- Oct 2024
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genizaprojects.princeton.edu genizaprojects.princeton.edu
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Quite sad that his handwriting is so bad... I would love to see what stuff he wrote to get inspired for my own process...
His writing is even harder to read than Niklas Luhmann's in some instances.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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"You get surprised even by your own notes."
Yes, that's exactly what Niklas Luhmann mentioned as the prerequisite for effective communication (with a Zettelkasten).
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System
card system ⇒ system theory
In the early 1900s it was very common, especially in English speaking countries to call these note taking/paper database systems "card systems". Is it a wonder then that they may have helped to create "systems theory"?
In particular, look at Niklas Luhmann's work as well as Ross Ashby.
Example of a fleeting note triggered by a single word in a context, but with thoughts not relating at all to the specifics of the particular work.
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Very often the text gives no or no clear answer to this question about the otherside of its statement. But then you have to help it on its feet with your ownimagination. Scruples with regard to hermeneutical defensibility or even truthwould be out of place here. First of all, it's just a matter of writing things down,looking for something worth remembering, and learning to read
Learning and Intellectualism can both be found in the act of comparison, or more broadly, analysis. One must do this perpetually when reading to dissect and gain most (long-term) (syntopical) value out of it.
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he problem of reading scientific texts seems to lie in the fact that here one needsnot a short-term memory but a long-term memory in order to gain reference pointsfor distinguishing the essential from the unessential and the new from the merelyrepetitive. But one cannot remember everything. That would be memorization. Inother words, you have to be able to read highly selectively and pull out widelyinterconnected references. One must be able to understand recursions. But howdoes one learn this, if no instructions can be given; or at best aboutconspicuousness (as in the previous sentence for example “recursions”, but not“must”)?Perhaps the best method is to take notes – not excerpts, but condensedreformulations of what has been read. The re-description of what has already beendescribed leads almost automatically to the training of an attention for “frames”,for schemes of observation or even for conditions that lead to the text offeringcertain descriptions and not others. In doing so, it is useful to always consider:What is not meant, what is excluded, when something specific is asserted? Whentalking about “human rights”: What does the author distinguish his statementsfrom? From non-human rights? From human obligations? Or culturallycomparatively or historically from populations that do not know human rights andcan live with them quite well?
In other words, Luhmann is urging to engage in pattern recognition.
True intellectual work using the Zettelkasten demands pattern recognition when reading. Domain specific knowledge + pattern recognition = efficient reading; for it allows to distinguish signal from noise, value from trash.
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Another possibility is read texts on certain topics – liability fordefects in civil law, socialization theory, risk research, etc. – in parallel. Then onegradually develops a feeling for what is already known and knows the “state of theart”. New things then stand out. But you learn something that is mostly veryquickly outdated and then to unlearn again.
Is this a criticism by Luhmann on the conventional notion of syntopical reading in Adlerian terms? Probably without knowing Adler's work.
Because science/truth work (knowledge) is constantly in revision, conventional syntopical reading on a topic of science is without necessary value?
Perhaps unless stored and expanded upon in a ZK?
Further thought is required to disseminate this paragraph.
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Beginners, especially first-year students, initially find themselves confronted with asentence-ordered set of words that they can read sentence by sentence andunderstand according to sentence meaning. But what does it come down to?What is to be “learned”? What is important, what is merely incidental? After a fewpages of reading, one can hardly remember what one has read. Whatrecommendations could be made here?
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Beginners' courses or introductory texts are also designed in this way.What one does not or hardly learn, however, are conceptual contexts and, aboveall, problems to which the texts try to give an answer.
One must read analytically (cf Adler & van Doren) in order to grasp the meaning behind text. Or perhaps syntopically by default if one performs the Zettelkasten method.
Conventional Syntopical Reading is "immediate" and project-based, at least in Adlerian terms, that is.
However, when doing Zettelkasten work, one is perpetually reading syntopically and therefore I would call it Delayed Syntopical Reading
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When I read a book, forexample, I proceed as follows: I always have a piece of note paper at hand onwhich I write down certain ideas for specific pages. On the back, I write down thebibliographic information. When I have read through the book, I go through thesenotes and think about what can be evaluated for which notes that have alreadybeen written and how. So I always read with an eye to the possibility of writingnotes to the books. Maybe it is simply a collecting instinct I have.
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- Aug 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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The song's criticism on mass media is mainly related to sensationalism.
"Good" things are usually not sensational. They do not demand attention, hence why the code of known/unknown based on selectors for attention filters it out.
Reference Hans-Georg Moeller's explanations of Luhmann's mass media theory based on functionally differentiated systems theory.
Can also compare to Simone Weil's thoughts on collectives and opinion; organizations (thus most part of mass media) should not be allowed to form opinions as this is an act of the intellect, only residing in the individual. Opinion of any form meant to spread lies or parts of the truth rather than the whole truth should be disallowed according to her because truth is a foundational, even the most sacred, need for the soul.
People must be protected against misinformation.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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( ~19:15 )
Johannes Schmidt calls Luhmann: "Without a doubt the most important German sociologist of the 20th century."
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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(~1:20)
Apparently Markus Krajewski is the one with "perhaps the most intimate knowledge of the Zettelkasten process alive"...
Why?
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- Jul 2024
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A critique on the Mass Media... The problem is that they want the Mass Media system to operate on the code of "True/False" rather than "Known/Unknown"... But if it were to be so, it would not be Mass Media anymore, but rather the Science System.
For Mass Media to be Mass Media it needs to be concerned with selection and filtering, to condense and make known, not to present "all the facts". Sure, they need to be concerned with truth to a certain degree, but it's not the primary priority.
This is a reflection based on my knowledge of Luhmann's theory of society as functionally differentiated systems; as explained by Hans-Georg Moeller (Carefree Wandering) on YouTube.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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( ~ 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.
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( ~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.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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( ~11:00 )
Another misconception, for sure because of Ahrens, namely that a Zettel should be able to stand on its own, Atomic thought... Explain without context.
This is not what Luhmann did at all.
In fact, it is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE.
Luhmann quite literally said that the value of a note is ONLY with regards to the other notes in the system. He wrote in thought sequences, and more often than not, a single note was not intelligible without the context of the other notes.
PLEASE PEOPLE, LEARN FROM MULTIPLE PRIMARY SOURCES, NOT JUST AHRENS :(
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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(9/8a2) Zettelkasten als Klärgrube – nicht nur abgeklärte Notizen hineintun. Aufschieben des Prüfens und Entscheidens – auch eine Tempofrage. Zettelkasten as a septic tank – don’t put just treated notes in. Suspending of examination and decision making – also a question of speed.
I have always misinterpreted this idea.
I thought it referred to the rumination of ideas... Don't put notes you just made in it (from any source, like reading a book), instead let it ruminate.
I was wrong. I realized this when chatting with Gemini Advanced.
But either way, the DeepL translation of this paragraph: "Slip box as a clarification pit - don't just put clarified notes in it. Postponing reviewing and deciding - also a question of speed."
It is moreso related to the idea of fleeting notes and unprocessed ideas. Have to think a bit more about what Luhmann meant. Maybe @chrisaldrich knows something.
