. Maybe it was added in the second ed.
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Clusters are sequences of notes where order emerges.
I struggled to locate this definition in the 2017 edition of the book, either because it isn't there, or because it doesn't have an index.
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cathieleblanc.com cathieleblanc.com
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https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/02/05/choosing-learning-materials/
Cathie notices that students skip materials about the theoretical "why" of assignments to get to the simpler assignments.
This seems to be an issue with some in the personal knowledge management space who want to jump into the technology, the terminology, and moving things about without always understanding what they're doing or why. Many end up giving up as a result. Few books provide reasoning behind the terminologies or building blocks they describe to provide the theoretical why. As a result some may figure it out from long, fraught practice, but it's likely that more are not seeing the results they expect and thus giving up.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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With a category you can just bypass idea-connection and jump right to storage.
Categorizing ideas (and or indexing them for search) can be useful for quick bulk storage, but the additional work of linking ideas to each other with in a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten can be more useful in the long term in developing ideas.
Storage by category means that ideas aren't immediately developed explicitly, but it means that that work is pushed until some later time at which the connections must be made to turn them into longer works (articles, papers, essays, books, etc.)
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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A long alphanumeric ID is an immediate indicator that a train of thought has been developing.
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Using an alphanumeric identification system for your notes is a workout. By having to situate new notes among previously imported ones, folgezettel forces at least one connection between ideas. It's mental calisthenics,8 acting as a check against capture bloat—that is, importing "all the things."
Those who practice analog note taking have a high level of friction which prevents them from over-collecting (or "capture bloat", importing "all the things", or "collector's fallacy") ideas, which may not rise to a certain level of value. Beyond this, the requirement to find at least one other note to link each idea to provides a smaller hurdle against these hoarding practices.
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www.harpgallery.com www.harpgallery.com
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https://www.harpgallery.com/shop/item42735.html
https://www.harpgallery.com/photos/42/7/35/card42735file3.jpg?v=1664570467
Photo here indicates offices at:<br /> - [255] Canal Street, New York - [???] Chestnut [??], Philadelphia - [???- ???] Mission [??], San Francisco
With manufacturing in Ilion, NY
Refinished 4 drawer 3x5 sold for $750 on 2023-01-11
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/115316277621
Clarke & Baker Co. had offices in New York and Philadelphia
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/255962754535
Clarke & Baker, 280 Broadway manufactured card index boxes in the early 1900s.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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You can’t do this so easy in the digital version.
In TiddlyWiki this just means having > 1 tiddler visible.
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Structure Notes are not limited to hierarchical structures like the nested list from above. Structure notes can also have sequential structures. Imagine the following line of argumentation: a -> b -> c, therefore a -> c. A Structure Note could capture this sequence and link each step of the sequence to a Zettel which expands on it. An example, with annotations to point out each step: (a) The stimulation of surface cold receptors is (b) the main driver of cold adaptation.[[202005201056]] Cold showers stimulate the surface cold receptors sufficiently.[[202005201057]] Therefore, (c) cold showers are a viable method of practicing cold adaptation training.[[202005201058]] The links via [[ID]] refer to Zettels that are compilations of evidence for each statement. The structure of the arguments guides this Structure Note.
So this is a way to abstract elements in Toulmin's approach to argument construction from the data which instantiates the specific point being argued.
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To make the most of a connection, always state explicitly why you made it. This is the link context. An example link context looks like this:
Doable in TiddlyWiki as it's just guidance on how to write tiddlers.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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In practical terms, he's talking about structure notes which consist of an outline of links to other existing notes.
Structure notes is a technical term. They're "meta-notes" in that they're notes that point to other notes containing content.
This seems to be what Ahrens means by a "sequence". I guess there's one explicit sequence defined by notes and their forward/back links, but structure notes can create used to arbitrary sequences.
This also seems to be the key mechanism by which a linear narrative is created.
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In practical terms, he's talking about structure notes which consist of an outline of links to other existing notes. They are used to group notes together into a cohesive argument. In a paper zettelkasten note IDs could be used to create these lists directly in the slip box (sometimes referred to as folgezettel). The disadvantage of doing so this way is that notes can only belong to one line of thought. With structure notes, which are independent of the placement of notes within the system, any given note may belong to multiple lines of thought.
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I think you just need to loosen up and put notes in the dang box. It didn't make sense to me either until I started writing jokes in this form. Maybe you just need to make sure you're actually interested in the stuff you're taking notes in (or have a use for it.)I would write sequences of jokes as I thought of them. As I got to a certain number of jokes, the system itself became self sustaining. Rather than having to think of jokes, I would have loads of ideas which I could further explore (this goes back to the author's idea of not starting with a blank slate.) I could add to the end of a sequence or I could branch a sequence. At any point in any of these sequences, I could branch off a node. As the network grows bigger, then I could remix jokes by combining completely different concepts. One otherwise unrelated node connects to another otherwise unrelated node and they form a new sequence. Now I have interconnection, a real network.
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That's the key to understand the paragraphs you've quoted. The reason for a Zettelkasten over a Wiki is 'text production' ... because a Zettelkasten, which is designed according to Luhmann's method, also depicts the chains of thought that precede the ideas or of which they are a part. And this in turn simplifies the text production -- one simply combines the different chains of thoughts that are recalled by the notes.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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They get to see everything, and nothing
This reminds me of esoteric transmission, in the sense that the ghost is only visible to those who are already prepared to see it.
It's also fitting that tantra is often narrowly equated with tantric sex.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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According to Shulman, "Cargo-cult is a belief that mock airplanes made of manure and straw-bale may summon the real airplanes who bring canned beef. Reverse cargo-cult is used by the political elites in countries lagging behind who proclaim that, in the developed world, airplanes are also made of manure and straw-bale, and there is also a shortage of canned beef."[29]
"Екатерина Шульман: Практический Нострадамус, или 12 умственных привычек, которые мешают нам предвидеть будущее". vedomosti/ (in Russian). Retrieved 24 June 2021.
A Note on the Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten
Modern cargo cults can be seen in many technology and productivity spaces where people are pulled in by exaggerated (or sometimes even real claims) of productivity or the general "magic" of a technology or method.
An example is Niklas Luhmann's use of his zettelkasten which has created a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants and users who read one or more of the short one page blog posts about his unreasonable productivity and try to mimic it without understanding the system, how it works, or how to make it work for them. They often spend several months collecting notes, and following the motions, but don't realize the promised gains and may eventually give up, sometimes in shame (or as so-called "rubbish men") while watching others still touting its use.
To prevent one's indoctrination into the zettelkasten cult, I'll make a few recommendations:
Distance yourself from the one or two page blog posts or the breathless YouTube delineations. Ask yourself very pointedly: what you hope to get out of such a process? What's your goal? Does that goal align with others' prior uses and their outcomes?
Be careful of the productivity gurus who are selling expensive courses and whose focus may not necessarily be on your particular goals. Some are selling very pointed courses, which is good, while others are selling products which may be so broad that they'll be sure to have some success stories, but their hodge-podge mixture of methods won't suit your particular purpose, or worse, you'll have to experiment with pieces of their courses to discover what may suit your modes of working and hope they'll suffice in the long run. Some are selling other productivity solutions for task management like getting things done (GTD) or bullet journals, which can be a whole other cargo cults in and of themselves. Don't conflate these![^1] The only thing worse than being in a cargo cult is being in multiple at the same time.
