The Complete Guide to Atomic Note-Taking
Atomicity refers to the idea that knowledge is made up of discrete building blocks. The Principle of Atomicity is a processing direction in note-taking, aiming for one knowledge building block per note. It is not a rigid law, but a guiding compass. It needs to be contextualised for each application.
Post edited by ctietze on
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Some thoughts:
I feel you are missing a third option where they are not saying you have to rely on heuristics and are willing to engage (not stating this is the case here, just an observation). They hear you out and just believe you are over-complicating a concept because you don't have a strong grasp of what is important in relation to the concept and are adding details /or sub-concepts that are unimportant.
I am not following what the problem of level 3 is in the context of this article. I looked back and was not able to work out what it is. I also don't think I have a strong grasp of what are the details that make up level 3 overall. Could have used 1-2 sentences stating what the procedures of the method are that differentiate from keeping a zettelkasten without the zettelkasten method.
I love level 4 and think about it a lot. I secretly wish I had my own coding skills (don't have the will to try vibe coding) to experiment with creating Obsidian plugins that can help with pushing one towards better thinking.
I really like Super Memo Guru (Piotr Wozniak) definitions for Concept and Model. I think of a model as a set of concepts connected by rules. I also don't quite agree with your knowledge building blocks, as they don't seem discrete enough from each other. As to me models are made up of concepts. Hypotheses are made up of arguments. I have no clue what I would say the building blocks of knowledge are instead.
I was completely lost on this aspect. I understand the zettelkasten iceberg level 2 and 3 but am not following along with what actually is atomicity level 2 and 3.
This is big to me and something I wonder a lot about. It makes me think this Andy Matuschak Patreon article. It unfortunately is locked behind a Patreon wall and I didn't make a copy of it, so I don't have exact quotes of what I'm thinking about. But he discusses how he abandoned his evergreen notes practice as it was accumulating too much technical debt, much better to just create a flat outline of sorts (Cal Newport style) per project. I thought that would be an interesting topic to tackle on the blog and see how you've handled that concern of technical debt over the years in your zettelkasten.
Impulse of creating/notes without directly moving to a later stage of maturity seems dangerous to me. Getting into Collector's Fallacy territory. This reminds me of how the brain generates an overabundance of neurons and synapses then prunes them to become more efficient. I think the worry is if you spend to much time in impulses than you never get around to pruning and aren’t particularly efficient. I’d say a certain level of efficiency is necessary due to our limited time/energy on this planet. Why do I say all this? Because impulsing without pruning or maturation feels good (collectors fallacy).
I got confused because you put your comment before the quote. I am pretty sure that it is the convention to put the quote first and then your comment. The dividers didn't show in the post, which would've helped.
It is based on a specific pattern-language of meaning. The eye is the all-seeing eye that emerges as a phenomonon in schizophrenia as a result of an overactive left hemisphere and a dysfunctional right hemisphere. A feeling of being constantly watched. (Based on Iain McGilchrist)
The puppy is the self, still unformed and full of potential. It can be both the user and the idea aiming up.
It is AI-generated.
This is based on my observation. So, I miss the third option, since I wished people would engage with the level 3 concepts.
Level 3 lacks the justification. The problem of level 3 is that it solves level 2 problems by giving a formal framework on how to make sure that you understand what an atom is (scuba diver directly looking). With this framework, you can actually make sense of heuristics more and use them more effectively. But level 3 still lacks a deeper justification of why this actually should work. Level 4 provides the justification by stating that atomicity is a trait of knowledge itself and the principle of atomicity is a principle of treating knowledge accordingly.
"Level 4 is reached when you see that level 3 is actually about sound thinking and not some methodological gimmick."
I think it is a good idea to learn to code for one's thinking ability. I am not sure how to learn to code to gain general benefits. I think it is the same with strength training for athletics. If you are really weak, any strength training will benefit you. But none of the people who are reading this are the equivalent of weak. So, a more sophisticated approach is needed.
You are mixing two frameworks here. If you go with the definitions of Wozniak, you can't make any consistency claim about the inventory, since the consistency is dependent on the condition that you go with the definitions. It is like exchanging sugar for honey, wheat flour with rice flour and then claim that the recipe is not working.
But I won't defend my inventory here. You can use any inventory of building blocks that you like. Well, the inventory should be working. Meaning: It should not just be a bunch of definitions but a bundle of ideas, methods, thinking tools etc.
To create an inventory, you need to have a reasonable framework of completeness of what you are mapping. If we are talking about knowledge building block, the inventory should map the process of knowledge work.
Atomicity level 2 means that you applied heuristics, level 3 means that you identified the knowledge building block and made sure that the note just contains this one building block.
