What's A "Zettlekasten" (Oh, no, not again!)?
We seem to be having a lot of discussion (argument?) about what a "Zettelkasten" is or should be or if it's even a well-defined concept. Is it "the Method"? It's probably foolish of me but I'm going to chip in with my own take.
Here is my current thinking, right off its z-card:
A note system should -
- Align with peoples' minds fit well with how a person's mind works;
- Be associative notes should associate with others;
- Building blocks notes should act like building blocks;
- Restore The Context notes and structure should remind one of
and restore one's concepts; - Keep attention apply principles of cognitive and psychological
science to overcome attention drift; Surface tacit semantic information.
To have a note system we should have it work well with how a person's mind works. That is partly associatively. So notes should associate with others. Humans have learned that using building blocks is useful. So notes should act like building blocks. Humans attention is easy to divert, so notes should try to overcome this tendency by applying principles of cognitive and psychological science.
People have a great deal of semantic information that is usually tacit. A notes system should try to surface some of it.
Both notes and the structure should help to restore the conceptual context of the captured thoughts.
Luhmann seems to have gotten about half of these items, I would say. Pretty good given how the paper system constrained him. He got some association with links, some with propinquity using fogelzettel. He used cards like building blocks to some extent. He obviously had some ability to restore his working context, though IMHO not as effectively as he could have. I think he must have had an unusually strong ability to focus, which was a way of countering attention drift.
As we all know, he used focused cards, a system for making links between cards, and a numbering system to make sure he could find cards again. Naturally he had a way of creating and working with cards that probably got refined over his working life. His focus was on working out ideas to the point of getting them published in an academic (or bureaucratic) context.
Let's say that a capital-Z Zettelkasten is a system that more or less adopts a linked building block, associative type of approach, in the hopes of increasing productivity and creativity. With modern technology we can approach more of the six bulleted items I listed above. The manner of working with the system can be system, purpose, and user- customized. The purpose of the note system can be broader than Luhmann's
If we leave it at that, we can avoid most of the discussion or arguments, while keeping the starting point, namely (as I take it), "I want some of what Luhmann got".
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Comments
I agree with all of your points. However, each element needs to be justified if you want to create more than an affirmative personal definition.
I assume you aim to define a Luhmannian Zettelkasten, not just any Zettelkasten?
Sadly, when I wrote that Don't Dehorsify the Horse I wasn't aware of Andy Coggins who produced the perfect example of a term that doesn't need a clean definition in practice (the anaerobic threshold). I think they didn't even use the same term always (sometimes LT1, somethims anerobic threshold, etc.) For context: It is a specific threshold in exercise intensity. This is the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/perspectives-18-overcoming-historical-inertia-with/id1457497693?i=1000579722563
However, this goal:
will not be achieved in my estimation. Reasons for that are:
I am a Zettler
"Luhmannian", in the sense I tried to set forth. If not that, it seems to me that the term "zettelkasten" is much too generic. I would be using the English phase "card catalog" which isn't a bad translation of "slip case" (I think, me not being a German speaker), or "index file".
Yes, use of index cards in some way has a long history. It took off once mass-produced practical index cards came on the market - that was around the 1880s, wasn't it? Some writers even class commonplace books in the same category. And probably Luhmann learned something of his way from teachers or mentors, who can be sure? But at least in English writings about "Zettelkasten", it's always Luhmann, great productivity, linked cards.
I'm not interested in defining a "school of Luhmannian card catalogs". I'm interesting in learning what made his system successful to the extent it was, and using that and other information to create a system that works well - at least for me and hopefully for others. I'm trying to ground it in well-known principles. I'm being guided by how I think a system ought be to be of assistance.
I only use the term "Zettelkasten" like that, presuming that it will give other people that idea, and the realization that there is some heritage here. Arguing about exactly what "the Zettelkasten system" or "the Zettelkasten method" is leaves me cold.
Yes, a violinist needs to learn technique, a lot of technique. But the point of it all is the music, and there are many players with great technique that don't make very interesting music. My interest is in the music and the instrument, and trying to make it so playable that good music doesn't demand excessive technique. Like any instrument, one will need to practice, sure.
I suggest a different wording for the question.
The first question tends to lead to fallacies, where people assume they talk about the same thing, but actually don't. @Sascha once wrote about the Beetle-in-the-box phenomenon. I think it applies also to the term "Zettelkasten".
The second question emphasizes that definitions are socially constructed. We might never come up with one definition that becomes widely accepted as lexical definition. But at least we'll learn during the process, what definitions have been proposed and by whom. Some of those definitions will catch on, others won't. And if someone wants to try out their own definition, they can simply stipulate one.
Personally, I don't know what "a Zettelkasten" is.
I'm curious to learn about the definitions out there. What is your personal definition of "zettelkasten"? Where do you draw the line between "this is a zettelkasten" and "this is not a zettelkasten"? What definitions have you read or heard that make sense to you?
Interesting, how some parts of Zettelkasten discourse have moved beyond Luhmann. Nori Parelius summarized the paradox nicely in her blog: "(…) the most famous user of the Zettelkasten method wouldn’t even recognise the rules that now seem to define the method he is credited with inventing."
I'd say that we have at least two major schools of "Zettelkasten" practice:
For all I know, Luhmann did not work that way. His process barely changed over decades. I'm baffled by the consistency of his zettelkasten practice.
We can make the discussion even simpler, if we completely separate such a "capital-Z Zettelkasten" from Luhmann. If you treat it as a separate and unrelated concept, many points of conflict should disappear.
Is it Machiavellian heresy to say that the ends justify the indexing?
In other words, a requisite for a Zettelkasten is a body of knowledge. Any one method of indexing and categorization is secondary as long as you can navigate the inventory of facts.
Library card catalogs of yore presented the same collection indexed three ways, author, title, and subject.
Multiple indexes referencing a single Zettelkasten sound justifiable.
Some methods of organization will work better than others, but if an alternate contributes to usefulness, why not?
Yes, that's so, but then there would be little reason to use the term at all, and let's face it, there is a line back to Luhmann's system in most of the material that get people interested in the first place.
A new good name would be all right with me, if its good enough. Quibbling about whether or not Luhmann's work is or is not a factor in a system isn't something I want to spend energy on.
Not a heresy at all. The needs are to be able to find things, to be able to navigate to them, and preferably to see a broader view of the (semantic) territory than a single card or pair of linked cards can provide. Luhmann couldn't run searches so he had to make do with the numbering system, index cards, and the like. Or rather, the kind of search he could do was to remember or look up a likely entry point and then to riffle through the cards. We don't have those limitations (if we are using a digital system) so we can try other ways.
The needs are the same.
Funny thing: I've always considered Andy Matushak's system one of the best examples of a Zettelkasten, even though he himself says it isn't one.
Thanks for the kind words. I wouldn't say "based solely on Luhmann's research", though. There's 20+ years of experience with systems that in retrospect have a lot in common with the general ideas behind my current Zettelkasten system. And putting together many elements from completely outside the world of note-taking.
@tomp
My points are in no particular order
In hindsight, they are in a particular order. I think the most productive line is the first point.
I am a Zettler
What exactly do you mean by the word "Zettelkasten" in this sentence? And what is the reason?
I like this way of framing it! I especially agree with the idea of notes as associative building blocks, and with the importance of being able to restore the context behind an idea later.
However, I'm not sure about that a note system should simply “align with how the mind works”. Our minds are associative, but they’re also easily distracted and pretty good at making arbitrary connections. So I think a good system should sometimes compensate for how our minds work, rather than just mirror them.
I also think that “Some of what Luhmann got” is probably a much more useful starting point than arguing over a single canonical definition of Zettelkasten.
Seems to me I included that, didn't I? Since I posted the above, I sharpened up the card a little:
Ooh, I see what you mean now. Great, I think your clarification about applying cognitive and psychological principles makes the distinction much clearer.
I also really like the idea of “I want some of what Luhmann got.” I'm still fairly new to the Zettelkasten world and I want to learn as much as possible of this method!
Thanks for clarifying!
Maybe you would like to read the paper I presented yesterday at a conference:
https://balisage.net/Proceedings/vol31/html/Passin01/BalisageVol31-Passin01.html#d12410e23
Or (quicker and easier), the slides for its presentation:
https://tompassin.net/pub/balisage2026/balisage_zk_slides_files.html
Not everyone here will agree with it all but it sounds like it may give you something fun to think about.
I have read the paper, thanks for sharing it! I loved the idea about Zettelkasten as something that should help reconstruct the mental context in which an idea was formed, rather than simply helping me retrieve the note itself.
I also liked the distinction between a note repository and a “cognitive instrument.” That seems to connect really well with what we were discussing about cognitive science and attention.
In the way I see it, the ZettleKasten is likely one of the best systems for taking notes! I mean, the heart of ZettleKasten resides in how much you can connect notes to each other!
For a ZettleKasten to work for you, you will need to create new notes based on other notes and developing new ideas, is like a hierarchy but they are not lineal. You can connect notes that talks about "one" topic from different perspectives and points of view... The goal is not to read and memorize your notes, is to develop deep ideas more and more to get involved with your notes and so you will learn them for real!
So yes, we can use them for everything in life and make them work for us, and as Luhmann used to say... "Talk with them"! 😌
It seems that you either didn't read or understand the article that I linked above. Quote from the article:
"Some people, for various reasons, try to state what a Zettelkasten is and what not. (...) But there is a technical problem with stating that X is not Y if some trait is missing."