If you go the digital route, be extremely wary of shiny object syndrome. Everyone has a favorite tool and will advocate that it's the one you should be using. (Often their method of use will dictate how much they love it potentially over and above the affordances of the tool itself.) All of these tools can be endlessly configured, tweaked, or extended with plugins or third party services. Everyone wants to show you their workflow and set up, lots of which is based on large amounts of work and experimentation. Ignore 99.999% of this. Most tools are converging to a similar feature set, so pick a reasonable one that seems like it'll be around in 5 years (and which has export, just in case). Try out the very basic features for several months before you change anything. Don't add endless plugins and widgets. You're ultimately using a digital tool to recreate the functionality of index cards, a pencil, and a box. How complicated should this really be? Do you need to spend hundreds of hours tweaking your system to save yourself a few minutes a year? Be aware that far too many people touting the system and marketers talking about the tools are missing several thousands of years of uses of some of these basic literacy-based technologies. Don't join their island cult, but instead figure out how the visiting culture has been doing this for ages.[^2] Recall Will Hunting's admonition against cargo cults in education: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”[^3]
Most people ultimately realize that the output of their own thinking is only as good as the inputs they're consuming. Leverage this from the moment you begin and ignore the short bite-sized advice for longer form or older advice from those with experience. You're much more likely to get more long term value out of reading Umberto Eco or Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren[^4] than you are an equivalent amount of time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, or trolling social media like Reddit and Twitter.
Realize that reaching your goal is going to take honest-to-goodness actual work, though there is potential for fun. No matter how shiny or optimized your system, you've still got to do the daily work of reading, watching, listening and using it to create anything. Focus on this daily work and don't get sidetracked by the minutiae of trying to shave off just a few more seconds.[^5] In short, don't get caught up in the "productivity porn" of it all. Even the high priest at whose altar they worship once wrote on a slip he filed:
"A ghost in the note card index? Spectators visit [my office to see my notes] and they get to see everything and nothing all at once. Ultimately, like having watched a porn movie, their disappointment is correspondingly high." —Niklas Luhmann. <small>“Geist im Kasten?” ZKII 9/8,3. Niklas Luhmann-Archiv. Accessed December 10, 2021. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V. (Personal translation from German with context added.)</small>
[^1] Aldrich, Chris. “Zettelkasten Overreach.” BoffoSocko (blog), February 5, 2022. https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/.
[^2]: Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.
[^3]: Good Will Hunting. Miramax, Lawrence Bender Productions, 1998.
[^4]: Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
[^5]: Munroe, Randall. “Is It Worth the Time?” Web comic. xkcd, April 29, 2013. https://xkcd.com/1205/.
Recommended resources
Choose only one of the following and remember you may not need to read the entire work:
Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.
Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.
Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html.
Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
Gessner, Konrad. Pandectarum Sive Partitionum Universalium. 1st Edition. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1548.
Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife.
Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.
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elizabethfilips.podia.com elizabethfilips.podia.com
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If you don't like Zettlekasten (I have my "own" version of Zettlekasten that I use so it's not 100% the original, but it's very heavily based on it - if you hate Zettlekasten this really isn't going to work).
https://elizabethfilips.podia.com/validation-cohort-muse
Elizabeth Filips is running a validation cohort for a course (presumably called MUSE, the marketing name for her "system" as well) on how to take notes and build a zettelkasten (or a second brain—there's evidence that she's taken Tiago Forte's course). She's got some indications that she's using a zettelkasten-like method for creation, but her burgeoning empire also appears to be firmly centered in the productivity porn space. I'm curious how she views her Muse system being different from a zettelkasten?
She's got an incredibly focused sales funnel web presence here.
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First, I am a big fan of Chris’ posts. He is our best historian. Second, I did not challenge his ideas but asked for clarification about some terms which I believe are of general interest. Chris is well-positioned to answer my questions. Third, statistical mechanics is more about microscopic systems that do not evolve. As we know, ideas (from concepts to theories) evolve and generally emerge from previous ideas. Emergence is the key concept here. I suggested Phenomics as a potential metaphor because it represents well the emergence of some systems (phenotypes) from pre-existing ones (genotypes).
reply to u/New-Investigator-623 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10r6uwp/comment/j6wy4mf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Ideas, concepts, propositions, et al. in this context are just the nebulous dictionary definitions. Their roots and modern usage have so much baggage now that attempting to separate them into more technical meanings is difficult unless you've got a solid reason to do so. I certainly don't here. If you want to go down some of the rabbit hole on the differences, you might appreciate Winston Perez' work on concept modeling which he outlines with respect to innovation and creativity here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQ-dW7yfPc.
I debated on a more basic framing of chemistry or microbiology versus statistical mechanics or even the closely related statistical thermodynamics, but for the analogy here, I think it works even if it may scare some off as "too hard". With about 20 linear feet of books in my library dedicated to biology, physics, math, engineering with a lot of direct focus on evolutionary theory, complexity theory, and information theory I would suggest that the underlying physics of statistical mechanics and related thermodynamics is precisely what allows the conditions for systems to evolve and emerge, for this is exactly what biological (and other) systems have done. For those intrigued, perhaps Stuart Kauffman's Origins of Order (if you're technically minded) or At Home in the Universe (if you're less technically oriented) are interesting with respect to complexity and emergence. There's also an interesting similar analogy to be made between a zettelkasten system and the systems described in Peter Hoffman's book Life's Rachet. I think that if carefully circumscribed, one could define a zettelkasten to be "alive". That's a bigger thesis for another time. I was also trying to stay away from the broad idea of "atomic" and drawing attention to "atomic notes" as a concept. I'm still waiting for some bright physicist to talk about sub-atomic notes and what that might mean... I see where you're going with phenomics, but chemistry and statistical mechanics were already further afield than the intended audience who already have issues with "The Two Cultures". Getting into phenomics was just a bridge too far... not to mention, vastly more difficult to attempt to draw(!!!). 😉 Besides, I didn't want Carol Greider dropping into my DMs asking me why didn't I include telomeres or chancing an uncomfortable LAX-BWI flight and a train/cab ride into Baltimore with Peter Agre who's popped up next to me on more than one occasion.
Honestly, I was much less satisfied with the nebulousness of "solution of life"... fortunately no one seems to be complaining about that or their inability to grapple with catalysis. 🤷🏼
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luhmann.surge.sh luhmann.surge.sh
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Two Essays by Niklas Luhmann
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zY7l2tzoQ
Ugh... another short mediocre introduction. Repeats the origin myth.
Seems to take a very Ahrens' based framing, but screws up a few pieces. More focus on "hub notes" and completely misses the idea of an index somehow?!?
The last section of 2+ minutes really goes off the rails and recommends converting notes from other places and muddles about "Favorite problems" (ostensibly a reference to Feynman's 12 Favorite Problems, but isn't direct about it?).
Also encourages the "Feynman technique"...
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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re: https://hypothes.is/a/HqT-lG1fEeqHX7fnzQAfGg
A zettelkasten provides a catalytic surface to which ideas in the "solution of life" can more easily adhere to speed their reaction with ideas you've already seen and collected.
Once combined via linking, further thinking and writing, they can be released as novel ideas for everyone to use.
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news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com
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I've tried to keep a Zettleksaten several times now with no real luck. My most recent try was using TiddlyWiki, with each Tiddler being an entry, usually containing a single piece of information. Perhaps it's the way TiddlyWiki is laid out, but I didn't particularly find the filing system to be of any real benefit to me. After my 30 day experiment I had nearly 1,000 Tiddlers and the majority were interlinked. When I would click through the hyperlinks I wouldn't necessarily have any particular 'a-ha' moments that these articles on Zettlekastens typically try to convince you will happen when you use this filing system.Perhaps I went about it all wrong, but I loved the theory but didn't find the particular application useful. I also found absolutely no examples of a real life Zettelkasten online anywhere.
Here's a real-life example using Obsidian. I suspect the success is in the use rather than the tool, and I would go for TiddlyWiki.
Tags
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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One can find utility in asking questions of their own note box, but why not also leverage the utility of a broader audience asking questions of it as well?!