I had a short exchange with Andy over this very topic. There were quite some issues with his practice, which explain the problems he had, at least in part.
It is indeed an interesting topic which I wouldn't label as technical debt but the problem maintenance. But there is no conscious solution on my part. The reason why I have almost zero technical debt is that my Zettelkasten practice is pretty much just a thinking practice. So, I don't have to clean anything up, just to keep everything tidy and working on the level of the method. If something is messy, it is messy for a good reason: My level of thinking is still messed up. I don't engage with messy areas of my Zettelkasten, unless I want to progress my understanding. If I need to connect a new idea to something that is messy in my Zettelkasten, I will clean that mess up as an act of furthering my understanding.
One aspect, for example, why Andy accumulates technical debt is that his Evergreen Note are public. This creates the need for them to be understood by others. There is a lot of stuff in my Zettelkasten that nobody than me can understand, that violates good practices etc. But it is my personal Zettelkasten and I don't need to care. When I see that something is inconsistent, incoherent or whatever, I can just accept it or write a comment with a quick idea on how to fix this and then move on. Impossible if the notes are available to others.
But I don't want to dissect Andy's notes in a thread in a forum because Andy's work warrants a more careful approach than a spontaneously generated answer.
Your stages seem to be on the level of workflow. I oriented myself by the maturation stages in practical knowledge work.
It is a straightforward condition: If you want to make the Zettelkasten a home for your mind and thinking, you should move the complete thinking process into the Zettelkasten.
You are right that there is a problem of the Collector's Fallacy. However, the root cause of the problem is not to be found in the method, but in one's approach to knowledge. A person that never disciplined his mind to follow through after the first impulse, will not do it with any system and external pressure (e.g. a deadline for an essay) will be the mechanism of making this happen.
If you try to deligate the mind's disciplination to external constraints, you risk of detraining your mind or never developing its discipline in the first place.
But you can watch the video to see that it works if you practice it.
I am a Zettler
I encourage whoever is reading this to check out S.S. Seward’s Note-taking (available free on Google Books). He anticipates the concept of atomicity when he instructs the reader to capture the idea of a curious portion of a text or lecture. That’s all the principle of atomicity is about. Capturing ideas. Not a summary, or an enumeration of facts and the secondary details pertinent to an idea but the special discrete points that the author is trying to communicate throughout the text.
Knowledge building blocks give you a mental bank of the type of ideas you that you find in a text. The stages of an atomic note are just ways to track the development of an idea—from a speculative bit of information into a concrete intimation that affects how you think and behave after its registered in your mind as correct.
Only taking notes on things that you intend to advance according to an implicit timeline sounds dangerous too. Like Sascha, I think this disrupts an inherently internal phenomenon by introducing external stakes. This is something that inhibited my own processes in the past. I reckon as of late that efficient impulses are a matter of taste—being able to distinguish what bits of information are relevant to your broader research and anticipating their usefulness. This is where having a “toolbox of building blocks” comes in handy. Luc B. Beaudoin’s CUP’A method is a terrific heuristic for processing information. I use Notenik to store my knowledge base and it gives you different ways to view your collection of note files in the UI. With the
Statusfield I can store the stages of my notes as numerical values and sort them. This is just an example of ways you can track the progress of notes made on an impulse. Although I must confess, I can’t think of any note of my own that wasn’t conceived like this.I think this is one of the strongest distinctions to make when talking about knowledge work. Productivity is one thing with its own set of practices and interests. “Practical knowledge work” (researching, note-taking, composing, publishing) is another. Atomic note-taking is an epistemic framework or a toolkit for working with knowledge. Something than your workflow can adapt to. I find that Nick’s reservations with impulsive notes are addressed here and in the broader section from where this passage originates:
The Zettelkasten Method as a whole seems impartial to any one productivity method. Bring your own. Sascha’s integration of BASB into his own system gave me some insight into this.
What we’re looking to achieve with our notes is made straightforward in this piece:
When it comes to cultivating knowledge I don’t think empirical data is always an appropriate metric for efficiency.
Resources like “SuperMemo Guru” appear inclined toward productivity. Beaudoin has a term that I’m fond of, “Cognitive productivity”. These kind of methods can help aid your knowledge work but I don’t think that success in this area alone can constitute for excellence when it comes to understanding things—the comprehensiveness of the methods not withstanding. The cultivation of knowledge is the objective of knowledge work and productivity workflows facilitate this effort. However I think that workflows are often confused as the either the means—or worst—the end.