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- Jun 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Why can Luhmann manage information better than those who typing on obsidian?
Too many people fetishize Luhmann and his system. Yes he wrote a lot and yes he was productive, but was he as influential as any of the thousands upon thousands of writers and academics who used broadly similar methods? A lot of Luhmann's productivity boils down to how one chooses to define productivity. As an example: Isaac Newton, John Locke, Taylor Swift, and even Eminem had broadly similar not taking methods and though their note corpuses are dramatically smaller than Luhmann, their influence on art, culture, and humanity dramatically exceeds that of Luhmann.
I would posit that most serious note takers' productivity boils down to their utter simplicity and easy ability to replicate that method for decades. The largest part of Luhmann's productivity was that he not only had a simple system, but that he was privileged to use and practice at full time for the length of his academic career. (He also didn't face the scourge of peer-review that most academics are forced to run today.)
As an example of someone whose methods were very similar to Luhmann's, but who was dramatically more productive (from a generic definition of it), take a look at S. D. Goitein who wrote out about 1/3 the number of slips that Luhmann did, but used them to write almost a 1/3 more articles and books! Luhmann: 90,000 slips, 550 articles, 50 books versus Goitein: 27,000 slips, 669 articles, 69 books. Interestingly Goitein's method of organization was much closer to the topical organization to the vast majority of zettelkasten/card index users (as well as Obsidian users) than to Luhmann's alpha-numeric organizational method. There isn't nearly enough scale in (psychology, cognitive psychology) research to reasonably compare analog versus digital methods, much less enough research to distinguish between methods at the scale of individual people. Everyone will respond differently to different modalities because the breadth of neurodiversity within the population. The psychology research you're citing is painfully, painfully thin and is far from reaching the level of replicability. As a result, the best practicable advice to any individual is to experiment for themselves and choose the method they feel works best for them from a sustainability perspective.
reply to u/Quack_quack_22 at https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1doqgar/why_can_luhmann_manage_information_better_than/
I found that Luhmann's information management system is not more complicated, but it is more effective than the influencers talking about taking notes on Obsidian. Because he took notes by hand:
Studies show that taking notes by hand has a positive impact on many different brain areas. Writing by hand is slower than typing: The slowness of handwriting helps Luhmann consider and select important words to write in literature notes. -> he will remember better the brain is relaxed -> the brain is more creative: when writing literature notes -> he will come up with more ideas so he can write permanent notes. To put it more simply. Luhmann takes notes to find as many ideas as possible to write in permanent notes, then these permanent notes will become a complete essay after Luhmann connects them together. And writing citations, summaries of content and citing sources in literature are just proof that his ideas are correct (ironically, people who make content about obsidian (also Tiago Forte) just encourage copy-paste).
Thus, copying highlights from Kindle to Obsidian becomes useless if you don't understand anything about highlights and don't get any ideas from them. I don't claim that typing makes us stupid, because people who write on computers have a habit of carefully correcting spelling and arguments, which helps them think more deeply = more smart.
Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyolson/2016/05/15/three-ways-that-writing-with-a-pen-positively-affects-your-brain/ https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/handwriting-shows-unexpected-benefits-over-typing/
P/s: I think this guy is very precise about the zettelkasten method: he takes notes on paper like Luhmann to get ideas, then he just starts copying them into Obsidian. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrvKHFIHaeQ&t=0s)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Luhmann uses his joker card as an example of the fact that every autonomous system must contain its own negation. (This may be a reference to Hegel's dialectic, where the developmemt of thought is based on the negation within the system.) So we have a German professor who has built a disciplined note taking system in which each card has its precise address. Except for the joker, which negates all other notecards, moves freely within the system and cannot be found.
I've always wondered if Luhmann's jokerzettel was inspired by Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rJJgt_5mg
Luhmann couldn't have worked in systems theory and information for so long without being intimately familiar with Shannon's work. There's direct evidence that he read at least his seminal work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/shannon_weaver_1949_communication
While we're on about the "Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten" and Claude Shannon, his short essay "The Bandwagon" is an infamous article he wrote about the cargo cult of information theory applications in 1956.
Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774. .pdf copy at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774
Finally, too many Zettelkasten adherents of the Luhmann-artig sort seem to want to forget that Luhmann's system was far from new and that thousands upon thousands had used similar systems for several hundreds of years before him. Many thousands of them also wrote huge amounts of material, many of them producing work far more consequential than anything Luhman wrote.
reply to u/taurusnoises and u/Filion_Alexandrian at I've always wondered if Luhmann's jokerzettel was inspired by Claude Shannon's Ultimate Machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rJJgt_5mg
Luhmann couldn't have worked in systems theory and information for so long without being intimately familiar with Shannon's work. There's direct evidence that he read at least his seminal work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/shannon_weaver_1949_communication
While we're on about the "Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten" and Claude Shannon, his short essay "The Bandwagon" is an infamous article he wrote about the cargo cult of information theory applications in 1956.
Shannon, Claude Elwood. “The Bandwagon.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 2, no. 1 (March 1956): 3. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1956.1056774. .pdf copy at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774
Finally, too many Zettelkasten adherents of the Luhmann-artig sort seem to want to forget that Luhmann's system was far from new and that thousands upon thousands had used similar systems for several hundreds of years before him. Many thousands of them also wrote huge amounts of material, many of them producing work far more consequential than anything Luhman wrote.
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/shannon_weaver_1949_communication
Overlap of Claude Shannon and Niklas Luhmann
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- May 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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(~6:30)
I think the major point here is that Adler points out our minds, and thus our thinking, changes over time. Therefore, when a book is read at a later point in time, our notes are different.
Perhaps his argument to "think again as to make the thought more current" is antithetical to Luhmann's Zettelkasten, which principles upon continuing previous lines of thought, even decades later.
(future note, about half an hour later)... I think in the Zettelkasten the problem is dealt with adequately, since you actually can make new notes expressing why your thought changes... So in this sense it is even more expanded upon the point that Adler makes even though at first sight it seems the complete opposite.
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luhmann.surge.sh luhmann.surge.sh
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Perhaps the best method would be to take notes—not excerpts, but condensed reformulations of what has been read. The re-description of what has already been described leads almost automatically to a training of paying attention to “frames,” or schemata of observation, or even to noticing conditions which lead the text to offer some descriptions but not others.
Summarization. Building of cognitive schemas.
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Learning How to Read
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Theoretically interested readers should therefore follow the advice of learning as many languages as possible in such a way that they have at least passive mastery of them and thus can read and understand them.
Interesting, Luhmann recommends to know many languages so as to prevent the pitfalls of translational errors in conveying meaning when it is to read translated books. So read books in their original language.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent read-ing. Some things should be read quick-ly and effortlessly, and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things dif-ferently according to their worth.
As Luhmann would say, it is foolish to think that things are black and white; in most scenarios there is nuance... So too is it with reading speed, it must be relative or else it is not accurate. Even speed within books can differ.
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ment, doubt, and inquiry. It's like re-suming an interrupted conversation with the advantage of being able to pick up where you left off. And that is exactly what reading a book should be: a conversation be-tween you and the author. Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; naturally, you'll have the prop-er humility as you approach him.