One of the values of social media is that it can allow you to practice or rehearse the potential value of ideas and potentially getting useful feedback on individual ideas which you may be aggregating into larger works.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Zettelkasten, a tool for the mind, A place to capture thoughts of every kind. A sea of cards, with notes that flow, Helping to organize, a world in a show. The time we spend, a precious cost, To scribble down, the thoughts we've lost. But with each card, a rabbit hole begins, A journey deep, of knowledge wins. We delve and dive, in search of truth, The links we make, a web of proof. But hours pass by, and what do we find? We've wasted time, with our method combined. Yet still we persist, in this quest we trust, The thrill of the hunt, a must. But remember, dear friend, to balance the scale, With breaks in between, lest our time bewails. So let's not waste, this gift we hold, With Zettelkasten, a tool to mold. A path to wisdom, in every note, A journey of discovery, and time well devoted.
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2502/time-well-spent
Presumably written by Edmund
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I'd recommend a Book-to-Maincard approach for this (instead of the 2-step Bibcard Method). And I'd recommend Reformulation notes (i.e., summarization notes) instead of Excerpts.
reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10o4jnl/comment/j6ii64d/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Is this about as close as Scott Scheper comes to recommending taking Cornell Notes?!? 😂
Let's be honest that this is roughly what this (and Bibcards) ultimately is. You take some general notes on a lecture (book or other material) as a sense making tool to help you better understand the material. You write down some bits you want to remember and use for some brief spaced repetition perhaps. You write down some pointed questions to help review for a test later. The subtle difference is that Cornell notes were designed to do the sense making, summary, and repetition portions well for students and learners, but didn't focus as much on the longer tail of knowledge creation using analysis, and synthesis. To fill in the last mile for your card index, take the best idea(s) (maybe one or two at most) and flesh it out to create a useful maincard.
If it's useful try some 8 x 12" paper for your lecture notes, and take them Bibcard or Cornell Notes style. Once you've excerpted your main card notes, you can fold your sheet in half twice and file it with your Bibcards, naturally taking care to have the paper's spine face up to prevent other slips from becoming lost in between. (This obviously works best for those using 4 x 6" index cards though if you're in the 3 x 5" camp, then use 6" x 10" sheets for folding.) For those with middle grades or high school students, this may be a more profitable method for introducing these methods to their study, learning, and creation patterns.
Summary: Cornell Notes can be an excellent method for capturing session-based fleeting notes and distilling them down into permanent notes. Cornell Notes focus on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than the broader spectrum that a zettelkasten method might.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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What are your goals for creating your zettelkasten? .t3_10mha0u._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10mha0u/what_are_your_goals_for_creating_your_zettelkasten/
The gloriousness of combinatorial creativity!
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www.antinet.org www.antinet.org
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https://www.antinet.org/wooden-antinet-waitlist
$995 for a single wooden, two drawer card index is a lot on the ridiculous side. Once can get rare vintage ones in excellent condition online for nearly a tenth the price!
Restored fine furniture versions with several dozen drawers go in this range.
Possibly the worst is that these don't even have following blocks to hold partial drawers of cards upright.
link to: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/26/the-ultimate-guide-to-zettelkasten-index-card-storage/
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reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6dhx2t/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It's relatively easy since it's all hiding in my notes. lt may become a book one of these days, I'm just not sure how to approach it quite yet, though I'm getting close to the philosophy I think is missing from the bigger space. I find it somewhat useful to use my notes to create longer responses in spaces like this that I expect I'll reuse in a book.
One can find utility in asking questions of their own note box, but why not also leverage the utility of a broader audience asking questions of it as well?!
I've seen that same copy of Webb's book floating around in various places. In fact, it's the exact same fingerprinted version of the .pdf that I originally read, which can be seen by appending
https://via.hypothes.is/
to the URL like this https://via.hypothes.is/http://digamoo.free.fr/webb1926.pdf which will quickly reveal my own notes in the margins. (It may help some to find the small portions outside of Appendix C which relate to note making. 😀)If you want to follow me down the rabbit hole on some of the intellectual history and examples, try: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/ which I try to keep updated with new pieces as they arrive.
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My plan is to make some sort of physical timeline eventually, but while analog does feel a little "fixed" for this purpose, I want the shear size and the speed of cards.Do you happen to know what historians used to do before computers?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6bdgma/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I've used data from my own cards to create timelines before using the Knightlab's TimelineJS tool: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=18QD2-Kx0WdFBzqDv1sTkQWOJLGHGXsvr4NBLYNiX9FA&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650%27%20width=%27100%%27%20height=%27650%27%20webkitallowfullscreen%20mozallowfullscreen%20allowfullscreen%20frameborder=%270%27
You'll note that it's got a fun card-like flavor to its design. 🤩
Historically, while they had certainly done so much earlier, historians began doubling down on slip-based research work flows in the late 1800's. Many in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were heavily influenced by the idea of "historical method" or the German "Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens". Primary sources going back over a century have included:
- Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie : mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittelzum Studium der Geschichte ... völlig neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 1889. Reprint, Leipzig : Duncker, 1903. http://archive.org/details/lehrbuchderhisto00bernuoft.
- 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.
- Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
- Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
A few prime examples of historians practicing this sort of card index method (though not necessarily in the same form as Niklas Luhmann) include:
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394.
- Aldrich, Chris. “S.D. Goitein’s Card Index (or Zettelkasten).” BoffoSocko (blog), January 15, 2023. https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.
- Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695119830900.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Margolin's short video is particularly lovely for its incredible depth despite its brevity.
Beyond this there is also a very rich history of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, and others in the humanities using similar methods.
Beatrice Webb has a fairly good description of how she created her "scientific notes" in the late 1880/1890s in a database-like fashion in the appendix to her memoir My Apprenticeship and expanded on some of the ideas in a more specific text a few years later.
- Webb, Beatrice. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926.
- Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
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Re"...what is it like? How does it manifest?"For me, the idea that my zettelkasten becomes an entity outside myself is most often (and most obviously) felt in two situations (tho there are probably others):When I'm importing new ideas and a connection arises that I hadn't thought of previouslyWhen following trains of thought and connections arise that I didn't overtly intend to makeIn the first instance, I come across ideas I had forgotten about, and although it's not the direction I assumed the new idea would go, it becomes an exciting and possibly more lucrative way to take it.In the second instance, where I might be tracing a thought line to develop an article, I might, for example, zoom in on the graph view in Obsidian and see an idea that, while not formally connected to the ones I'm following, happens to be in close proximity spatially, and so it triggers a new direction I might want to take the article. (You can see this happen IRL in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OUn2-h6oVc&)In both cases, my zk feels like it's offering me more than what I would have gotten had I not been communicating with it. There is a sense that I and it are working together. I import new ideas with a rough sense of how they should connect. It shows alternatives to my thinking on the matter.Obviously, in both cases, all the ideas are my own. So, the zk is not necessarily developing ideas for me. But, because of the way in which the ideas are handled—non-hierarchically, rhizomatic, cross-categorical, cross-theme, etc.—non-habituated connections come to light, connections that are less conditioned by my own conventional ways of thinking.
A good description from Bob Doto.
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I've decided I don't care (too much) where new notes go .t3_10mjwq9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/jackbaty at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10mjwq9/ive_decided_i_dont_care_too_much_where_new_notes/
u/jackbaty, If it doesn't make sense for you (yet, or for your specific needs), you can always follow in the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands who used a topical subject heading method of the commonplace book before Luhmann's example shifted the space over the last decade. If it worked for Francis Bacon, you'll probably be alright too... (See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/)
I find that sometimes, it is useful to bank up a few dozen cards before filing/linking them together. Other times I'll file them by category in a commonplace book like system to ruminate a bit only later to move them to a separate Luhmann-esque zettelkasten area where they're more tightly linked with the ideas around them. After you've been doing it a while, it will be easier to more tightly integrate the three-way conversation or argument you're having between yourself, your card index, and the sources you're thinking about (or reading, watching, listening to). You mention that "my brain needs at least some level of structure", and I totally get it, as most of us (myself included) are programmed to work that way. I've written some thoughts on this recently which may help provide some motivation to get you around it: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
It helps to have a pointed reason for why you're doing all this in the first place and that reason will dramatically help to shape your practice and its ultimate structure.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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yeaaaaaaah I'm gonna need a link to purchase these if you got one
reply to u/pipepistolnoscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10lqfsn/comment/j62dp7o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
These are slightly easier to find in a variety of styles, colors, and materials if you're using European A5 or A6 slip sizes. Search for 6 ring binders which usually come in A5 or A6 sizes for a variety of planners, calendars, and general notes with accessories. Franklin Covey has a variety of binders for their 4.25" x 6.75" note pages and planners which will likely work with index cards, but I haven't tried that.
