No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.
If you’re not sure how to start the first card in your zettelkasten, simply write this quote down on an index card, put a number in the corner, and go…
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Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
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Umberto Eco (Secker & Warburg)
My absolute favorite novel. Eco was a master.
True… but Eco seems to treat this as destructive. Wasn’t it believed by the other main characters that the reason the one character from Garamond Press developed cancer was owing to his intellectual search to make connections had an corresponding ontological effect of rewriting his DNA? The web of corresponding connections Causabon makes leads to his death.
Truly, I don’t mean to poo poo the quote and your point. Just pointing out there is an irony that the quote is from a novel about a group of people being destroyed by the knowledge they uncover / connect.
I’m curious what he means by “file” in the context of the novel?
Thanks for the quote! It tells me that I should read Eco (I tried reading “The Name of the Rose” as a teenager and didn’t like, but teenagers are known to be stupid).
If you’re in software development, start your zettelkasten by documenting the step-by-step instructions to fresh install your development environment. Windows Utilities, Dev Tools, IDE, all those config options not already in your dotfiles, etc…
I promise it’ll be useful and get you started
….as long as the connections don’t turn into Wikipedia…
Thanks for sharing.
Are you scanning all your analogue note cards?
I was just thinking () about Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s idea of “” and I serendipitously came across this quote from Umberto Eco. #CombinatoricCreativity
Syndicated copies:
anagora.org/CombinatoricCr…
While the statement in itself is probably objectively false, it still is a good way to get people to start a Zettelkasten. And I will probably include this in the getting started with Zettelkasten section of my book on how to study effectively.
The reason the statement is probably false lies in the fact that information does indeed have superiority over other information depending on the connections, it’s up to us to find the strength of those connections (In AI this is known as weight values), which is on par with Evaluation on Bloom’s Taxonomy, the highest form of learning, only below creation itself.
Take extreme care how you may conflate and differentiate (or don’t) the ideas of “information” and “knowledge”. Also keep in mind that the mathematical/physics definition of information is wholly divorced from any semantic meanings it may have for a variety of receivers which can have dramatically different contexts which compound things.
It’s very possible that the meaning you draw from it is an eisegetical one to the meaning which Eco assigns it.
Syndicated copies:
This Status was mentioned on cyberzettel.com
I’ve seen several places in the note taking or zettelkasten communities the general advice that one should not include quotes in or amongst their notes. The general source of this “rule” seems to stem from Sonke Ahrens’ book Smart Notes. However, suggesting that Ahrens has a “rule” against quotes is a dramatic misreading of his intent. I imagine that this potentially stems from someone reading and excerpting his intent incorrectly and then others passing it along indiscriminately in the dreadful litany of one-page blogposts about how one should keep a zettelkasten.
The word “quote” (or close variations like “quotes” and “quotation(s)”) only appear 19 times in the first edition of Ahrens’ book.
In most of the contexts which have what one might call an “anti-quote” connotation, he’s directly recommending against the practice of indiscriminate highlighting/excerpting and collecting of general quotes specifically because they don’t aid in creating understanding by the reader. Instead he repeatedly recommends that one internalize the information by rewriting it in their own words instead. This helps the reader to better understand and know what the author is trying to convey. This also allows the reader to have material in their collection already written in their own words for later reuse.
Talking about “literature notes” Ahrens writes:
Places where quote appears in a context which argues against indiscriminate collection of quotes:
Now let’s take a quick look at some of Ahrens’ “pro quote” passages which provide the opposite view of when and where quotes can be useful:
How is one to have useful/impactful/fitting/necessary quotes at hand if they haven’t excerpted them as they read? In these portions he is actively suggesting that quotes from one’s reading in their notes can be a good thing and can help in making persuasive arguments. The secret is that they need to be done judiciously. One needs to be able to quote in a manner which keeps the original context and argument, but which can also fit into your current context and provide support or further argumentation.
As an example of terrible decontextualization, who hasn’t attended a wedding that featured a reading of 1 Corinthians 13? The passage seems wholly appropriate for a church wedding reading, but when you consider that it’s excerpted out of context you might reconsider using it at your own wedding. Go back and try reading it in light of being sandwiched between Corinthians 12 and 14 and you’ll change your mind that chapter 13 is about the sort of romantic love and implied by a wedding. Once you’ve done this, there’s added comedic subtext to scenes like the following from Wedding Crashers (New Line Cinema, 2005):
To prevent embarrassment of this sort, perhaps when you’re quoting a source directly you ought to provide at least a short note about the context in which the words were provided?
Any good rhetorician will tell you that quoting works in your writing can be incredibly helpful in building context and creating authority.
If anything, Ahrens’ book is missing a section on “how to quote correctly”, and this is a stumbling block of his text. As a quick remedy, one could read a bit of Seneca perhaps?
Beyond just Ahrens there are several thousands of years of prior art seen in the commonplace book tradition where quotes feature not only prominently but at times almost exclusively. Quotes, particularly sententiae, are some of the most excerpted and transmitted bits of knowledge in the entire Western canon. Without quotes, the entire tradition of excerpting and note taking might not exist.
Of course properly quoting is a sub-art in and of itself within rhetoric and the ars excerpendi.
Fellow note taking writer Umberto Eco warns against this same sort of indiscriminate collecting without actively making the knowledge your own. In How to Write a Thesis (MIT Press, 2015, p125), instead of railing against indiscriminate highlighting, or digital cutting and pasting, Eco talks about another sort of technological collection tool more rampant in the 1990s and early 2000s which facilitated this sort of pattern: the photocopier.
Many people may highlight, tag, or collect a variety of quotes within a text, but this activity is only a simulacrum of understanding and knowledge acquisition. This pattern can be particularly egregious in digital contexts where cutting and pasting has be come even easier and simpler than using a photocopier. Writing it down and summarizing important ideas in your own words will actively help you on your way to ownership of the material you’re consuming.
A zettelkasten with no quotes—by definition—shouldn’t carry the name. So let’s lay to rest that dreadful idea that quotes aren’t allowed in a zettelkasten.
And if you’re just starting out on your zettelkasten or commonplace book journey and don’t know where to begin, I’ve recommended before writing down the following apropos quote and continuing from there: