There is no such place. If one idea is connected in some way to fifteen other ideas, where might the “right place” be?
That is one of the major reasons for using the Zettelkasten method: it doesn’t matter where a “card” is placed so long as it is linked to others that are relevant to it. Luhmann was constrained by the fact that he was using physical cards in a physical box, but as I understand it, the core of his methodology was to link (using a numbering system) one card to many others. This is very easy using digital tools, like DEVONthink, Tinderbox, The Archive, or others. If you really want to, you can give each note a UUID (which can be as simple as the date in YYYYMMDDHHmmss format) so you can be sure you are linking to that note, and not another one, but I don’t think it is strictly necessary. There are plenty of people who seem to manage just fine without them.
If you create a complicated system, you will spend more time on admin and housekeeping than you will on using the material.
Moreover — make your own system that works for you, for your interests/disciplines(s), and your work style…
Learning about Zettelkasten as one data point is great. Mimicking it under the assumption it will be the best system for you is silly. Even Luhmann probably would have done things differently if he had a computer.
This was also my experience. At a certain point I realised that I need to run my Zettelkasten instead of trying to copy Luhmann’s. I think it’s more relevant to get the framework and apply it to own needs.
Links can be helpful and I sometimes use them to link a Note/Zettel to a literature note etc. But then I follow a strict rule, I have set up for myself. But when you start moving notes it might be that the link won’t work anymore.
My recommendation is to give it a try and see if you can trust your system. I think links can be helpful, at least I didn’t want to depend on them.
I have tried it and used it for a while. There’s a bit of an overhead in using it but it does work. Possibly with some extra scripts it might be the answer you’re looking for.
I found Kourosh quite helpful when I needed to contact him.
The UUID stays intact so x-Devonthink links still work if you move a document to a different group in a database. The links even work if you move a document to a different DT3 database.
But since my notecards (files) for this project are exclusively Rich Text Files I don’t think this is a problem, because I can export them File > Export > as RTF Document… and the sorting will be retained.
And since I use Nisus, I can also select all files in DT I want to export, press CommandKey “c” and then CommandKey “v” in Nisus. This simple copy and pasting will create hot links in Nisus in the same order they are in DT
I visited www.zettelkasten.de this weekend. They have indeed a rich variety of interesting information. I need to check out the debate there about the use of Folgezettel. Thanks for mentioning that.
In the meantime, I wonder whether Tinderbox would perhaps be the better choice for this project… I have heard that some people have had problems exporting RTFs from Tinderbox. I’ve also heard that viewing two or more cards in Tinderbox simultaneously is not possible.
Anyway, the steep learning curve is holding me back, and I still haven’t reached into every nook and cranny of DT yet. :–)
I also plan to use my basic Zettelkasten-data in Scrivener and see if that is better. I particularly like the option of selecting files in Scrivener and be able to look at them as one long (word processor) document.
When I first read about Luhmann’s method (a couple of years ago) I remember that even his co-workers and assistant didn’t always understand how he did it exactly.
I also saw pictures of his original cards, and although I have no problem with reading German, I couldn’t decipher his scribble. He had an almost illegible handwriting. So I never (fully) understood what he was actually linking from and to what. — I suppose transcriptions of some of his cards can be found online now, but I haven’t searched for them specifically.
If the process doesn’t work, I abandon it and look for other means to reach my goal (which in most cases means looking for other tools [= software].)
For me, the question is: why was Luhmann so productive? He himself said that it was not he who wrote his books and papers… it was his Zettelkasten. All academics and ambitious students at that time were also using a slip-box and notecards, albeit not applying Luhmann’s method and certainly not being as prolific as he. So there must be something magical about his method…
Or …, the story has a twist.
Maybe it were neither his notecards nor his method of linking them that made him so exceptional. Maybe it was just his Fleiß, teutonic diligence and hard work, that enabled him to churn out one top-quality book after another.