This is the entire point of an Antinet or Zettelkasten, and it is far more advanced/useful for this purpose than just Marginalia. Sorry Adler, but you should have spoken to Luhmann in this regard. Both of you are heroes of mine, but in this round, Luhmann takes the crown.
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bobjessop.wordpress.com bobjessop.wordpress.com
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Luhmann cites Edgar Morin (1980: 44) on ecological dominance, i.e., an ecological relation wherein some systems may be dominant but where none dominates (Luhmann 1987: 109-110; 1990a: 147-8).
Luhmann meminjam Edgar Morin tentang dominasi ekologis. Bahwa dalam relasi ekologis sebagian sistem mungkin dominan tapi tidak mendominasi.
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Ecological dominance is a contingent emergent relationship between two or more systems rather than a naturally necessary property of a single system. Thus a given functional system can be more or less ecologically dominant, its dominance may vary across different systems in its environment and/or with changing circumstances, and the continuation of any dominance will depend on the development of the ecosystem as a whole.[2] So there is no ‘last instance’ in relations of ecological dominance. But, given that the capitalist economy is structurally coupled to other operationally autonomous systems and to the lifeworld (and these to each other too), we can ask which, if any, of them could become ecologically dominant. There are seven analytically distinct, but empirically interrelated, aspects of the social (as opposed to biological) world that affect a system’s potential in this regard (see Table 1). Considered in these terms, the capitalist economy, with its distinctive, self-valorizing logic, tends to have just those properties that favour ecological dominance.
Dominasi Ekologis
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www.magrathea-tlc.nl www.magrathea-tlc.nl
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his ‘antihumanism’ is not a replacement of ‘human nature’ with systems. ‘Social systems theory does not describe reality as it “essentially” is, but as what it has actually become – and it could have come out otherwise’
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- Apr 2024
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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00:26 Zettelkasten wasn't conceived by Niklas Luhmann; this is a myth (which the person in the video puts forward). Zettelkasten has a long history, and, Niklas Luhmann had a specific taste and version of it.
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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The 20th-century German sociologist Niklas Luhmann managed to publish 70 books.
I should start collecting quotes about Luhmann's prodigiousness. I've read variously that he published 40 books, 50 books, 60 books, 70+ books, as well as 400, 600 articles. I'm just curious to know 1) what the real number is, and 2) why so many people are using different numbers.
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- Feb 2024
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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Niklas Luhmann's communication with his slip-box began not with trying to find a place for independently conceived notes, but with reading and developing new ideas in light of ones he had already begun.
Reading with an eye towards a zettelkasten is a communication process.
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- Jan 2024
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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ZK II note 9/8b 9/8b On the general structure of memories, see Ashby 1967, p. 103 . It is then important that you do not have to rely on a huge number of point-by-point accesses , but rather that you can rely on relationships between notes, i.e. references , that make more available at once than you would with a search impulse or with one thought - has fixation in mind.
This underlies the ideas of songlines and oral mnemonic practices and is related to Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think.
Luhmann, Niklas. “ZK II Zettel 9/8b.” Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, undated. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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reply to oxytonic on 2023-01-08 at https://hypothes.is/a/8QdgetQOEe2XG6u5i9iAHQ
In my experience, alternating alphanumeric codes give you the "gist" of the original context. Purely with reference to my rough outline, my notecard "3516/b" implies psychology (3XXX), cognition (35XX), and memory (351X). Even the single slash implies a level of abstraction and/or specificity.
But it's not enough because it runs the risk of locking you in. Forward links on the card (or forward links to the card!) offer comparable if not competitive recontextualization, which is most likely what Luhmann means by "multiple storage".
Caution: My note here has some significant missing context which results from significant additional research.
The primary issue with analog slip boxes, particularly in academic research of Luhmann's day, was one of multiple storage. No one else I'm aware of prior to his time used Luhmann's filing scheme (and very few after until about 2013). Instead most filed multiple copies of their notes under category headings like "psychology", "cognition", and "memory" (to use your example) so that those ideas would be readily available when they came to work on their ideas relating to cognition, for example. This involved a tremendous amount of copying work. (For reference, see Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931. which is the handbook which Luhmann used to scaffold his method.) It was this copying and filing under multiple categories which was commonly referred to as multiple storage. Many academics got around it by hiring assistants or secretaries who would do this duplicative work and filing on their behalf; Luhmann didn't have this additional help and it may have been a portion of the pressure for the evolution of his method.
Instead Luhmann used branching and cross-indexing his ideas along with regular use and familiarity of the space within his boxes. While his zettelkasten may seem on the surface to be done by category, the way you suggest, it definitely is not. Some of this appearance is suggested by editorial decisions made by the curators of his digital archive and, in larger part, by Scott Scheper who (sadly in my opinion) recommends using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as top level categories a practice which heavily belies some of what Luhmann was doing. While Luhmann was inspired by the Dewey Decimal System, he wasn't using the parts of it that equated numbers with topics, in part because he didn't need to and it would have been counterproductive to his ultimate method—specifically causing him to deal with multiple storage. Modern (digital) database theory and practice allows some note takers an easier way around this problem.
For more on this see: - https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ - https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
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- Dec 2023
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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
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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Heute vor 90 Jahren wurde mein Vater Niklas Luhmann geboren.Ein ausgezeichneter Künstler !NL, Aquarell 1947, 24cm x 28cm
translation:
My father Niklas Luhmann was born 90 years ago today. An excellent artist! NL, watercolor 1947, 24cm x 28cm Clemens Luhmann, Posted to Facebook on 2017-12-08
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- Nov 2023
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Local file Local file
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taking in sociological investigation
The simplest and most direct way of bringing home to the reader the truth of this dogmatic assertion of the scientific value of note-taking in sociological investigation...
Beatrice Webb indicates that it is an incontrovertible truth that sociologists should use a card index (zettelkasten) as a primary tool in their research.
We ought to closely notice that she wrote this truism about the field of sociology in a book published in 1926, the year prior to Niklas Luhmann's <s>death</s> birth.
How popular was her book with respect to the remainder of the field of sociology subsequently? What other sociology texts may have had similar ideas? Webb obviously quotes some of this technique in the late 1800s as being popular within the area of history. How evenly was it spread across the humanities in general?
Is Beatrice Webb's card index amongst her papers? Where might they be stored today?