I place myself in the spiritual lineage of Luhmann's Zettelkasten. He made a move towards the organic, the fractal, the autopoietic. I think it is a pivotal move for developing a personal system. There is not just heritage. I owe Luhmann the idea itself, genetic core that drives the whole thing.
I am a Zettler
It's more that to state equivalence, one has to know what attributes are being used to make the comparison. "Are penguins birds, since they can't fly?", of course, is a classic example.
BTW Luhmann, in case 1, note 6,3 and related notes discusses the issue of when a judgement of equality can be made. He points out that if all attributes are the same between two objects then there is identity, not just equality.
I believe I too wrote "heritage". At least I did somewhere. To me the word includes the core ideas.
Are you referring to a set of core ideas that define "Zettelkasten"? I'm curious how you identified them.
No, it's time you write what you think they are. I imagine you have som ideas or you would be in a "Zettelkasten" group. I responded to what Sasha wrote, though His words are a little fuzzy for me.
Actually, I don't. :-)
In my digital Zettelkasten I have a note called "Zettelkasten (disambiguation)". It links various concepts that have have been discussed under the label "Zettelkasten" in English and German. It's inspired by Wikipedia's disambiguation pages.
I find it much more interesting to compare different concepts than to posit the one-and-only core feature set.
If I had to group Zettelkasten concepts, I'd use criteria like
For me too. :-)
OK, now I will write down my own thinking. My group of core attributes of a "Zettelkasten" system (upper case) is much shorter:
I think that these 4 items represent the essence of Luhmann's Zettelkasten. All those other things you listed are just implementation or design details. I suspect that Sascha sees the core elements in a similar way.
For example, if you use Markdown and I use ReStructured Text for the metadata, does that cause one of our systems to not be a Zettelkasten? No, of course not.
Luhmann's metadata was primarily the card's number, and the notation for linking and citing. For me, the details of that metadata notation (and the exact nature of the metadata, for that matter) is irrelevant to the question of whether some system "is" a Zettlekasten.
My approach to settling on those kinds of details has been to try to understand, preferably at a high level -
A. What makes a system like this able to be effective [1];
B. How to create a system (presumably digital in these days) that will implement or exhibit the findings in 1).
And, very important practical matters -
C. Work out the inevitable tradeoffs between the ideal, the available supporting software, and the amount of effort it would take me to implement what I envision. This includes whether it is to be a commercial product or not ("not", in my case).
[1] I take "effective" as meaning that the system helps me to find notes and related ones easily, and more important, helps promote productivity and creativity.
Then of course, there is the matter of how one actually interacts with the system. That is partly a matter of computer interface features (part of item C above), and partly about how one thinks, writes notes, navigates, and so on. Those in turn affect the implementation in item C.
However, none of those details change the "Zettelkasten-ish" nature of the system.
@Sasha wrote earlier in this thread
This passage is, I think, in harmony with my 4 items above. On the one hand, there is a system, on the other, a vision of what the system could do for someone. I have separated the latter from the former in my four items but the whole point is to arrive at a system that promotes good things for you, whatever you think those things are.
If I had to give up on some or all of the 4 items to get a better system, I would. I wouldn't keep calling it a "Zettelkasten", though.
Schmidt documents the opposite, and Luhmann's two collections are not one practice continued. The first, roughly 1951–1962, holds about 23,000 cards in 108 consecutively numbered subject sections, with a comma after the first number; the second, 1963–1997, holds about 67,000 cards under eleven top-level sections and roughly 100 subsections, with a slash. The first explores largely predetermined fields of knowledge; the second is by design problem oriented.
The linking practice changed by roughly half. Sample counts give about 20,000 references in the first collection and about 30,000 in the second — a reference on nearly every card in the first, and on nearly every second card in the later one.
He also rebuilt rather than extended. The second collection was started in 1963 rather than continuing the first, and its keyword index exists in four versions, each rewritten once the alphabetical order of the previous one became too disordered.
Schmidt, J.F.K. (2018). Niklas Luhmann's Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity. Sociologica 12(1), 53–60. doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350. Shortened from the 2016 chapter in Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines (Brill, 289–311).
Zettel GitHub. Zettel Wiki Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. PROBLEMS. Grooks, 1966. CC BY-SA 4.0.
My assessment is based on my own analyses of ZK I and ZK II. I spent some time with a wide range of facsimiles of Luhmann's original zettels. I have a pretty good idea how they look like in detail. I also downloaded a copy of all zettels that the Luhmann Archive made available online. It made some quantitative evaluations possible.
There are subtle differences between ZK I and ZK II. (One of the bigger differences is rarely mentioned: ZK II includes topical hierarchies, for example encoded with the first 4 digits of the ZK II 3 branch; see also Schmidt (2016).) But have you noticed how much ZK I and ZK II have in common, how much they are the same?
