Reposted Thinking About Tools For Thought: Episode 005 – Interview with Chris Aldrich by Andy Sylvester (thinkingabouttoolsforthought.com)

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Links from today’s episode:

Chris Aldrich web site

Gardens & Streams II (Indieweb pop-up event) on September 25, 2021 https://events.indieweb.org/2021/09/gardens-and-streams-ii-pPUbyYME33V4

Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/)

Hypothesis (https://web.hypothes.is/)

Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture by Lynne Kelly (Cambridge, 2015)

Memory Craft by Lynne Kelly (Pegasus, 2019)

Anthropology: Why it Matters by Tim Ingold (Polity Press, 2018)

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers by Sönke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017)

And for the crazy rhetoric and note taking nerds:

Early Philosophical Texts

Aristotle, Topica, written about 350 BCE Venice, 1495.

Aristotle, Rhetorica, written about 350 BCE. Basel, 1529.

Cicero, De Oratore, written about 46 BCE. Northern Italian manuscript about 1450.

Cicero, Topica, written about 44 BCE. Florentine manuscript, about 1425-30.

Seneca the Younger, Epistulae morales, written 62-65 CE. French manuscript, about 1175.

Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, written about 100 CE. Paris, 1542.

Macrobius, Saturnalia, written about 430 CE. Central Italian manuscript, about 1475.

Boethius, De topicis differentiis, written about 480-526 CD. English manuscript, about 1275.

Renaissance Handbooks

Rodolphus Agricola, De formando studio. Antwerp, 1532; composed 1484.

Desiderius Erasmus, De ratione studii et instituendi pueros comentarii totidem. [Paris, 1512].

Philip Melanchthon, Institutiones rhetoricae. Wittenberg [1536].

Philip Melanchthon, Rhetorices elementa. Lyon, 1537.

Desiderius Erasmus, De duplici copia verborum ac rerum. Cologne, 1540.

Petrus Mosellanus, Tabulae de schematibus et tropis…. In Rhetroica Philippi Melanchthonis. In Erasmi Roterdami libellum De duplici copia. Paris, 1542.

Joachim Camerarius, Elementa rhetoricae. Basel, [1545].

Henry Peacham, The garden of eloquence: conteyning the figures of grammar and rhetorick. London, 1577.

One of the first handbooks in English

Philip Melanchthon, De locis communibus ratio. Augsburg [1593].

John Brinsley, Ludus literarius: or, The grammar schoole; shewing how to proceede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection. London, 1612.

[Obadiah Walker], Of education: especially of young gentlemen. Oxford, 1673.

I may have broadened the discussion that some of the intended audience on tools for thought may be showing up for, but I can never resist introducing people to mnemnotechniques and research on orality, anthropology, or the history of commonplaces.

I provocatively (with only a modest amount of wickedness) put forward the idea that a rock is as good a tool for thought as Obsidian.md or Roam Research.