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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@DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 1 month ago hey, thanks for your input - you sound like an advanced Zettelkasten-er. Any recommendations for those that want the full version? Show less Read more 0 Like 0 Dislike Reply @DrMaddy101 @DrMaddy101 0/ Cancel Reply Add a reply... @jsnyrty3917 1 month ago @DrMaddy101 not advanced simply used primary sources and secondary sources like Scott Scheper’s youtube channel which explains it accurately.
reply to @DrMaddy101 and jsnyrty3917 at #
I would recommend caution here as Scheper approaches the subject like a cult, which it patently is not. He also has the tendency to gatekeep, gaslight others, and create a toxic environment. He's selling you something, and he's being rude about it at the same time. Even though he attempts to maintain something closely akin to Luhmann's practice, his poorly edited book distinctly suggests some very non-Luhmann-esque practices. The zettelkasten tradition is much richer and deeper than the surface level discussion of Luhmann. Using him as your only model is perforce going to be tremendously limiting. You'll find additional excellent (and even some more productive) examplars hiding in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Desiderius Erasmus, Rodolphus Agricola, Philip Melancthon, Konrad Gessner, John Locke, Carl Linnaeus, Thomas Harrison, Vincentius Placcius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, S. D. Goitein, Gotthard Deutsch, Beatrice Webb, Sir James Murray, Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mortimer J. Adler, Niklas Luhmann, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Jacques Barzun, Vladimir Nabokov, George Carlin, Twyla Tharp, Gertrud Bauer, and even Eminem. We really need to put an end to the "Cult of Luhmann" philosophy which is going around.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Knorr-Cetina also received her Habilitation in sociology at the University of Bielefeld in 1981, and served as Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld from 1983 to 2001. Her work in the social studies of science during these years culminated in her widely-cited book Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, published in 1999.
This period coincides w Luhmann's. Hadn't realised that objects of sociality had originated there too at U Bielefeld.
The wikipedia page also links to Latour ([[Latours Actor Network Theory ANT 20201129164732]]) and the paper mentioned below also cites Latour once.
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- Oct 2023
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www.amazon.nl www.amazon.nl
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Saw Chris Aldrich annotate this. The blurb stands out to me: Der angesagteste Denker der Gegenwart erklärt in rasenden Ultimativinterviews, was Liebe, was Kunst, was Politik ist. **Der reinst Anti-Habermas“ (Tempo, Die hundert besten Bücher der 80er Jahre)
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Local file Local file
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Nein. Ich habe den Zettelkasten aus der simplen Überlegung her-aus angefangen, daß ich ein schlechtes Gedächtnis habe. Zunächsteinmal hatte ich Zettel in Bücher gelegt, auf die ich mir Notizenmachte, auf diese Weise gingen die Einbände der Bücher kaputt.Dann habe ich mir mit Mappen geholfen, als die jedoch dickerwurden, fand ich nichts mehr in ihnen. Ab 1952 oder 1953 begannich dann mit meinem Zettelkasten, weil mir klar wurde, daß ich fürein Leben planen müsse und nicht für ein Buch.
Machine translation:
No. I started the Zettelkasten out of the simple thought that I have a bad memory. First of all, I put pieces of paper in books on which I wrote notes, so the covers of the books got ruined. Then I helped myself with folders, but when they got thicker I couldn't find anything in them. In 1952 or 1953, I started my Zettelkasten because I realized that I had to plan for a life and not for a book.
There's some missing interstitial space here about how precisely he came to it outside of the general motivation for the thing in general.
52/53 would have been after law school and in his administrative days and before his trip to Harvard in 61.
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— Ich muß Ihnen sagen, daß ich nie etwas erzwinge, ich tueimmer nur das, was mir leichtfällt. Ich schreibe nur dann, wenn ich
sofort weiß, wie es geht. Wenn ich einen Moment stocke, lege ich die Sache beiseite und mache etwas anderes.
Was machen Sie dann'?
Na, andere Bücher schreiben. Ich arbeite immer gleichzeitig an mehreren verschiedenen Texten. Mit dieser Methode, immer an mehreren Dingen zu arbeiten, habe ich nie Blockierungen.
Rough translation:
— I have to tell you: I never force anything, I only do what comes easy to me. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.
(Interviewer): What do you do then?
Well, write other books. I always work on several different texts at the same time. With this method of always working on multiple things, I never have any blockages.
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Im wesentlichen eigene Gedanken, manchmal auch Zitate, aber dasgeschieht ganz selten
Luhmann indicates that most of his zettelkasten notes are his own thoughts, but some are quotes, which he uses rarely.
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Viel gelesen und vor allen Dingen begonnen, mit einem Zettelka-sten zu arbeiten, also Zettel vollgeschrieben. In den Zetteln habeich die Literatur, mit der ich mich vorwiegend beschäftigte, verar-beitet, also Soziologie und Philosophie. Damals habe ich vor allemDescartes und Husserl gelesen. In der soziologischen Theorie hatmich der frühe Funktionalismus beschäftigt, die Theorien von Mali-nowski und Radcliffe-Brown; dies schloß ein, daß ich mich auchsehr stark mit Kulturanthropologie und Ethnologie befaßte
With heavy early interest in anthropology, sociology and philosophy including Malinowski, it's more likely that Luhmann would have been trained in historical methods which included the traditions of note taking using card indices of that time.
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"Biographie, Attitüden, Zettelkasten" ist unter dem Titel "Der Zettelkasten kostet michmehr Zeit als das Bücherschreiben" in der Frankfurter Rundschau am Samxtag, den27. April 1985, S. ZB 3 gekürzt erschienen.
"Biography, Attitudes, Zettelkasten" was published under the title "The Zettelkasten costs me more time than writing books" in the Frankfurter Rundschau on Saturday, April 27, 1985, p. ZB 3, abridged.
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Luhmann, Niklas. Archimedes und wir: Interviews. Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1987.
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Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date.
Anne Frank (June 12, 1929-1945)<br /> Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927-1998)
Niklas Luhmann was a year and a half older than Anne Frank who received her first card index file in February 1943 (likely between the 27th, the date of her diary entry mentioning it and the prior diary entry on February 5th), from her father at the age of 13. She was intended to use it as a "reading file" to note down the books she'd read along with the author and the date.
One can only wonder at how many entries she would have made over the span of her life had it not come to such an abrupt end.
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- Sep 2023
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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Doto, Bob. “Inspired Destruction: How a Zettelkasten Explodes Thoughts (So You Can Have New Ones).” Personal blog. Writing by Bob Doto (blog), September 13, 2023. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/inspired-destruction-how-a-zettelkasten-explodes-thoughts-so-you-can-have-newish-ones/.
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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I should perhaps also note that I try, whenever possible, not to collect raw quotes or information simply copied from the Internet or from books, but to write excerpts or summaries in my own words on the basis of my reading. Luhmann called this "reformulating writing" and argued that such an approach is most important for one's own intellectual life.
Quote for "reformulating writing"? Date? Does it predate the so-called Feynman technique?
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A priest, a rabbi, and Nicholas Luhmann walk into a bar. They sit down, and the priest says, "Let's all share ideas from our florilegia." The rabbi responds by pulling out his own annotation of a gloss on the commentary of Rashi which comments on the Mishnah and the Gamara. To this Luhmann replies, "You're not practicing the one true note taking religion unless you're using alpha-numeric identifiers and have appropriately cross indexed at sheet 031-R with a link branching off of note 100(1) in ZK I.
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takingnotenow.blogspot.com takingnotenow.blogspot.com
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There are no privileged places in the note-card system, every card is as important as every other card, and no hierarchy is super-imposed on the system. The significance of each card depends on its relation to other cards (or the relation of other cards to it). It is a network; it is not "arboretic." Accordingly, it in some ways anticipates hypertext and the internet.
Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten system doesn't impose a heirarchy upon it's contents and in some ways its structure anticipates the ideas of hypertext and the internet's structure.