If you use US standard index cards 4 x 6" or 3 x 5", you'll want an appropriate 6 ring hole punch to pre-punch your cards as appropriate, but keep in mind the two standard sizes can be slightly off with respect to the binder you find but they're probably close enough it shouldn't be a big issue as most of the binders are slightly larger in both directions to protect the paper inside.
I recently posted about note taking on the go, so you might find some interesting ideas, methods, modifications or even DIY options there or in the comments: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/
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If you really want to go crazy you can get 6-hole punches to make your own cards.
And if you like you can co-opt those holes in your notebox by using them for taxonomy terms and removing/or not the connective pieces to indicate membership of a group. Then by putting a knitting needle through large groups of cards, you can sort through your collection to find related items the way they used to in early computing with edge-notched cards. 😉🗃️
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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supernote.com supernote.com
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By linking notes in a zettelkasten-like way, you can create a relationship between one piece of information and another, forming a more thorough and deeper insight.
https://supernote.com/pages/note-system-everything-you-need-to-stay-organized
The Ratta Supernote e-reader/e-note device indicates that you can link notes "in a zettelkasten-like" way.
Interesting that they say this rather than "wiki-like"...
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feeei.substack.com feeei.substack.com
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In the super-nerdy space where the fine details of digital note-taking are discussed, you’ll hear a lot about the Zettelkasten Method (ZK Method), popularized by a German professor called Niklas Luhmann who was incredibly prolific and famously wrote over 90,000 notes on index cards that were linked together.
Not so much origin myth here, but popularization myth…
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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If you feel the need to categorize and separate them in such a surgical fashion, then let your index be the place where this happens.
The index is the place for categorization. Now the questions is how deep is good enough to categorize.
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Perhaps the overlap of math and history is exactly the interdisciplinary topic you’re working toward? If this is the case, just put cards into the slip box closest to their nearest related intellectual neighbor—and by this I mean nearest related to your way of thinking, not to Melvil Dewey’s or anyone else.
This idea is quite interesting in the sense that categorization is limiting. Defining is limitation
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Note 9/8j says - "There is a note in the Zettelkasten that contains the argument that refutes the claims on every other note. But this note disappears as soon as one opens the Zettelkasten. I.e. it appropriates a different number, changes position (or: disguises itself) and is then not to be found. A joker." Is he talking about some hypothetical note? What did he mean by disappearing? Can someone please shed some light on what he really meant?
On the Jokerzettel
9/8j Im Zettelkasten ist ein Zettel, der das Argument enthält, das die Behauptungen auf allen anderen Zetteln widerlegt.
Aber dieser Zettel verschwindet, sobald man den Zettelkasten aufzieht.
D.h. er nimmt eine andere Nummer an, verstellt sich und ist dann nicht zu finden.
Ein Joker.
—Niklas Luhmann, ZK II: Zettel 9/8j
Translation:
9/8j In the slip box is a slip containing the argument that refutes the claims on all the other slips. But this slip disappears as soon as you open the slip box. That is, he assumes a different number, disguises himself and then cannot be found. A joker.
Many have asked about the meaning of this jokerzettel over the past several years. Here's my slightly extended interpretation, based on my own practice with thousands of cards, about what Luhmann meant:
Imagine you've spent your life making and collecting notes and ideas and placing them lovingly on index cards. You've made tens of thousands and they're a major part of your daily workflow and support your life's work. They define you and how you think. You agree with Friedrich Nietzsche's concession to Heinrich Köselitz that “You are right — our writing tools take part in the forming of our thoughts.” Your time is alive with McLuhan's idea that "The medium is the message." or in which his friend John Culkin said, "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us."
Eventually you're going to worry about accidentally throwing your cards away, people stealing or copying them, fires (oh! the fires), floods, or other natural disasters. You don't have the ability to do digital back ups yet. You ask yourself, can I truly trust my spouse not to destroy them?,What about accidents like dropping them all over the floor and needing to reorganize them or worse, the ghost in the machine should rear its head?
You'll fear the worst, but the worst only grows logarithmically in proportion to your collection.
Eventually you pass on opportunities elsewhere because you're worried about moving your ever-growing collection. What if the war should obliterate your work? Maybe you should take them into the war with you, because you can't bear to be apart?
If you grow up at a time when Schrodinger's cat is in the zeitgeist, you're definitely going to have nightmares that what's written on your cards could horrifyingly change every time you look at them. Worse, knowing about the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, you're deathly afraid that there might be cards, like electrons, which are always changing position in ways you'll never be able to know or predict.
As a systems theorist, you view your own note taking system as a input/output machine. Then you see Claude Shannon's "useless machine" (based on an idea of Marvin Minsky) whose only function is to switch itself off. You become horrified with the idea that the knowledge machine you've painstakingly built and have documented the ways it acts as an independent thought partner may somehow become self-aware and shut itself off!?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa9v8Z7Rac
And worst of all, on top of all this, all your hard work, effort, and untold hours of sweat creating thousands of cards will be wiped away by a potential unknowable single bit of information on a lone, malicious card and your only recourse is suicide, the unfortunate victim of dataism.
Of course, if you somehow manage to overcome the hurdle of suicidal thoughts, and your collection keeps growing without bound, then you're sure to die in a torrential whirlwind avalanche of information and cards, literally done in by information overload.
But, not wishing to admit any of this, much less all of this, you imagine a simple trickster, a joker, something silly. You write it down on yet another card and you file it away into the box, linked only to the card in front of it, the end of a short line of cards with nothing following it, because what could follow it? Put it out of your mind and hope your fears disappear away with it, lost in your box like the jokerzettel you imagined. You do this with a self-assured confidence that this way of making sense of the world works well for you, and you settle back into the methodical work of reading and writing, intent on making your next thousands of cards.
Tags
- Werner Heisenberg
- note collection loss and damage
- useless machines
- fears
- Ghostbusters
- Erwin Schrödinger
- dataism
- Lila
- Niklas Luhmann
- death by zettelkasten
- fear uncertainty and doubt
- Schrödinger's cat
- ghost in the machine
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- Claude Shannon
- jokerzettel
- Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
Annotators
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Box Update!
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10gnh3u/box_update/
Example of a zettelkasten maintainer (u/A_Dull_Significance) who has shown a photo of their zettelkasten box with the superimposed words "My Baby!" over the box label as a means of indicating how valuable it is to them.
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I’m back at the box.
This is a great euphemism for the fun "work" of maintaining a zettelkasten.
via u/A_Dull_Significance at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10gnh3u/box_update/
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Around 1956: "My next task was to prepare my course. Since none of the textbooks known to me was satisfactory, I resorted to the maieutic method that Plato had attributed to Socrates. My lectures consisted essentially in questions that I distributed beforehand to the students, and an abstract of the research that they had prompted. I wrote each question on a 6 × 8 card. I had adopted this procedure a few years earlier for my own work, so I did not start from scratch. Eventually I filled several hundreds of such cards, classed them by subject, and placed them in boxes. When a box filled up, it was time to write an article or a book chapter. The boxes complemented my hanging-files cabinet, containing sketches of papers, some of them aborted, as well as some letters." (p. 129)
This sounds somewhat similar to Mark Robertson's method of "live Roaming" (using Roam Research during his history classes) as a teaching tool on top of other prior methods.
link to: Roland Barthes' card collection for teaching: https://hypothes.is/a/wELPGLhaEeywRnsyCfVmXQ
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richardcarter.com richardcarter.com
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The above is an attempt to describe how I went about writing one chapter of my book. I use the same basic approach for all my chapters, namely: make lots of linked notes about stuff I happen to find interesting;continue to develop those notes, splitting them into smaller notes when they become too wide-ranging;write Journal entries and draw mind-maps to explore what I’ve discovered;keep playing with my notes;await a lightbulb moment, when two or more notes suddenly make an unexpected new connection in my brain, and I think, “Oh, that’s interesting!”create a detailed bullet-point outline of my chapter, complete with links to supporting notes and references;write the chapter;compile the chapter references with the help of the chapter outline links;repeat until the first draft of the book is finished;then comes the fun part.
Summary of Richard Carter's writing process from notes to product.
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All that remained was the small matter of actually writing the chapter. I don’t do this in Obsidian: I think it would be asking for trouble to mix notes and their end-products in the same place.
I've not seen this explicitly laid out as advice before though in most contexts people's note taking spaces have historically been divorced from their writing spaces for publication because slips and notes are usually kept physically separate from the working spaces or finished parts, but Richard Carter specifically separates the digital spaces in which he takes his notes and then uses them for creating end products. While he could both take notes in Obsidian, his tool of choice for notes, as well as write his finished pieces there, he actively changes contexts to use a different digital app to compose his notes into final pieces.
What affordances does this context shift provide? <br /> - blank slate may encourage reworking and expansion of original notes - is there a blank slate effect and what would it entail? - potentially moves the piece into a longer format space or tool which provides additional writing, formatting or other affordances (which? there don't seem to be any in this case aside from a potential "distraction free mode" which may tend to force one to focus only on the piece at hand rather than the thousands of other pieces (notes) hiding within the app)
What affordances does this remove?<br /> - He's forced to repeat himself (cut & paste / DRY violation)
Is it easier or harder (from a time/effort perspective) to provide citations with such a workflow? Carter does indicate that for him:
Having links to original sources in my outline makes the compilation of references for the chapter far easier than it used to be.
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At around this point, as is my habit when trying to work out where I’ve got to, and to devise a basic outline, I took out my trusty Leuchtturm1917 notebook and scrawled out a rough mind-map of my potential chapter:
To test out some potential ideas and flow of a particular chapter for which he already had a corpus of notes, Richard Carter created a mindmap outline of some of his ideas. This in combination with testing out further ideas in his writing journal "three weeks later" caused him to make some significant changes in the structure of his chapter.
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Among other things, I have traditionally used my Journal to think out loud to myself about my work in hand: the progress I’m making, the problems I’m encountering, and so on. Many of my best ideas have arisen by writing to myself like this.
Richard Carter uses his writing journal practice to "think out loud" to himself. Often, laying out extended arguments helps people to refine and reshape their thinking as they're better able to see potential holes or missing pieces of arguments. It's the same sort of mechanism which is at work in rubber duck debugging of computer code: by explaining a process one is more easily able to see the missing pieces, errors, or problems with the process at hand.
Carter's separate note taking and writing journal practice being used as a thought space or writing workshop of sorts is very similar to the process seen in my preliminary studies of Henry David Thoreau's work in which he kept commonplace books and separate (writing) journals which show evidence of his trying ideas on for size and working them before committing them to his published works.
Tags
- note taking practice
- journals
- text editing
- open questions
- thought spaces
- mindmaps
- revision
- don't repeat yourself
- note taking affordances
- trying on ideas
- rubber duck debugging
- writing output
- Henry David Thoreau
- thinking out loud
- Richard Carter
- zettelkasten output
- outlines
- writing process
- cut and paste
- read
- writing journals
- context shifting
- writing output affordances
- citations
Annotators
URL
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Anybody using this approach to manage contacts? How?
reply to IvanFerrero at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1740/anybody-using-this-approach-to-manage-contacts-how#latest
Many of the digital note taking tools that run off of text allow you to add metadata to your basic text files (as YAML headers, inline with a
key:: value
pair, or via #tags). Many of them have search functionality or use other programmatic means like query blocks, DataView, DataViewJS, etc. for doing queries on your files to get back lists, tables, charts, etc. of the data you're looking for.The DataView repository has some good examples of how this works with something like Obsidian. Fortunately if you're using simple text files you can usually put them into one or more platforms to get the data and affordances you want out of them individually.
As an example, I have a script block in my daily note in Obsidian for birthdays in my notes that fall on today's date:
```dataview LIST birthday FROM "Lists/People" WHERE birthday.day = date(2023-01-18).day ```
If I put the text
birthday:: 1927-12-08
into a note about Niklas Luhmann, his name and birthday would appear in my daily note on his birthday. One can use similar functionality to create tables of books they read with titles, authors, ratings, dates read, etc. or a variety of other data input which parses through your plaintext files. Services like Obsidian, Logseq, et al. are getting better about allowing these types of programmatic searches for users without backgrounds in programming and various communities usually provide help for pre-made little snippets like the one above that one can cut and paste into their notes to get the outputs that they need. Another Obsidian based example that uses text files for tracking academic journal articles can be found at https://nataliekraneiss.com/your-academic-reading-list-in-obsidian/; I'm sure there are similar versions for other text-based platforms.In pre-digital times, for a manual version of a rolodex like this in paper, one could use different color cards as pseudo-tags (doctors are on yellow cards, family members on blue cards, friends on green cards, etc.) or adding edge notches or even tabs to represent different types of metadata. See for example the edge colored cards in Hawkexpress' Pile of Index Cards: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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How do you maintain the interdisciplinarity of your zettlekasten? .t3_10f9tnk._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
As humans we're good at separating things based on categories. The Dewey Decimal System systematically separates mathematics and history into disparate locations, but your zettelkasten shouldn't force this by overthinking categories. Perhaps the overlap of math and history is exactly the interdisciplinary topic you're working toward? If this is the case, just put cards into the slip box closest to their nearest related intellectual neighbor—and by this I mean nearest related to you, not to Melvil Dewey or anyone else. Over time, through growth and branching, ideas will fill in the interstitial spaces and neighboring ideas will slowly percolate and intermix. Your interests will slowly emerge into various bunches of cards in your box. Things you may have thought were important can separate away and end up on sparse branches while other areas flourish.
If you make the (false) choice to separate math and history into different "sections" it will be much harder for them to grow and intertwine in an organic and truly disciplinary way. Universities have done this sort of separation for hundreds of years and as a result, their engineering faculty can be buildings or even entire campuses away from their medical faculty who now want to work together in new interdisciplinary ways. This creates a physical barrier to more efficient and productive innovation and creativity. It's your zettelkasten, so put those ideas right next to each other from the start so they can do the work of serendipity and surprise for you. Do not artificially separate your favorite ideas. Let them mix and mingle and see what comes out of them.
If you feel the need to categorize and separate them in such a surgical fashion, then let your index be the place where this happens. This is what indices are for! Put the locations into the index to create the semantic separation. Math related material gets indexed under "M" and history under "H". Now those ideas can be mixed up in your box, but they're still findable. DO NOT USE OR CONSIDER YOUR NUMBERS AS TOPICAL HEADINGS!!! Don't make the fatal mistake of thinking this. The numbers are just that, numbers. They are there solely for you to be able to easily find the geographic location of individual cards quickly or perhaps recreate an order if you remove and mix a bunch for fun or (heaven forfend) accidentally tip your box out onto the floor. Each part has of the system has its job: the numbers allow you to find things where you expect them to be and the index does the work of tracking and separating topics if you need that.
The broader zettelkasten, tools for thought, and creativity community does a terrible job of explaining the "why" portion of what is going on here with respect to Luhmann's set up. Your zettelkasten is a crucible of ideas placed in juxtaposition with each other. Traversing through them and allowing them to collide in interesting and random ways is part of what will create a pre-programmed serendipity, surprise, and combinatorial creativity for your ideas. They help you to become more fruitful, inventive, and creative.
