( ~19:15 )

Johannes Schmidt calls Luhmann: "Without a doubt the most important German sociologist of the 20th century."

( ~ 9:36)

Luhmann got his doctoral and habilitation thesis in one year, in 1966; but the books he used for this had been written in 1964, according to Dr. Schmidt.

( ~9:15 )

I am quite similar to Luhmann in the sense that we both prefer theoretical research over practical research. However, I think Schmidt here refers to the overall conception of a Grand Theory, seeming to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. This is where I depart with Luhmann as my whole goal rests on the practicality of optimizing education.

So while I prefer theoretical research, the end is to improve something in a practical sense.

Die Autor:innen des Projekts "Net Zero 2040" erläutern in einem Blogpost auf der Standard-Website ihre Ergebnisse. Modellierungen zeigen, dass in Österreich eine vollständige Dekarbonisierung im Energiesektor bis 2040 möglich ist, wenn sie politisch entschlossen vorangetrieben wird. Der Projekt Bericht enthält vier unterschiedliche, realistischeSzenarien zum Erreichen von Net Zero. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000205443/wie-oesterreich-klimaneutral-werden-kann

Ergebnisse der Szenarien: https://www.netzero2040.at/

With rough German to English translation here:

Zettelkasten as the second brain of Niklas Luhmann

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Roy Scholten</span> in "@ChrisAldrich For a somewhat in depth look at Luhmann's zettelkasten , I made a rough translation of this talk: https://t.co/ik7VTOGMV8 here: https://t.co/nAAb7aXXtC" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>11/01/2021 11:39:57</time>)</cite></small>

Watched 2021-11-01

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.

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.

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.

I've not looked directly at Wittgenstein's note collection before, but it could be an interesting historical example.

Might be worth collecting examples of what has happened to note collections after author's lives. Some obviously have been influential in scholarship, but generally they're subsumed by the broader category of a person's "papers" which are often archived at libraries, museums, and other institutions.

Examples: - Vincentius Placcius' collection used by his students - Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten which is being heavily studied by Johannes F.K. Schmidt - Mortimer J. Adler - was his kept? where is it stored?

Posthumously published note card collections - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project - Ronald Reagan's collection at his presidential library, though it is more of an commonplace book collection of quotes which was later published - Roland Barthes' Mourning Diary - Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura - others...

Just as note collections serve an autobiographical function, perhaps they may also serve as an intellectual autobiographical function? Wittgenstein never managed to complete his 'big book', but in some sense, doesn't his collection of note cards serve this function for those willing to explore it all?

I'd previously suggested that Scott P. Scheper publish not only his book on note taking, but to actually publish his note cards as a stand-alone zettelkasten example to go with them. What if this sort of publishing practice were more commonplace? The modern day equivalent is more likely a person's blog or their wiki. Not enough people are publicly publishing their notes to see what this practice might look like for future generations.

Niklas Luhmann thought of the zettelkasten as a cybernetic system.

He considers a precondition of its creation is that it ought to waive any "fixed order", allow for search, and the asking of questions.

There are only the outlines of brief and scant thoughts here however, which would have required significant amounts of additional context not contained on the card. As a result one would require additional underpinning to understand what Luhmann means here as the card definitively couldn't have been directly or easily reused for future writing beyond the basic sketch outline he provides. What proportion of cards have brief thought sketches like this versus more fully thought out and directly reusable ideas within his system? Does Schmidt provide any guidance here without reading portions of the larger corpus? How does this differ from the guidance of Ahrens?

(Translation from German to English via Google)

Schmidt, J. F. (2018). Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity. Sociologica, 12(1), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350

Annotating with Hypothes.is? https://docdrop.org/pdf/Niklas-Luhmanns-Card-Index_-Th---Schmidt-Johannes-F.K_-0rcv9.pdf/

Note that this article is a revised and shortened form of a chapter in Cevolini's Forgetting Machines. I'm tempted to just read that instead...