Also similar to the idea from Umberto Eco: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw
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luhmann.surge.sh luhmann.surge.sh
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We should only write on one side of these papers so that in searching through them, we do not have to take out a paper in order to read it. This doubles the space, but not entirely (since we would not write on both sides of all the slips). This consideration is not unimportant as the arrangement of boxes can, after some decades, become so large that it cannot be easily be used from one’s chair. In order to counteract this tendency, I recommend taking normal paper and not card stock.
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- Aug 2023
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blog.jerrybrito.com blog.jerrybrito.com
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After all, Luhmann himself didn’t have automatic backlinking. He had to manually add the cross-references to his analog notecards, and yet the system allowed him to write dozens of books and papers. Indeed, as Christian from Zettelkasten.de has said, automation might actually be an impediment to the cogitation and deep understanding the method seeks to engender.
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library.oapen.org library.oapen.org
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Loet Leydesdorff. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Discursive Knowledge Communication-Theoretical Perspectives on an Empirical Philosophy of Science
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- May 2023
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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It is unfortunate that the German word for a box of notes is the same as the methodology surrounding Luhmann.
reply to dandennison84 at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17921/#Comment_17921
I've written a bit before on The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten, the latter of which has been emerging since roughly 2013 in English language contexts. Some of it is similar to or extends @dandennison84's framing along with some additional history.
Because of the richness of prior annotation and note taking traditions, for those who might mean what we're jokingly calling ZK®, I typically refer to that practice specifically as a "Luhmann-esque zettelkasten", though it might be far more appropriate to name them a (Melvil) "Dewey Zettelkasten" because the underlying idea which makes Luhmann's specific zettelkasten unique is that he was numbering his ideas and filing them next to similar ideas. Luhmann was treating ideas on cards the way Dewey had treated and classified books about 76 years earlier. Luhmann fortunately didn't need to have a standardized set of numbers the way the Mundaneum had with the Universal Decimal Classification system, because his was personal/private and not shared.
To be clear, I'm presently unaware that Dewey had or kept any specific sort of note taking system, card-based or otherwise. I would suspect, given his context, that if we were to dig into that history, we would find something closer to a Locke-inspired indexed commonplace book, though he may have switched later in life as his Library Bureau came to greater prominence and dominance.
Some of the value of the Dewey-Luhmann note taking system stems from the same sorts of serendipity one discovers while flipping through ideas that one finds in searching for books on library shelves. You may find the specific book you were looking for, but you're also liable to find some interesting things to read on the shelves around that book or even on a shelf you pass on the way to find your book.
Perhaps naming it and referring to it as the Dewey-Luhmann note taking system or the Dewey-Luhmann Zettelkasten may help to better ground and/or demystify the specific practices? Co-crediting them for the root idea and an early actual practice, respectively, provides a better framing and understanding, especially for native English speakers who don't have the linguistic context for understanding Zettelkästen on its own. Such a moniker would help to better delineate the expected practices and shape of a note taking practice which could be differentiated from other very similar ones which provide somewhat different affordances.
Of course, as the history of naming scientific principles and mathematical theorems after people shows us, as soon as such a surname label might catch on, we'll assuredly discover someone earlier in the timeline who had mastered these principles long before (eg: the "Gessner Zettelkasten" anyone?) Caveat emptor.
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- Apr 2023
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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The Zettelkasten provides combinatorial possibilities that were never planned, never pre-meditated, or never designed in this way.
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A Zettelkasten that is constructed based on our instructions can achieve high independence. There may be other ways to achieve this goal. The described reduction to a fixed-placement (but merely formal) order, and the corresponding combination of order and disorder, is at least one of them.
The structural components of Luhmann's zettelkasten which allow for "achieving high independence" are also the same structures found in an indexed commonplace book: namely fixed placement (formally by the order in which things are found and collected) as well as combinations of order and disorder (the methods by which they can be retrieved and read).
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If you have to write anyway, it is pragmatic to exploit this activity by creating a system of notes that can act as a competent communication partner.
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But don’t count on fast reaction times since I am taking a break from Luhmann because of a Luhmannian overdose.
"Luhmannian overdose"—Ha!
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- Mar 2023
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Die vermutlich zwischen 1952 und Anfang 1997 entstandenen Aufzeichnungen, mithilfe derer Luhmann die Ergebnisse seiner exzessiven und interdisziplinär breit angelegten Lektüre systematisch organisiert hat, dokumentieren die Theorieentwicklung auf eine einzigartige Weise, so dass man die Sammlung auch als eine intellektuelle Autobiographie verstehen kann.
The researchers at the Niklas Luhmann-Archive studying Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten consider that "the collection can be understood as an intellectual autobiography" (translation mine) even though his slips were generally undated.
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Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Sammlung von Notizen, die Luhmann vermutlich zwischen 1952 und 1961 angelegt hat (mit einzelnen späteren Nachträgen; Notizen insbesondere zum Themenkomplex Weltgesellschaft wurden allerdings noch bis ca. 1973 durchweg in diese Sammlung eingestellt). Die insgesamt ca. 23.000 Zettel verteilen sich auf die ersten sieben physischen Auszüge des Kastens sowie auf kleinere Registerabteilungen, die im 17. Auszug der zweiten Sammlung (physischer Auszug 24) stehen. Die Notizen sind im Wesentlichen in der Zeit entstanden, als Luhmann als Rechtsreferendar in Lüneburg bzw. als Regierungsrat im Kultusministerium in Niedersachen gearbeitet hat und dokumentieren seine Lektüre verwaltungs- bzw. staatswissenschaftlicher, philosophischer und zunehmend auch organisationstheoretischer sowie soziologischer Literatur.
According to the Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, Luhmann began his first zettelkasten in 1952 likely when he was working as a legal trainee in Lüneburg or as a government councilor in the Ministry of Education in Lower Saxony.
This timeframe would have been just after Johannes Erich Heyde had published the 8th edition of Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens in 1951.
Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/Jn9elsk5Ee2hsLP5WWBEBw on dates of NL ZK - https://hypothes.is/a/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA aktenzeichen - https://hypothes.is/a/4wxHdDqeEe2OKGMHXDKezA Clemens Luhmann link
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www.raulpacheco.org www.raulpacheco.org
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I will share my processes to take notes using different methods. The very first method I use is the Index Cards Method.
Professor Raul Pacheco-Vega calls his note taking process the "Index Cards Method" and only subtly differentiates it from Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten method.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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German academic publishing in Niklas Luhmann's day was dramatically different from the late 20th/early 21st centuries. There was no peer-review and as a result Luhmann didn't have the level of gatekeeping that academics face today which only served to help increase his academic journal publication record. (28:30)
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Tutorial: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial
Note search: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/suche
Table of contents for ZKI and ZKII: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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Luhmanns intent was to create an organic growing system – not to implement Folgezettel.
I have a separate theory here...