Broadly the same thing is happening with respect to the structure of commonplace books. There one needs to do more work of randomly reading through and revisiting portions to cause the work or serendipity and admixture, but the end results are roughly the same. With the zettelkasten, it's a bit easier for your favorite ideas to accumulate into one place (or neighborhood) for easier growth because you can move them around and juxtapose them as you add them rather than traversing from page 57 in one notebook to page 532 in another.
If you use your numbers as topical or category headings you'll artificially create dreadful neighborhoods for your ideas to live in. You want a diversity of ideas mixing together to create new ideas. To get a sense of this visually, play the game Parable of the Polygons in which one categorizes and separates (or doesn't) triangles and squares. The game created by Vi Hart and Nicky Case based on the research of Thomas Schelling provides a solid example of the sort of statistical mechanics going on with ideas in your zettelkasten when they're categorized rigidly. If you rigidly categorize ideas and separate them, you'll drastically minimize the chance of creating the sort of useful serendipity of intermixed and innovative ideas.
It's much harder to know what happens when you mix anthropology with complexity theory if they're in separate parts of your mental library, but if those are the things that get you going, then definitely put them right next to each other in your slip box. See what happens. If they're interesting and useful, they've got explicit numerical locators and are cross referenced in your index, so they're unlikely to get lost. Be experimental occasionally. Don't put that card on Henry David Thoreau in the section on writers, nature, or Concord, Massachusetts if those aren't interesting to you. Besides everyone has already done that. Instead put him next to your work on innovation and pencils because it's much easier to become a writer, philosopher, and intellectual when your family's successful pencil manufacturing business can pay for you to attend Harvard and your house is always full of writing instruments from a young age. Now you've got something interesting and creative. (And if you must, you can always link the card numerically to the other transcendentalists across the way.)
In case they didn't hear it in the back, I'll shout it again: ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST YOUR NATURAL URGE TO USE YOUR ZETTELKASTEN NUMBERS AS TOPICAL HEADINGS!!!
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Giannakis, Georgios K., Christoforo Charalambakis, Franco Montanari, and Antonios Rengakos, eds. Studies in Greek Lexicography. Studies in Greek Lexicography. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes 72. De Gruyter, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110622744.
Skimmed for portions relating to the Bauer zettelkasten
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12 “In summer 2010, seven cardboard boxes with lexicographical slips compiled by Dr. GertrudBauer were presented by Professor Peter Nagel (Bonn) to the DDGLC office, which had beenhanded over to him in the early 1990s by the late Professor Alexander Böhlig. The Gertrud-und-Alexander-Böhlig Stiftung funded the scanning and slotting of the slips into a database accord-ing to the hierarchical structure of the original compilation,” http://research.uni-leip-zig.de/ddglc/bauer/BauerIndex.pdf
repetition of what appears on their primary web page in early 2023. the .pdf document doesn't appear to exist anymore (it redirects to https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/ddglc/index.html
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The slips constitute a thorough lexicographical compila-tion of about 15,000 attestations of almost 150 types of Greek prepositions, con-junctions and particles in Coptic, from virtually all Coptic dialects and types oftexts, arranged on the basis of a detailed analysis of their semantic and syntacticproperties.
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Since 2015 a digitalized card index of Greek functionwords in Coptic is available online (as part of the DDGCL)
A digitized version of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten has been available online since 2015.
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Language contact and contact induced changein the light of the (digital) lexicography ofGreek loanwords in the non-Indo-Europeanlanguages of the Greco-Roman worlds (Coptic,Hebrew/Aramaic, Syriac)
Katsikadeli, Christina. “Language Contact and Contact Induced Change in the Light of the (Digital) Lexicography of Greek Loanwords in the Non-Indo-European Languages of the Greco-Roman Worlds (Coptic, Hebrew/Aramaic, Syriac).” In Studies in Greek Lexicography, 21–40. Trends in Classics - Supplementary Volumes 72. Boston: De Gruyter, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110622744-003.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpvEY-2dSdU
In this episode, I explain the memory system I created in order to expand my memory to new heights. I call it the Sirianni Method and with it, you can learn how to create an intentional photographic memory.
Who the hell is the Sirianni this is named for, himself? (In the comments he mentions that "it's my italian grandpa's last name, I always liked it and a while back started naming things after it)
tl;dr: He's reinvented the wheel, but certainly not the best version of it.
What he's describing isn't remotely related to the idea of a photographic memory, so he's over-hyping the results, which is dreadful. If it were a photographic memory, he wouldn't need the spaced-repetition portion of his practice. While he mentions how he's regularly reviewing his cards he doesn't mention any of the last century+ of research and work on spaced repetition. https://super-memory.com/articles/20rules.htm is a good place to start for some of this.
A lot of what he's doing is based on associative memory, particularly by drawing connections/links to other things he already knows. He's also taking advantage of visual memory by associating his knowledge with a specific picture.
He highlights emotion and memory, but isn't drawing clear connections between his knowledge and any specific emotions that he's tying or associating them to.
"Intentional" seems to be one of the few honest portions of the piece.
Overview of his Sirianni method: pseudo-zettelkasten notes with written links to things he already knows (but without any Luhmann-esque numbering system or explicit links between cards, unless they're hiding in his connections section, which isn't well supported by the video) as well as a mnemonic image and lots of ad hoc spaced repetition.
One would be better off mixing their note taking practice with associative mnemonic methods (method of loci, songlines, memory palaces, sketchnotes, major system, orality, etc.) all well described by Lynne Kelly (amongst hundreds before her who got smaller portions of these practices) in combination with state of the art spaced repetition.
The description of Luhmann's note taking system here is barely passable at best. He certainly didn't invent the system which was based on several hundred years of commonplace book methodology before him. Luhmann also didn't popularize it in any sense (he actually lamented how people were unimpressed by it when he showed them). Popularization was done post-2013 generally by internet hype based on his prolific academic output.
There is nothing new here other than that he thinks he's discovered something new and is repackaging it for the masses with a new name in a flashy video package. There's a long history of hucksters doing this sort of fabulist tale including Kevin Trudeau with Mega Memory in the 1990s and going back to at least the late 1800s with "Professor" Alphonse Loisette and the system he sold for inordinate amounts to the masses including Mark Twain.
Most of these methods have been around for millennia and are all generally useful and well documented though the cultural West has just chosen to forget most of them. A week's worth of research and reading on these topics would have resulted in a much stronger "system" more quickly.
Beyond this, providing a fuller range of specific options and sub-options in these areas so that individuals could pick and choose the specifics which work best for them might have been a better way to go.
Content research: D- Production value: A+
{syndication link](https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10ehrbd/comment/j4u495q/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
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he [Luhmann] popularized method of expanding your memory called the zettelkasten method (04:49)
At least he doesn't go with the invention myth, but it's also false that he was the one who popularized it... others online popularized it.
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notes.andymatuschak.org notes.andymatuschak.org
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Here I’ve summarized Christian Tietze’s process, which I’m presently adopting / adapting:
Andy is Adapting the approach of zettelkasten writer Christian Tietze
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Aschheim, Steven E., and Vivian Liska, eds. The German-Jewish Experience Revisited. Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts 3. De Gruyter, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110367195.
Skimmed for references with respect to Aby Warburg and his zettelkasten.
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For some scholars, it is critical thatthis new Warburg obsessively kept tabs on antisemitic incidents on the Easternfront, scribbling down aphorisms and thoughts on scraps of paper and storingthem in Zettelkasten that are now searchable.
Apparently Aby Warburg "obsessively kept" notes on antisemitic incidents on the Eastern front in his zettelkasten.
This piece looks at Warburg's Jewish identity as supported or not by the contents of his zettelkasten, thus placing it in the use of zettelkasten or card index as autobiography.
Might one's notes reflect who they were as a means of creating both their identity while alive as well as revealing it once they've passed on? Might the use of historical method provide its own historical method to be taken up on a meta basis after one's death?