Why did Luhmann start a new ZK in the early 1960s? Schmidt (2016) speculates that it "had to do with his turn toward sociology in the early 1960s" after Luhmann had spent a year in the USA. ZK II has a clearer focus, but many structural aspects are very similar, if not the same, as in ZK I.
Not sure how this counts as a discontinuity. I'd treat this as an example, where Luhmann repeatedly made the same mistake. :-) He could have used the standard practice of the time and create one card for each term in the alphabetical index.
References:
That's what I called earlier "[D]igital hypertext systems that have little recognizable connection to Luhmann's example."
The idea is that you stand in a different tradition; the tradition of people like Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, Jeff Conklin, Tim Berners-Lee, Ward Cunningham, …
Let's agree to disagree?
I'm not interested in the question, what a Zettelkasten "is", but in comparing how different people define "Zettelkasten". So I'm thankful that you took the time to describe yours!
Addendum: The wording "little recognizable connection" doesn't work that well in this case. :-) Don't know yet, how to phrase it better.
The idea is that these digital Zettelkastens have more in common with digital hypertext than with Luhmann's wooden box. They can be better understood by reading research papers about digital hypertext than speculating about the few clues left behind by Luhmann.
And that leads us again back to the question of the essence of the Luhmannian Zettelkasten.
Even if you are not interested in identifying the "true" essence of the Luhmannian Zettelkasten as a goal, it is a step in the journey.
Oh, man. These notes... I am quit surprised by how Luhmann is engaging in concept work. He, for example, mixes prescriptive with descriptive. Claiming that "if X, concept Y applies" only can be descriptive if there is (proper) evidence provided (not just a external reference). What is present in his notes is merely sufficient for prescriptive statements.
(As far as I remember, this was the reason why I cancelled the first reading of Luhmann's Social Systems to the annoyance of Christian)
With "core ideas", do you mean essential ideas...
A mere meta-statement about the epistemic work you have done is not showing and sharing the epistemic work itself. Showing and sharing the epistemic work would be the right thing to do, if you want to cooperate instead of skipping your part of the work.
I am a Zettler
Like this, this or this? :-)
Image: Herlitz' Zettelkasten Big 9 Box 650 Blatt transparent
Common language
Why do some people care, if something is a Zettelkasten or not? Maybe because they want to…
For example, would you include the paper-filled box pictured above in your definition of "Zettelkasten"?
Familienähnlichkeit
In the article1 you reference Wittgenstein's concept "Familienähnlichkeit". The linked Wikipedia mentions "overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things".2
I'm curious, what features/traits you have in mind, when you determine, if something is a Zettelkasten or not. In your opinion:
More than parts
Some time ago you wrote:3
Apparently you have at least one criterion, that distinguishes between Zettelkasten and non-Zettelkasten, even if the compared things do share features/traits like "zettel" (slips) in a "kasten" (box).
Begriffsarbeit
I find it noteworthy, how you describe "Begriffsarbeit" in your book:4
From my point of view, I'm following your advice and "engage with the terms and their definitions" that I encountered in your writing.
Thanks! However, you might have guessed it, I'm wondering what you mean by "the idea itself" and "the whole thing".
Definition as knowledge building block
I'm still hoping for a quote, that I can use in my Zettelkasten for the defnition note "Zettelkasten (Fast)". This atomic note describes your concept and your concept only. It does not mix it with other people's concepts.
I hope for a knowledge building block of the type concept or definition:
I have difficulties to reconcile your philosophy of discrete knowledge building blocks with the article, where you warn against "making platonic what is not platonic by nature".1 (BTW, what is a Zettelkasten "by nature"?) On one hand you teach to break down knowledge into discrete, clearly-cut pieces. On the other hand you seem to insist that the concept "Zettelkasten" is beyond such cutting.
How would you define the concept "Zettelkasten" as a proper concept knowledge building block?
https://zettelkasten.de/posts/dont-dehorsify-the-horse/ ;↩︎ ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Family_resemblance&oldid=1360512376 ;↩︎
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19117/#Comment_19117 ;↩︎
"Setzen Sie sich mit den Begriffen und ihren Definitionen auseinander, die Sie in Texten finden. Begriffsarbeit birgt viel Potential. Wissensarbeit im strengeren Sinne beginnt dann, wenn wir für oder gegen bestimmte Begriffe argumentieren." Sascha Fast: Die Zettelkasten Methode, 2025. Page 24 ↩︎
The Complete Guide to Atomic Note-Taking (2025) ↩︎
Reading for the Zettelkasten Is Searching (2016) ↩︎
"Eine Definition ist eine Beschreibung davon, was wir meinen, wenn wir ein Wort benutzen." Sascha Fast: Die Zettelkasten Methode, 2025. Page 23 ↩︎