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hello and welcome back to history for today as you know i have been fascinated by the idea of note-taking and slip boxes with the germans called zettel costan and being a historian i like going back
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to primary sources and so i went looking for the actual article that nicholas lumon wrote in 1981 in which he talked about his technique
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the article itself which is published in a german language journal is called communication apparently the plural of zero costing is edelcasten
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with an umlaut and in it lumon makes some very interesting points he begins by saying you cannot think without writing at least not in a demanding accessible
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way then he continues by saying if you have to write anyway it is advisable to use this activity at the same time to create a competent communication partner
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in the system of notes and this is the central idea of this essay that the settle constant itself the slip box is actually a partner in this process of exploration and communication
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lumon is arguing that there is a role that the zettel costan system is actually playing as more than just an inert record of discrete packets of
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information the point seems to be that the value of the data more often than not comes from its location in or its incorporation into a train of interpretive thought the slip box
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facilitates this by way of linkages between notes the lack of a predefined structure in this system is really the key lumon calls this an open system and he goes on to
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describe how the zettel costan has in his words to be designed so that it can acquire the appropriate communicative competence he claims that
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his findings in this article are less theoretical and more empirical based on by this time in 1981 decades of using the system and then with some
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little bit of theory bolted onto it it's crucial that lumon says to resist what he calls a systematic order according to topics and subtopics that are predefined
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before you begin studying and it's important to maintain an organization by position with what we would nowadays call dynamic linking he contrasts this to the system of the structuring of a book and he says
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that adopting that at the front end of research would force you to in his words commit yourself to a certain sequence once and for all and then parenthetically he says and
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decades in advance exclamation point and this is an important point i think when we begin a research project we may have an inkling of where we would like it to go
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and where we might expect it to go but unless we're either incredibly lucky or unless we deliberately close ourselves off from certain types of data or certain types of interpretation
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we can't predict for sure where we're actually going to find ourselves at the ends of the research process and we can't predict where it will actually take us and where the most interesting and
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compelling insights actually will end up being found there's a remarkable inflexibility when you think about it about the actual structure of a book
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although at the back end of it it seems inevitable it's just one path through a forest of information it may be the most valuable path as it turns out but it's not the only
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path and the same forest of data could probably have told us different things if we had taken a different path if we had asked it different questions
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and i've been talking with my students about this in the context of the nearly infinite number of historical data that we can draw on to include in a book or in say a textbook we've
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talked about that just in the last couple of days how and why do authors choose what gets included and what gets excluded isn't something that readers often ponder
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but maybe they should a little bit more often luman says that the key is what he calls an internal branching ability of the slip box or the zettle costume he
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describes how he switches between numbers and letters in his numbering scheme and he uses red ink to mark connection points and he points out that a single card can have many
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different connection points in this way he says a kind of inward growth is possible depending on the amount of thought and without systemic pre-programming
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and without being tied to sequential linearity i think it's remarkable how this wood and paper box and card system anticipates a lot of the exciting
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elements of hypertext data surfing and storytelling that we're only now just beginning to imagine today the disadvantage lumon admits is that originally running
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text is often interrupted by hundreds of slip sheets although he does say that if the numbering is used systematically the original context of the text can easily be
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found and the trail can be picked up again keeping a keyword index up to date lumon says is an important element of making information in the boxes findable this is probably
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less of an issue in a digital slip box today but it might still be a useful exercise to maintain a keyword index as a way of kind of staying on top of and periodically reviewing the big ideas
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in the system lumon mentions that bibliographic slips can include the numbers of notes addressing a topic's ideas and this could be achieved nowadays by either tagging
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or by doing something like reviewing the unlinked references in an application like rome lumon says that at a certain critical mass of size and complexity the zettel
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constant becomes what he calls an alter ego with which one can continuously communicate this alter ego is related to memory but different it's not necessarily a perfect
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all-knowing oracle but it is more like an external record of thought some things seep away some notes are never seen again lumon says on the other hand there are
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preferred centers clusters and regions with which one works more often than with others these clusters are of course related to the user's own interests
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and ideas the things that we take out of books and make note of will be different from what the next reader to pick up the book might take and the things that we return to and continue to pursue will be different
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based partly on our interests and partly on the chances of what we find in our research the order that we process it and the connections that occur to us
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some of this may be deliberate if we return to a topic often enough we may have a better chance to consider it from a number of different angles and to really squeeze all the juice out of it
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but even then there is an element of randomness that is frankly kind of fascinating lumon was aware of this contingency similar to how one has to give up the idea in epistemology
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that there are privileged ideas from which the truth value of other positions or statements can be controlled he says one must also when creating the slip box give up the idea that there are
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privileged places cards of a special quality that guarantees knowledge ideas get their value from their relationships with other ideas notes get their value
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from what he calls the network of references and backlinks in the system lumon says a note that is not connected to this network is lost in the notebox and forgotten it disappears
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until it is maybe rediscovered and connected back to a train of thought that allows it to have value and to do some good the big advantage that lumon seems to have experienced
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in his time using the settle costume involves what he calls combinatorial possibilities that were never planned never thought ahead never conceived
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after years a new query in his words can provoke possibilities for relationalization that have not yet been traced he says and this is the key
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to forming new ideas scientific publications are not produced at least in my experience lumon declared by copying what has already been put down
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in the slip box and this is where he really stresses the dialogue metaphor communication with the card box he says is only fruitful on a higher generalized level
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in his words where he is working on what he calls the relationalization of relations maybe that sounds better of deutsch lumen concludes with a discussion
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of the element of chance in the formulation of knowledge which he says is controversial within the philosophy of science he calls on the theory of evolution here and i think
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as more than just a metaphor the sense seems to be that just as variations in environmental conditions create opportunities for mutations to be tested to see which
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has greater reproductive or survival value chance plays a role in determining the opportunities for ideas to come together in not only our minds but also in
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the slip box and to interact in particular ways via linkages and create what he calls possibilities of testing and selecting innovations the randomness of the ways that
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potential knowledge becomes available to us and the more or less organized way that we respond and engage with it is a very interesting process there are
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elements of this in a more straightforward method of just writing stuff down and remembering it but it's probably true that the emergent opportunities for surprises
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that the critical mass provided by a zettle cast and probably adds at least in luan's case probably added to both more productions and to more insightful
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syntheses of his ideas and this is a very hopeful outcome and it seems to me to be worthwhile to try to emulate this system as a way of trying to gain both more
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volume of ideas and also more insights and linkages and connections between them so that is what i am going to be trying to do and i will let you know how it goes
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so i hope you found that look at lumon's own actual writing interesting thanks for listening stay tuned for more and i'll see you next time
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