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refubium.fu-berlin.de refubium.fu-berlin.de
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https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/24570
Some interesting programming and structured data with relationship to the Gertrud Bauer Zettelkasten Online.
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Richter, Tonio Sebastian. “Whatever in the Coptic Language Is Not Greek, Can Wholly Be Considered Ancient Egyptian”: Recent Approaches towards an Integrated View of the Egyptian-Coptic Lexicon.” Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies. Journal de La Société Canadienne Pour Les Études Coptes 9 (2017): 9–32. https://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeumdok.00004673.
Skimmed for the specifics I was looking for with respect to Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten.
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It is a digitizedcard index containing about 15,000 token attestations of 150 types of Greek prepositions, conjunctions andparticles in Coptic from the whole range of Coptic dialects and types of text, arranged on the basis ofa detailedanalysis of their semantic and syntactic properties. This admirable work was conducted by Gertrud Bauer towhom this article is dedicated, in the 1970s and 1980s under the auspices of Alexander Bbhlig at the University ofTubingen. With Gertrud Bauer’s kind permission to make use of her work, we scanned the originalslips and slotted them into a database replicating the hierarchical structure of the original compilation It is ourpleasure to provide the public with a new lexicographical tool which helps to cope with a particularly difficultand interesting kind of Greek loanwords in Coptic.
This repeats chunks of prior notes from https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/ddglc/bauer-db/index.html, but is a better published/referenceable verion of it than just the web page.
Link to : - https://hypothes.is/a/nrqq3JXqEe2i5TOTRdgmQg - https://hypothes.is/a/uCcDTJXnEe2nZFtz8Aa_LQ
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The DDGLC data are not accessible online as of yet. A migration of the database and the data into aMySQL target system is underway and will allow us to offer an online user interface by the end of 2017 Whatwe can already offer now is a by-product of our work, the Gertrud Bauer Zettelkasten Online.6'
61 Available online at http://research.uni-leipzig.de/ddglc/bauerindex.html. The Work on this parergon to the lexicographical labors of the DDGLC project was funded by the Gertrud-und Alexander Böhlig-Stiftung. The digitization of the original card index was conducted by temporary collaborators and volunteers in the DDGLC project: Jenny Böttinger, Claudia Gamma, Tami Gottschalk, Josephine Hensel, Katrin John, Mariana Jung, Christina Katsikadeli, and Elen Saif. The IT concept and programming were carried out by Katrin John and Maximilian Moller.
Digitization of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten was underway in 2017 to put the data into a MySQL database with the intention of offering it as an online user interface sometime in 2017.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Equations and Formulas in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry Using a Digital Zettelkasten .t3_10dbza7._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } zk-structureHow do you handle relations between mathematical, physical or chemical formulas in a digital Zettelkasten? Since I would like to use a future-proof system, my files are written in markdown.Is it possible to write down those formulas on a tablet and save the pdfs inside the digital Zettelkasten (along with a new ID and a descriptive title) and then just reference on it from the markdown Zettel? Or should I create attachments for markdown Zettel that require some formulas or images providing the *same* ID to them?Or, do I completely overthinking this?
reply to u/phil98f at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10dbza7/equations_and_formulas_in_mathematics_physics_and/
Perhaps you've not gotten far enough in your studies to see the pattern yet, but most advanced mathematics texts (Hungerford's Algebra or Rudin's Real Analysis for example) and many physics texts are written as if they were pre-numbered zettelkasten. Generally every definition, theorem, corollary, proposition, and lemma in the text will be written out succinctly with its own unique number and arranged in some sort of branching order. Most of these texts you could generally cut up and paste onto cards and have something zettelkasten-like without any additional work.
I generally follow this same pattern and usually separate proofs on cards behind their associated theorems (typically only for those I've written out myself). Individual equations can be numbered, but I rarely give an equation its own card and instead reference them by card number with a particular equation line in parenthesis when necessary. I can then cross reference definitions, theorems, etc. easily as I continue building things up. Over time you can eventually cross reference various branches of math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. For example I've got a dozen different proofs and uses of Schwartz' inequality in six different branches of mathematics which goes toward showing how closely knit various disparate branches of math can be.
In most cases I might also suggest against too heavy a focus on the equations, but on what they may say/mean, and what you can use it for. Alternately drawing diagrams or pictures of the relationships can be valuable. Understand it first then write it down. As an example you can look at Boyle's Law, Charles' law, Avogadro's Law and Gay-Lussac's law, but if you know and understand them properly then you should be able to write down and understand the more generic Ideal Gas Law, which shows how they're interlinked. Later in your studies you might also then be able to derive it from microscopic kinetic theory with statistical mechanics as well, then you'll be able to link up those concepts at that time.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Ut_opinor December 2020 Flag With respect, I think y'all have it backwards. The important word is not "Zettel", but "Kasten." That is the key to the system and the brilliant insight Luhmann was able to exploit in devising his system. First, as an American (and, more particularly, a Californian), I must object to the casual use of "slip" in talking about the Zettel. "Slip" and "slip-box" are British English; as you know, George Bernard Shaw remarked that America and England were separated by a common language. So, here. In American English, it is a piece of paper. We understand "slip of paper," of course, but it would not likely occur to an American to say it. At the most, we might say "a little (or small) piece of paper." That is not really the point. Looking at actual pictures of Luhmann's Zettelkasten shows that it is simply what used to be called a card catalogue; more broadly, a card file index. They used to be a prominent feature of libraries. They included what we now call metadata about publications. They also had call numbers (in America; shelf numbers elsewhere) that were used to get the book. Sometimes, the book was fetched by a library employee. Now, some call it the UID. Same idea, same purpose, same occasionally-odd result. And, if you got to go into the stacks where the books were shelved, the same serendipity could lead to interesting discoveries. Simply, Luhmann's flash of brilliance was to see that his own reading and thoughts constituted his academic library, and his work involved gleaning what he could from those sources. Since he created the sources, which were always his own thoughts based on his reading and thinking, he could use the results directly in drafting his writings, which is why he was so productive. The Zettelkasten is just his own, personal card catalogue, where he gathered his research material. The key to success was the reference system he devised, just like the Dewey decimal system used by American libraries, and whatever similar reference system is used by libraries elsewhere. The main thing is that each research item has a unique identifier that allows it to be located as desired. I say that Kasten is the important word, rather than Zettel, because it was the fact that the material--notes, files, cards, little pieces of paper, matchbook covers, whatever--was all together in one place and available for research and thinking that made the difference. Luhmann was not the first to write notes down compulsively, nor to keep them; he did figure out a system for finding them when he needed or could use them. Luhmann's success was that he saw clearly what was right in front of him, and he understood how to take advantage of it. (The essence of genius is to not look surprised when the lightning strikes.) In his system, there are three important steps: capture, corral, and ride. And if the horse wants to run away with you, let it. You never know when it might stumble across a gold mine in the desert. Yippie-ki-yay, Cowboys!
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/9357/#Comment_9357
I just love this perspective! They've gotten so many parts "correct"!
slip box vs zettelkasten vs card file index (or card catalog)
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Zettelkasten for studying art?
Sometimes having examples of others' work can be helpful. In your case, perhaps perusing some zettelkasten work by previous users within the art/image space? In this respect some of the work by Aby Warburg may be interesting to you. I might suggest starting with his archive here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verknüpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials
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userpage.fu-berlin.de userpage.fu-berlin.de
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After browsing through a variety of the cards in Gertrud Bauer's Zettelkasten Online it becomes obvious that the collection was created specifically as a paper-based database for search, retrieval, and research. The examples and data within it are much more narrowly circumscribed for a specific use than those of other researchers like Niklas Luhmann whose collection spanned a much broader variety of topics and areas of knowledge.
This particular use case makes the database nature of zettelkasten more apparent than some others, particularly in modern (post-2013 zettelkasten of a more personal nature).
I'm reminded here of the use case(s) described by Beatrice Webb in My Apprenticeship for scientific note taking, by which she more broadly meant database creation and use.
