Month: June 2021

Yes, somehow this is the sort of Wikipedia entry I find myself editing at 10 on a Monday night:

A Catholicized version of the Theatrum entitled the Magnum theatrum vitae humanae (1631) by Lawrence Beyerlinck was one of the largest printed commonplace books of the early modern era. These two works “may fairly be described as the early modern ancestors of the great dictionnaire raisonné of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the Encyclopédie of Diderot.”[9]

9. Havens, Earle (2001). Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (first ed.). Yale University. p. 52.

Curious that I’ve seen ramify as a verb within commonplace book settings, but not seen it in regard to zettelkasten or digital gardens in the context of Obsidian, Roam Research, Notion, et al.

I half expected to see Petrus Ramus‘s name in the etymology of the word. If nothing else, it’s a fitting word. Perhaps it was a bit of nominative determinism?

other forms: ramify; ramifies; ramified; ramifying