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- Feb 2023
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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if you break it down it's just six notes a day 00:11:11 and that doesn't include Saturdays and Sundays
Ahrens' 6 notes per day calculation doesn't include Saturdays or Sundays
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Local file Local file
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“I only dowhat is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If Ifalter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.”(Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)[4]
https://youtu.be/qRSCKSPMuDc?t=37m30s (all links are on takesmartnotes.com)<br /> Luhmann, Niklas, Dirk Baecker, and Georg Stanitzek. 1987. Archimedes und wir: Interviews. Berlin: Merve.
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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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In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.
The sense of writing partner here is similar to that mentioned by Niklas Luhmann in Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account (1981), though in his case his writing partner was a carefully constructed database archive of his past notes.
see: Luhmann, Niklas. “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen: Ein Erfahrungsbericht.” In Öffentliche Meinung und sozialer Wandel / Public Opinion and Social Change, edited by Horst Baier, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, and Kurt Reumann, 222–28. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-87749-9_19.<br /> translation at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm.
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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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strengejacke.wordpress.com strengejacke.wordpress.com
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Luhmann talks about the Zettelkasten<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke
Daniel Lüdecke apparently subtitled a Luhmann interview, but it seems to have disappeared since his 2007-07-06 post.
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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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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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“The Zettelkastenis much more effortand time consumingthan writing books.”Niklas Luhmann, Shortcuts, p.26
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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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luhmann.surge.sh luhmann.surge.sh
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Two Essays by Niklas Luhmann
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- Jan 2023
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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
- useless machines
- Erwin Schrödinger
- dataism
- death by zettelkasten
- Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
- ghost in the machine
- Lila
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- Schrödinger's cat
- Ghostbusters
- fears
- Werner Heisenberg
- fear uncertainty and doubt
- jokerzettel
- Niklas Luhmann
- Claude Shannon
- note collection loss and damage
Annotators
URL
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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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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papers.ssrn.com papers.ssrn.com
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<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Peter Smith</span> in Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>01/17/2023 16:52:31</time>)</cite></small>
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petersmith.org petersmith.org
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I have a bit of a soft spot for Niklas Luhmann ever since David Seidl introduced me to his ideas. I think it was at an EGOS conference in the early 2000s.
https://petersmith.org/blog/2022/12/10/zettelkasten/
Peter Smith was introduced to Niklas Luhmann at an European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Conference in the early 2000s, ostensibly a business related group.
I came across this via an IndieWeb reference and webmention.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I think the point is somewhat different. Luhmann was an academic writing for other academics and wrote technically due to fears of misunderstanding by those with a different educational background, as was a quite reasonable fear at the time.
Was Luhmann's obtuse style, in part, a means of publicly sharing content, but doing so in a way as to restrict the knowledge to those who had an increased level of context for understanding it? How similar is this to the pattern of restricted knowledge in some Indigenous cultures where people passed along knowledge in restricted ways?
Is there a word or phrase to synopsize this sort of hard to understand academic-speak?
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- Dec 2022
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docs.google.com docs.google.com
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fGMOEWudc1PhmLIDfj6MtRdmOVITynsHNxG-XW89Mxw/edit
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/FastSascha</span> in Beta Reading: Communication with Zettelkastens : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>12/23/2022 12:02:16</time>)</cite></small>
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www.spiegel.de www.spiegel.de
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A disc by Dirk Käsler of Niklas Luhmann's 'Soziale Systeme', both from 1984. Käsler notes something I hadn't realised yet. Luhmann and Habermas are almost the same age, and Käsler in 1984 dubs them Western-Germany's best sociological and philosophical contemporary export products respectively. E did her master thesis on Habermas in comparison with blogs (H never said anything about internet). The Western-Germany context is also something to take note of I think. Reading the name made me realise how much context / cultural background there is in it. How different I experience Germany now from the 1980s when even a year before the fall of the wall that happening seemed a generation away. The summers I spent in Germany, all in the west, and the visit to East Germany in 1987. A different world compared to later visits on both sides of the former divide.
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facundomaciasescritor.wordpress.com facundomaciasescritor.wordpress.com
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La efectividad de este sistema no se basa en la ética de trabajo enfermiza de su creador, y si en su similitud con el funcionamiento de nuestro cerebro.
Though to a great extent, his work ethic was really key to his output, something which was facilitated by his method.
Another example of building the myth of the method while sidelining the ethic which could be paired with it.
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Local file Local file
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People are fascinated with how Luhmann became a book-writing academicresearch machine. The answer? The Antinet.
He highlights this here because it seems convenient to his thesis about a "true way", but Scheper has also mentioned in other venues that it was Luhmann's tenacity of working at his project that was largely responsible for his output.
I believe he made that statement in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgMh6iuFbT4
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- Nov 2022
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library.oapen.org library.oapen.org
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Groethe-Hammer, Michael. 2022. The Communicative Constitution of The World: A Luhmannian View on Communication, Organizations, and Society in The Routledge Handbook of The Communicative Constitution of Organization.
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- Oct 2022
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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His social theory, developed over thirty years, owes a massive intellectual debt to the work of the English philosopher and mathematician George Spencer-Brown. Spencer-Brown's work of algebraic locic, Laws of Form (1969), was a minor cult hit in the 1970s
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www.markbernstein.org www.markbernstein.org
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When I first read the Zettelkasten paper, in the late 90s, the interesting point was the physical filing system.
Mark Bernstein, the creator of Tinderbox, indicates that he read Niklas Luhmann's paper "Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account" (1992) in the late 1990s.
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Deutsch himself pointed to criticswho called him a ‘chiffonier’ or historical rag-picker, though he defended his ‘incon-venient though undeniable facts’ (Deutsch, 1916). A number of contemporaries recog-nized the limits of his interest in individual facts. ‘I get the impression’, one figure put it,‘that the charm of the facts of history, was so great for Deutsch, he lost himself socompletely . . . in the study of them, that he was never altogether able to say he is throughwith studying them and that he is ready for writing’ (Schulman, 1922). One review ofDeutsch’s Scrolls (1917), which collected some of his scattered articles, reflected thatthe articles lacked organization. ‘In order to obtain value,’ the reviewer insisted, ‘factsmust be organized . . . Isolate a fact as one isolates a germ in the laboratory, such a factbecomes worthless for historical purposes’ (Leiber, 1917).
Just as people chided Niklas Luhmann for his obtuseness in writing based on his zettelkasten, Gotthard Deutsch's critics felt he didn't write enough using his.
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- Sep 2022
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writingcooperative.com writingcooperative.com
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Artykuł poświęcony metodzie Zettelkasten Niklasa Luhmanna. Autor omawia ją na swój sposób, bardziej jednak zachwalając lub pisząc ogólnie, niż opisując szczegółowo. Podaje kilka informacji, opisuje swoje podejście i rozwiązania, powiela przy tym jednak parę błędnych przekonań.
Zaletą tekstu jest jednak to, że autor powołuje się na źródła, podaje parę ciekawych, w tym także naukowych, tekstów. Ogólnie sądzę, że to dobre wprowadzenie dla kogoś, kto nie zna tej metody, choć problemem jest powtarzanie błędnych przekonań. Z kolei dla osoby średniozaawansowanej nie ma tu nic odkrywczego i nowego.
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www.fpnotes.com www.fpnotes.com
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Artykuł jest właściwie skrótem, czy transkrypcją, materiału wideo na temat adresowania, numerowania notatek Zettelkasen.