He obviously put a lot of effort in his work. When his co-workers went to a pub after work, he would instead go home and play with his Zettelkasten.
He was also an avid reader. There are apparently more than 90,000 books and papers in his reference slip-box!!
Considering all this …, was it just plainly his Fleiß that created the magic and made his exceptional productivity possible in the first place, or was it—after all— something else?
The salient question is: Were other academics and students (ambitious or not) as prolific as he, even to an appreciable degree? I don’t see much evidence of that.
Whether that method suits someone’s particular perspective or not, is up to the individual. Personally, I don’t see any particular magic in his method except that it helped him, from what he reports.
The core is that for a complex question one has to gather a larger number of materials (notes, references) and develop more complex arguments (build from individual ideas/notes).
The question is then how to synthesize an argument for an answer to a question or topic?
This requires a process that can be supported by outlining (structuring) and requires tools to have an overview of notes and find elements.
For this reason, I consider collapsable headings for outlining so valuable, and also consider a “corkboard” (over)view valuable.
I find the numbering system, for me, in digital times less important than the visual elements to (pre)view (short) notes and give my synthesis of these a structure.
I made this point elsewhere but both suggestions (collapsible headings, corkboard view) did not find much support here
Since it was mentioned above: Scrivener has the corkboard view and a few nice elements to help composing texts from smaller units. It is however rich text based and I find DT a lot more powerful and trustworthy when it comes to gathering material. Obsidian is getting a lot of attention for the visual elements and I am curious about the discussions elsewhere in the forum where DT and Obsidian are combined. I found the plugin zoo of obsidian more off putting than attractive.
I realized that my process of synthesis is too variable or messy, to try something like the Zettelkasten techniques. Most important is for me the gathering and management of information, and that is where DT shines. This is why I haven’t moved anywhere. I can edit texts with external editors if I wish and one can also develop his/her own workflow. The collapsable headings and corkboard are small things, compared to the basis required for gathering and managing information, reliably, across devices.
I was referring to the comments made by Sascha Fast on the Tinderbox forums. I hope he will not mind if I quote them more fully:
the collective thinking process (due to the popularity of the book by Ahrens) was pushed heavily in the direction of thinking about the workflow that transforms each note type to another.
I think this is a distraction from the real issues that are interesting when you ask yourself the Zettelkasten question: How can I create a system that is extends my ability to deal with ideas (and knowledge in general) in a way that it scales beyond one project.
The questions derived from this line of thinking are for example:
How to write a note for longevity?
How to access a very big and highly complex note collection (or the network if you connect the notes) to assist with the task at hand (thinking on an issue, writing a text etc.)?
How to optimize the effect of creating one note?
How to access note collections within a note collection? (Not just notes that share a property, but also note clusters that are more tightly connected to each other than to others)
There are also issues/opportunities that emerge from other lines of thinking. For example: My Zettelkasten is also a training tool for me. I have almost 13k notes at the moment. But yesterday I could demonstrate how to create connections between two notes that I took 8 years apart within 2 minutes. It is possible because of the way I work with my Zettelkasten and the depth of connection between the note content. The connected question is:
How can you optimize the training effect on your brain using your note-taking system? (Instead of just letting your tool taking care of tasks, which could lead to atrophy of your specific skill in the worst case)
There is no magic in the Zettelkasten method. Some of the most revered and influential scholarly works in the history of mankind were written with nothing more than a quill pen and a penetrating mind.
Much is made of the quantity of writing put out by Luhman – but I don’t see a lot of discussion of its quality. I’m not qualified to do so because I haven’t read any of it, but I can’t help wondering why his work is not better known outside Germany if it is so remarkable.
It doesn’t matter what method you use if the ideas you eventually come up with do not resonate with other people. In the end, all we are trying to do is to communicate with others.
Tinderbox can export notes in a format that will import directly into Scrivener. It is one of the standard export options, and has been for some time.
There is now a mode in Tinderbox that is essentially like “Scrivenings” mode in the latter program. This was implemented in a fairly recent update.
