12 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
    1. Wells, H. G. “A Galaxy of Authority.” Harper’s Magazine, December 2023. https://harpers.org/archive/2023/12/a-galaxy-of-authority/

      Read on 2023-12-25 at 12:39 pm in paper format. This is a painfully foreshortened version of the 11 page 1936/37 article.

      See also notes at https://hypothes.is/a/8WtRpKOMEe6M63_J8qxz3g

    1. Wells, H. G. “The Idea of a World Encyclopedia.” Harper’s Magazine, April 1937. https://harpers.org/archive/1937/04/the-idea-of-a-world-encyclopedia/.

    2. I believe thatin some such way as I have sketched, themental forces now largely and regrettablyscattered and immobilized in the univer-sities, the learned societies, research in-stitutions, and technical workers of theworld could be drawn together into areal directive world intelligence, and bythat mere linking and implementing ofwhat is known, human life as a wholecould be made much surer, stronger,bolder, and happier than it has ever beenup to the present time.
    3. Something of the sort was at-tempted years ago with the utmost se-riousness by a Mr. Quilter of Florence,Whistler's "Harry QUilter"; if I remem-ber rightly it was called All About Every-thing, and some of it was quite uninten-tionally very amusing reading.
    4. There had been no attempt toassemble that mechanism of knowledgeof which America stood in need.
  2. Mar 2023
    1. Following volumes I and II (a and b) the editors of the TLL separated out the occurrence of proper names into a supplement, called the Onomasticon, which includes the words beginning with "C" and "D". Following D, they began leaving out proper names because their inclusion was slowing down the progress of the thesaurus and there are other resources like encyclopedias for discussion and inclusion of these. [24:48]

  3. Oct 2022
    1. e called on his fellow rabbis to submitnotecards with details from their readings. He proposed that a central office gathermaterial into a ‘system’ of information about Jewish history, and he suggested theypublish the notes in the CCAR’s Yearbook.

      This sounds similar to the variety of calls to do collaborative card indexes for scientific efforts, particularly those found in the fall of 1899 in the journal Science.

      This is also very similar to Mortimer J. Adler et al's group collaboration to produce The Syntopicon as well as his work on Propædia and Encyclopædia Britannica.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/nvWZnuApEeuKR--5AeBv8w

    2. Deutsch created his index in the context of a range of encyclopedic activities. In 1897,the Central Conference of American Rabbis asked Deutsch to create a two-volume ency-clopedia, and he soon joined a similar effort by Funk and Wagnalls under the direction ofIsidore Singer. As the main editor for historical topics, Deutsch helped publish 12 volumesof the Jewish Encyclopedia from 1901 to 1906. In these same years, Deutsch produced acalendar of Jewish anniversaries in the monthly Die Deborah (1901), reprinted in 1904 inthe Hebrew Union College Annual (as the ‘Encyclopedic Department’) and as a standalonevolume (Deutsch, 1904a, 1904b).

      Deutsch's encyclopedia work here sounds similar to that of Mortimer J. Adler who used a card index in much the same way.

    3. The index frames a figure who may at first glanceseem a curious or even comedic caricature of a certain positivist historical tradition, butone who also imparted to his students a sense of the magnitude of Jewish history, andwho straddled a mechanical pursuit of individual ‘facts’ with a certain attention to novelmethods and visions of comprehensively encyclopedic information.

      From where did Deutsch learn his zettelkasten method? And when? Bernheim's influential Lehrbuch der historischen Methode (1889) was published long after Deutsch entered seminary in October 1876 and 9 years before he received his Ph.D. in history in1881.

      One must potentially posit that the zettelkasten method was being passed along in (at least history circles) long before Bernheim's publication.

      I'm hoping that Lustig isn't referring to zettelkasten when he says "novel methods", as they weren't novel, even at that time. Deutsch certainly wasn't the first to have comprehensive encyclopedic visions, as Zettelkasten practitioner Konrad Gessner preceded him by several centuries.

      I'm starting to severely question Lustig's familiarity with these particular traditions....

    1. Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’?

      From his bibliography, it appears that Deutsch was a prolific writer and teacher, so how will Lustig (or others he mentions) make the case that his card index was useless "chips from his workshop"? Certainly he used them in writing his books, articles, and newspaper articles? He also was listed as a significant contributor to an encyclopedia as well.

      It'd be interesting to look at the record to see if he taught with them the way Roland Barthes was known to have done.

  4. Aug 2022
    1. I was doing some random searches for older material on zettelkasten in German and came across this.

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Jul 2021
    1. Reminded by Connor of Mortimer Adler's Syntopicon. I'm pretty sure I've got it in my list of encyclopedias growing out of the commonplace book tradition, but... just in case.

      If I recall it was compiled using index cards, thus also placing it in the zettelkasten tradition.

      (via Almay)

      If you’re generalizing Zettelkasten to “All Non-Linear Knowledge Management Strategies” You should include Mortimer Adler and the Syntopicon, and John Locke’s guide to how to set up a commonplace book<br><br>This isn’t a game of calling “dibs”<br><br>it’s about 🧠👶shttps://t.co/sH3JO6d9Jq

      — Conor White-Sullivan 𐃏🇸🇻 (@Conaw) July 8, 2021
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