Autor przedstawia 5 konwencjI numerowania notatek: samego Niklasa Luhmanna, Boba Doto, Scotta Schepera, Dana Alloso oraz własną.
Przedstawia różne sposoby tworzenia adresu notagraficznego.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Niklas Luhmann read a secret, little-known German book in early 1951 which formed the foundation for his Zettelkasten.
According to Scott Scheper's conversation with Clemens Luhmann, Niklas' son, Niklas Luhmann read Heyde (1931) in 1951. He would have been 24 years old and just out of law school at the University of Freiburg (1946-1949) and starting into a career in public administration in Lüneburg. (It would have been before he went to Harvard in 1961 and before he left the civil service in 1962. (Wikipedia entry for dates here)
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www.connectedtext.com www.connectedtext.com
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By the way, Luhmann's system is said to have had 35.000 cards. Jules Verne had 25.000. The sixteenth-century thinker Joachim Jungius is said to have had 150.000, and how many Leibniz had, we do not know, though we do know that he had one of the most ingenious piece of furniture for keeping his copious notes.
Circa late 2011, he's positing Luhmann had 35,000 cards and not 90,000.
Jules Verne used index cards. Joachim Jungius is said to have had 150,000 cards.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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Jeff Miller@jmeowmeowReading the lengthy, motivational introduction of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes (a zettelkasten method primer) reminds me directly of Gerald Weinberg's Fieldstone Method of writing.
reply to: https://twitter.com/jmeowmeow/status/1568736485171666946
I've only seen a few people notice the similarities between zettelkasten and fieldstones. Among them I don't think any have noted that Luhmann and Weinberg were both systems theorists.
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- Aug 2022
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uni-bielefeld.de uni-bielefeld.de
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A-6 format
This is 4-1/8 x 5-7/8 in which is close to the American 4x6 inch index card.
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pdf-objects.com pdf-objects.com
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Jahraus, Oliver, Armin Nassehi, Mario Grizelj, Irmhild Saake, Christian Kirchmeier, and Julian Müller, eds. Luhmann-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung. Springer, 2012. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-476-05271-1
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Technik des Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens by Johannes Erich Heyde
Technik des Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens by Johannes Erich Heyde is potentially the book in which Niklas Luhmann learned/modeled his zettelkasten after.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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level 3sscheper · 2 days agoI did an interview with Luhmann's youngest son, Clemens. He told me he was trying to get his father to switch to using a computer for the last 15 years of his life (Clemens studied computer science in America when he was 16). Luhmann's response: "If it ain't broke, why change?" According to Clemens, Luhmann felt they were distracting and refused to own one. Now... if he were getting started today I'd guess he'd probably use digital (but who knows, he may switch to using analog).
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- Jul 2022
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vimeo.com vimeo.com
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/729407073?h=054ecbcc7b" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
MakingKnowledge: Scott Scheper from Dan Allosso on Vimeo.
Various names Luhmann gives to the effects seen in his slip box: - ghost in the box - second mind - alter ego - communication partner
These are tangential ideas and words which lead up to the serendipity of combinatorial creativity, but aren't quite there.
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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German sociologist
Somehow there are more references to Luhmann in the literature as "The Sociologist from Bielefeld", almost the same what that everyone referred to Aristotle as "The Philosopher".
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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Langlois, Charles-Victor / Seignobos, Charles (1898): Introduction to the Study of History. London
Niklas Luhmann cites Langlois and Seignobos' Introduction to the Study of History (1898) at least once, so there's evidence that he read at least a portion of the book which outlines some portions of note taking practice that resemble portions of his zettelkasten method.
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Local file Local file
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What is the use of this pedantic method of note-taking, involvingmasses of paper and a lot of hard thinking, not to mention the shufflingand reshuffling, which is apparently the final cause of this intolerableelaboration? will be asked by the post-graduate student eager to pub¬lish an epoch-making treatise on the History of Government, or, per¬chance, on the History of Freedom, within the two years he has allottedto the taking of his doctorate. The only answer I can give is to citeour own experience.
Compare this statement to the no less grandiloquence of Niklas Luhmann's mission statement: "Theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none”.
This quote would seem to indicate that Luhmann had read or seen this book.
Luhmann's zettelkasten (search on 2022-07-19) only shows one card referencing some of her other work: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_33-1d1A4-1_V
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bafybeiac2nvojjb56tfpqsi44jhpartgxychh5djt4g4l4m4yo263plqau.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiac2nvojjb56tfpqsi44jhpartgxychh5djt4g4l4m4yo263plqau.ipfs.dweb.link
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Niklas Luhmann’s [ 6,7 ] terminology, we refer to these dominant symbolic networks associal systems. When approached not as aggregations of people but rather as patterns of communicationssustained among people, social systems can be observed to have enormous powers over humanbeings.
- definition of social systems
- social systems focus on the pattern of communication, not on the people who participate in those patterns
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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Over the course of his intellectual life, from about 1943 until hissudden death in 1980, Barthes built a card index consisting of morethan 12,250 note cards – the full extent of this collection was notknown until access to it was granted to the manuscript researchers ofthe Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) inFrance (Krapp, 2006: 363).3
Roland Barthes accumulated a card index of more than 12,250 note cards beginning in 1943 which were held after his death in 1980 at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) in France.
Barthes' dates 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980 age 64
He started his card index at roughly age 28 and at around the same time which he began producing written work. (Did he have any significant writing work or publications prior to this?)
His card collection spanned about 37 years and at 12,250 cards means that was producing on average 0.907 cards per day. If we don't include weekends, then he produced 1.27 cards per day on average. Compare this with Ahrens' estimate of 6 cards a day for Niklas Luhmann.
With this note I'm starting the use of a subject heading (in English) of "card index" as a generic collection of notes which are often kept in one or more boxes. This is to distinguish it from the more modern idea of zettelkasten in the Luhmann framing which also connotes a dense set of links between the cards themselves, though this may not have been the case historically. Card index is also specifically separate from 'index card' which is an individual instance of an item that might be found in a card index. At present, I'm unaware of a specific word in English which defines the broader note taking context or portions thereof relating to index cards in the same way that a zettelkasten implies. This may be the result of the broad use of index cards for so many varying uses in the early 20th century. For these other varying uses I'll try to differentiate them henceforth with the generic 'index card files' which might also be used to describe the containers in which cards might be found.
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www.otherlife.co www.otherlife.co
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I tried using Roam for about two weeks once. I used Roam and only Roam, diligently. After only two weeks, my knowledge graph was utterly unintelligible and distressing.
While one can take a lot of notes in two weeks, even just six quality notes a day (Niklas Lumann's pace was six per day while Roland Barthes was closer to 1 and change per day) only provides about 84 cards or zettels. This isn't enough to make anything distressing or unintelligible. It's also incredibly far short of creating any useful links to create anything. He should have trimmed things down and continued for about 24 weeks to see any significant results. (Of course this also begs the question: what was his purpose in pursuing such a system in the first place?)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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The presenter in the video has 70 notes across 3 months which is drastically lower than what I have.