Tinderbox is not the easiest program to approach, partly because it is so open-ended, and so unlike most other programs on the market. But there is now a very extensive number of training videos (over 70) for those who are new to the program:
User of both DTP and Obsidian here. I’m using Obsidian quite extensively for research, and the “plugin zoo” has proven to be very useful to me. The level of automations and integrations that I’m achieving with Obsidian surpasses by and large what I’ve been able to do in any other system, including DTP. For research, I’ve switched to Obsidian: http://www.mnott.de/devonthink-pro-vs-obsidian/ but also mostly for even management of Meetings (I’ve recently written an importer that creates Meeting Nodes from Outlook directly.
At the same time, I’ve never used the concordance etc. functions in DTP. It may very well be that DTP is just as good as a Zettelkasten; ultimately, what Obsidian does is to create the one thing that Luhman did - the logic of linking notes to other notes, for you; you still have to forward and backreference notes, but from there on, all links are automatically kept up to date.
I run my own Zettelkasten within DT. I have one folder for sources (for not my own content), and one for Zettels (with my own content).
You don’t need these index numbers. Luhmann needed them, but he had no DT. It’s just to make sure every Zettel has its own index number.
What you need in some cases a certain sequence of Zettels, for certain logical arguments. For this I sometimes use “Argument Zettels” where I link all the Zettels for that argument, and sometimes even parts of their content.
Another method I use is also by Luhmann: Vorzettel (the one before) and Folgezettel (the one behind). This is at the top of my Zettels, right under the link of this Zettel itself.
So I just put all my notes (Zettel) in this folder and can sequence them by Vor- and Folgezettel (and sometimes two or three of them) or by so called “Argument Zettels” where I summarize arguments.
As for starting a new Zettelkasten from Scratch, this might be done better with Obsidian.md and just indexing of the markdown folder by DT. However I run my Zettelkasten completely in DT and the coders here added lots of functionality to get ever better in doing so.
Most important thing: Luhmann used his Zettelkasten to great advantage. But the thing was, he was constantly working with it, not only adding, but linking all the Zettels he worked with all the time. He kept updating old ones continually. And I think he gained all his advantages by constantly working with all his notes (and not just the newest, latest ones). This cannot be achieved by this or that software. The software can help you set up a Zettelkasten, but the advantages will only materialize if you work on all your notes all the time constantly.
Indeed. It’s notable that the most famous part of his life’s work is not his actual research, but how he worked. And his method isn’t even novel - humankind has battled with how to store information and think pretty much since words were invented, and organising information by linked thoughts, whilst uncommon, wasn’t unheard of. In fact even in Luhmann’s own time he wasn’t the only one using index cards that were “indexed” the create links between ideas - Umberto Eco published his (Italian) manual on how to store ideas and quotes in index cards almost 20 years before Luhmann wrote his paper (and Eco was intending to teach new students the practice - presumably existing academics already knew this method - or had found other useful ways to capture ideas).
Away from index cards, thematic notebooks offered a similar methodology for many intellectuals, and commonplacing (which is essentially all these index cards are) as a method for developing ideas and essay writing was a mainstay of education in Ancient Rome and then subsequently much of Western Europe (and later its empires) for centuries. One could argue (and I will ) that given that pretty much all pre-1900 western canon was built on that tradition, you might as well take up commonplacing if you want to mimic “The Greats”.
And FWIW, I do not consider volume of output a measure of success, and I’ve seen multiple comments that some of Luhmann’s original writings are not fully developed or coherent narratives, just threads pulled together.
It’s a bit like researching how Shakespeare sat down to write and then mimicking that. Doesn’t make you Shakespeare. (We don’t know how Shakespeare developed his ideas, but we know he read a lot and it’s not unreasonable to assume he wrote a lot of notes!)
) that given that pretty much all pre-1900 western canon was built on that tradition, you might as well take up commonplacing if you want to mimic “The Greats”.