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https://userpage.fu-berlin.de/johnkatrin/bauer1/index.html
The digitized and online version of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten.
Search fields: - simple search - ID - Lemma - card type - Dialect - Use
Tags
- Gertrud Bauer Zettelkasten Online
- zettelkasten examples
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten
- Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC)
- scientific note taking
- card index as database
- digitized note collections
- Beatrice Webb
- Gertrud Bauer
- databases
Annotators
URL
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www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de
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In summer 2010, Professor Peter Nagel of Bonn forwarded seven cardboard boxes full of lexicographical slips to the DDGLC office, which had been handed over to him in the early '90s by the late Professor Alexander Böhlig.
In the 1990s Professor Alexander Böhlig of the University of Tuebingen gave Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten to Professor Peter Nagel of Bonn. He in turn forwardd the seven cardboard boxes of slips to the Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC) office for their use.
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The development of the Gertrud Bauer Zettelkasten Online was funded 2010 – 2015 by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Gertrud-und-Alexander-Böhlig-Stiftung.
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Thanks to funding from the Gertrud-und-AlexanderBöhlig Stiftung, it was possible to inspect the content of the boxes, and to re-establish the original order of the lexicographical slips and their internal hierarchical structure.
What was the nature of the hierarchical structure of Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten?
Some of the structure may be understandable by the nature of the digital database.
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The original slips have been scanned and slotted into a database replicating the hierarchical structure of the original compilation. It is our pleasure to provide a new lexicographical tool to our colleagues in Coptology, Classical Studies, and Linguistics, and other interested parties.
The Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC) has scanned and placed the original slips from Gertrud Bauer's zettelkasten into a database for scholarly use. The database allows the replication of the hierarchical structure of Bauer's original compilation.
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The huge collection of lexicographical slips underlying this publication was produced in the '70s and '80s for Prof. Alexander Böhlig's loanword project at the University of Tuebingen.
Gertrud Bauer produced her zettelkasten as part of a loanword project overseen by professor Alexander Böhlig at the University of Tuebingen.
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Her work on borrowed function words was so far manifest in her Konkordanz der nichtflektierten griechischen Wörter im bohairischen Neuen Testament, Göttinger Orientforschungen VI/6, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1975, the tip of the iceberg as we know now.
Gertrud Bauer used her zettelkasten on Coptic and Greek to write Konkordanz der nichtflektierten griechischen Wörter im bohairischen Neuen Testament, Göttinger Orientforschungen VI/6, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1975, a work on borrowed function words.
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these slips constitute a thorough lexicographical compilation of about 15.000 attestations (tokens) of almost 150 types of Greek prepositions, conjunctions and particles in Coptic, from virtually all Coptic dialects and types of texts, arranged on the basis of a detailed analysis of their semantic and syntactic properties. It is the work of Dr. Gertrud Bauer from Tuebingen.
Gertrud Bauer maintained a zettelkasten in the 1970s and 1980s in which she compiled "about 15,000 attestations (tokens) of almost 150 types of reek prepositions, conjunctions and particles in Coptic, from virtually all Coptic dialects and types of texts, arranged on the basis of a detailed analysis of their semantic and syntactic properties."
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Local file Local file
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ned the art of notetaking for themselves that this pamphletis prepared. It does not seem wise to attempt to lay down any verystringent rules on the subject. We can only suggest the more generalmethods from which every man can work out his own particular system.
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www.istockphoto.com www.istockphoto.com
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mattgiaro.com mattgiaro.com
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Originally, it was the note-taking method used by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist.
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I began by committing the basic error of writing my notes on both sides of the page. I soon learned not to do that, but I continued to copy excerpts into notebooks in the order in which I encountered them.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYj1jneBUQo
Forrest Perry shows part of his note taking and idea development process in his hybrid digital-analog zettelkasten practice. He's read a book and written down some brief fleeting notes on an index card. He then chooses a few key ideas he wants to expand upon, finds the physical index card he's going to link his new idea to, then reviews the relevant portion of the book and writes a draft of a card in his notebook. Once satisfied with it, he transfers his draft from his notebook into Obsidian (ostensibly for search and as a digital back up) where he may also be refining the note further. Finally he writes a final draft of his "permanent" (my framing, not his) note on a physical index card, numbers it with respect to his earlier card, and then (presumably) installs it into his card collection.
In comparison to my own practice, it seems like he's spending a lot of time after-the-fact in reviewing over the original material to write and rewrite an awful lot of material for what seems (at least to me—and perhaps some of it is as a result of lack of interest in the proximal topic), not much substance. For things like this that I've got more direct interest in, I'll usually have a more direct (written) conversation with the text and work out more of the details while reading directly. This saves me from re-contextualizing the author's original words and arguments while I'm making my arguments and writing against the substrate of the author's thoughts. Putting this work in up front is often more productive at least for areas of direct interest. I would suspect that in Perry's case, he was generally interested in the book, but it doesn't impinge on his immediate areas of research and he only got three or four solid ideas out of it as opposed to a dozen or so.
The level of one's conversation with the text will obviously depend on their interest and goals, a topic which is relatively well laid out by Adler & Van Doren (1940).
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Forrest Perry shows an example of one of his zettels which has evidence of his having renumbered at least one card.
The image of the card has a strip of white out tape in the upper right hand corner with about 6 characters' worth of text covered over and the identifier "4b" written in black ink over it.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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2. Attal, Robert. A Bibliography of the writings of Prof. Shelomo Dov Goitein, Ben Zvi Institute Jerusalem 2000, an expanded edition containing 737 titles, as well as general Index and Index of Reviews.
Robert Attal's revised bibliography (2000) of Goitein's output lists 737 titles.
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ias.academia.edu ias.academia.edu
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800 Articles & Reviews68 Books
https://ias.academia.edu/ShelomoDovGoitein/Articles-&-Reviews
Not sure who compiled this academia.edu profile of Goitein, but it lists a reasonable sounding 800 articles/reviews and 68 books which tracks with the revised edition of Robert Atta's bibliography.
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genizalab.princeton.edu genizalab.princeton.edu
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https://genizalab.princeton.edu/pgp-database/technical-history
Overview of the technical portions of the Princeton Geniza Lab operatioins.
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genizalab.princeton.edu genizalab.princeton.edu
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Then two things happened. Goitein had bequeathed his “geniza lab” of 26,000 index cards and thousands of transcriptions, translations and photocopies of fragments to the National Library of Israel (then the Jewish National and University Library). But Mark R. Cohen(link is external) and A. L. Udovitch(link is external) arranged for copies to be made and kept in Princeton. That was the birth of the Princeton Geniza Lab.
https://genizalab.princeton.edu/about/history-princeton-geniza-lab/text-searchable-database
Mark R. Cohen and A. L. Udovitch made the arrangements for copies of S.D. Goitein's card index, transcriptions and photocopies of fragments to be made and kept at Princeton before the originals were sent to the National Library of Israel. This repository was the birth of the Princeton Geniza Lab.
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Zinger, Oded. “Finding a Fragment in a Pile of Geniza: A Practical Guide to Collections, Editions, and Resources.” Jewish History 32, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 279–309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-019-09314-6.
Read on 2023-01-09
An overview of sources and repositories for fragments from the Cairo Geniza with useful bibliographies for the start of Geniza studies. Of particular interest to me here is the general work of Shelomo Dov Goitein and his 27,000+ card zettelkasten containing his research work on it. There's some great basic description of his collection in general as well as some small specifics on what it entails and some reasonable guide as to how to search it and digital versions at the Princeton Geniza Lab.
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offers a breakdown of the most useful index cards of the second type.
Oded Zinger provides a two page chart breakdown overview of the smaller portion of Goitein's 7,000 cards relating to his study of the Geniza with a list of the subjects, subdivisions, microfilm rolls and slide numbers, and the actual card drawer numbers and card numbers. These cards were in drawers 1-15, 17, and 20-22.
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