Somewhere I think I read that Luhmann only added about 6 cards a day to his zettelkasten. (I suspect they averaged his 90K output over the span of years he said he used it....)
My fleeting note output right now is potentially too much, and I certainly should be spending more time refining and building on my (note-based) thoughts.
It's not how many thoughts one has, but their quality and even more importantly, what one does with them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/jho1em/i_found_a_gem/
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- Jun 2022
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oxfordre.com oxfordre.com
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Luhmann remarked that, when the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University, newly established in 1969, asked its professors to report on the research projects they were working on, his reply was “Theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none” (Luhmann, 1997, p. 11).
“Theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none”
Quote from
Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (2 vols). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp. Published in translation as Theory of society (2 vols.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2012–2013.
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www.wikiwand.com www.wikiwand.com
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Das gerichtliche Aktenzeichen dient der Kennzeichnung eines Dokuments und geht auf die Aktenordnung (AktO) vom 28. November 1934 und ihre Vorgänger zurück.[4]
The court file number is used to identify a document and goes back to the file regulations (AktO) of November 28, 1934 and its predecessors.
The German "file number" (aktenzeichen) is a unique identification of a file, commonly used in their court system and predecessors as well as file numbers in public administration since at least 1934.
Niklas Luhmann studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1946 to 1949, when he obtained a law degree, before beginning a career in Lüneburg's public administration where he stayed in civil service until 1962. Given this fact, it's very likely that Luhmann had in-depth experience with these sorts of file numbers as location identifiers for files and documents.
We know these numbering methods in public administration date back to as early as Vienna, Austria in the 1770s.
The missing piece now is who/where did Luhmann learn his note taking and excerpting practice from? Alberto Cevolini argues that Niklas Luhmann was unaware of the prior tradition of excerpting, though note taking on index cards or slips had been commonplace in academic circles for quite some time and would have been reasonably commonplace during his student years.
Are there handbooks, guides, or manuals in the early 1900's that detail these sorts of note taking practices?
Perhaps something along the lines of Antonin Sertillanges’ book The Intellectual Life (1921) or Paul Chavigny's Organisation du travail intellectuel: recettes pratiques à l’usage des étudiants de toutes les facultés et de tous les travailleurs (in French) (Delagrave, 1918)?
Further recall that Bruno Winck has linked some of the note taking using index cards to legal studies to Roland Claude's 1961 text:
I checked Chavigny’s book on the BNF site. He insists on the use of index cards (‘fiches’), how to index them, one idea per card but not how to connect between the cards and allow navigation between them.
Mind that it’s written in 1919, in Strasbourg (my hometown) just one year after it returned to France. So between students who used this book and Luhmann in Freiburg it’s not far away. My mother taught me how to use cards for my studies back in 1977, I still have the book where she learn the method, as Law student in Strasbourg “Comment se documenter”, by Roland Claude, 1961. Page 25 describes a way to build secondary index to receive all cards relatives to a topic by their number. Still Luhmann system seems easier to maintain but very near.
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'> Scott P. Scheper </span> in Scott P. Scheper on Twitter: "The origins of the Zettelkasten's numeric-alpha card addresses seem to derive from Niklas Luhmann's early work as a legal clerk. The filing scheme used is called "Aktenzeichen" - See https://t.co/4mQklgSG5u. cc @ChrisAldrich" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>06/28/2022 11:29:18</time>)</cite></small>
Link to: - https://hypothes.is/a/Jlnn3IfSEey_-3uboxHsOA - https://hypothes.is/a/4jtT0FqsEeyXFzP-AuDIAA
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Local file Local file
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First, while using the previous retrieval methods, it is a good ideato keep your focus a little broad. Don’t begin and end your searchwith only the specific folder that matches your criteria.
The area of serendipity becomes much more powerful when one has ideas both directly interlinked, ideas categorized with subject headings or tags, or when one can have affordances like auto-complete.
The method Forte suggests and outlines allows for some serendipity, but not as much as other methods with additional refinements. Serendipity in Forte's method isn't as strong as in others.
In this section he's talking about some of the true "magic of note taking" which is discussed by Luhmann and others.
link to:<br /> Luhmann's writings on serendipity and surprise when using his zettelkasten (Communication with the Slipbox...)<br /> Ahrens mentions of this effect
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On average I capture just twonotes per day
Tiago Forte self-reports that he captures two notes a day.
Link to other's notes per day including Barthes, Luhmann, et al.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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The addressing system that many digital note taking systems offer is reminiscent of Luhmann's paper system where it served a particular use. Many might ask themselves if they really need this functionality in digital contexts where text search and other affordances can be more directly useful.
Frequently missed by many, perhaps because they're befuddled by the complex branching numbering system which gets more publicity, Luhmann's paper-based system had a highly useful and simple subject heading index (see: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_001_V, for example) which can be replicated using either #tags or [[wikilinks]] within tools like Obsidian. Of course having an index doesn't preclude the incredible usefulness of directly linking one idea to potentially multiple others in some branching tree-like or network structure.
Note that one highly valuable feature of Luhmann's paper version was that the totality of cards were linked to a minimum of at least one other card by the default that they were placed into the file itself. Those putting notes into Obsidian often place them into their system as singlet, un-linked notes as a default, and this can lead to problems down the road. However this can be mitigated by utilizing topical or subject headings on individual cards which allows for searching on a heading and then cross-linking individual ideas as appropriate.
As an example, because two cards may be tagged with "archaeology" doesn't necessarily mean they're closely related as ideas. This tends to decrease in likelihood if one is an archaeologist and a large proportion of cards might contain that tag, but will simultaneously create more value over time as generic tags increase in number but the specific ideas cross link in small numbers. Similarly as one delves more deeply into archaeology, one will also come up with more granular and useful sub-tags (like Zooarcheology, Paleobotany, Archeopedology, Forensic Archeology, Archeoastronomy, Geoarcheology, etc.) as their knowledge in sub areas increases.
Concretely, one might expect that the subject heading "sociology" would be nearly useless to Luhmann as that was the overarching topic of both of his zettelkästen (I & II), whereas "Autonomie" was much more specific and useful for cross linking a smaller handful of potentially related ideas in the future.
Looking beyond Luhmann can be highly helpful in designing and using one's own system. I'd recommend taking a look at John Locke's work on indexing (1685) (https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685 is an interesting source, though you're obviously applying it to (digital) cards and not a notebook) or Ross Ashby's hybrid notebook/index card system which is also available online (http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html) as an example.
Another helpful tip some are sure to appreciate in systems that have an auto-complete function is simply starting to write a wikilink with various related subject heading words that may appear within your system. You'll then be presented with potential options of things to link to serendipitously that you may not have otherwise considered. Within a digital zettelkasten, the popularly used DYAC (Damn You Auto Complete) may turn into Bless You Auto Complete.
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- May 2022
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www.uni-bielefeld.de www.uni-bielefeld.de
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The pixel portrait of Niklas Luhmann was created by Sebastian Zimmer (CCeH) using the software AndreaMosaic from the image of 1271 slips of paper from the 'Zettelkasten'.
© Alexander Kluge/ Universität Bielefeld*
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