Devising a productive system of learning does not bring one any closer to the discovery and recognition of Truth. But it can help keep you consistent on the journey. This is similar to the path of spritual reformation in Islam. For example, a seeker may be prescribed or adopt practices in addition to the obligatory and customary acts of worship. But these auxiliary practices in and of themselves do not bring them closer to their ultimate objective (viz. salvation in the afterlife).
Nice recommendation! (It is also available via the internet archive: https://archive.org/details/cu31924012997627/page/n3/mode/2up if you want to download it in various formats. It is public domain)
Yes! I made a connection with what you wrote further down: Knowledge Building Blocks give you an external reference point if you got the idea right. (Just an addition to what your wrote)
To add to that: External stake to the internal process could be translated to: You put public pressure on your private sphere. It is absolutely not correct to make this translation, but it echoes the problem of specific restrictions.
This is speculative: If you only pursue for what you already have a plan, you might become less creative because creativity is dependent on a more open-ended, playful attitude.
Yes, exactly!
You will be quoted. This is exactly it!
I am a Zettler
I appreciate the comments.
@Sascha
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This captures the tension perfect and may additionally result in one pursuing less ambitious work/research. Of course this implies a certain level of control over your work/output that may escape a lot of people. I found Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity a useful read in general but I felt like it makes this assumption. Indeed it may be a privilege overall, to be so good you can afford to work slow and deep.
Ah! Still I dream.
I did it — I have reviewed and processed the essay, the video, and the discussion.
A lot of work, and there would be a lot to say.
The short answer is that this is a very meaningful and relevant work.
In my view, it is essentially the transposition of bottom-up object-oriented development — taken from software development and brought into idea development. The process is especially evident in the video.
It seems to me that this work marks a major evolution in the theme of atomicity.
It addresses some of the limits of the simple model of “one idea per note.” It presents tools for achieving atomicity in a rational way, as well as techniques to avoid fragmentation.
The video, in particular, is a powerful example — not only of how atomization can be done, but of how general Zettelkasten work can be done. A pure organic development, very similar to how, in software development, a cluster of classes, objects, modules emerges from a coding task. That use of refactoring is exactly how I see Zettelkasten (and in fact, thanks to my background as a developer, that’s how the model of atomicity came to me “naturally”).
One observation I can make — a possible completion of the work — would be to better explain why pursuing atomization is worthwhile. That would make the value of the effort clearer. Understanding ideas better, clarifying them, and being able to make connections are only three of many benefits.
I’ll just mention a few (non-exhaustive list):
I see a potential critical point in the block-based model, which should probably be discussed more deeply.
Perhaps there’s too much implicit focus on the structural properties of the blocks for retrieving the architecture of ideas, and less on their ability to express creativity, taste, subjectivity, and personal perspectives. Of course, the article does not exclude this possibility in any way, but it might be worth emphasizing it explicitly. Not only can I “capture the truth,” but I can also “interpret” or have my own perspective.
When we talk about blocks, patterns, and structures, it’s very easy to be distracted by their formal and representative properties — while subjectivity, which distinguishes Zettelkasten from other models, risks being overlooked. For example, if I have a “model block” or an “argument block,” it’s easy to end up expressing only the descriptive part of the model, capturing the idea "as it is" from the source.
In the last minutes of the video, you briefly mention your personal reason for using that dynamic about IQ — it’s a short but very important moment to me. Presented so briefly, it might not be perceived as fundamental.
In general, despite the soundness of the atom-based model, or its block-based evolution as you’ve shown, over time I find it easier to introduce the concept of atomicity using the photography metaphor rather than the atomic one.
In the future, when asked to explain it, I think I’ll rely more on photographic metaphors.
The great advantage of photography is that everyone understands it — you can bring up relatable examples of photos that “work” or don’t work:
At the same time, however, the photographic model works well for showing what works and what doesn’t, but perhaps provides fewer tools for explaining how to do it well.
That might just be my personal limitation, since I’m much more experienced as a developer and system modeler — I master those two mindsets better than that of a photographer. I can recognize a good photo but wouldn’t be able to teach how to take one, while a good photographer could develop a sound photography based mindset for atomization. Nevertheless, simple photographic metaphors have, in the past, illuminated for me very clearly how to pursue atomicity (landscape, portrait, and so on).
I’ve made this side discussion about photography mindset not to diminish the block-based mindset you presented, but to highlight what I believe is a valuable opportunity.
I’m quite sure there are Zettelkasten practitioners who don’t fully feel comfortable thinking in terms of “blocks.”
That’s fine: these people can use the same method as a “template framework,” inserting their preferred mindset (for example, the photographic metaphor) in place of the block vocabulary, while keeping the same skeleton that provides progressive modeling on four levels, organicity, refactoring and so on.
So, if you don’t like blocks, try replacing them — keeping everything else the same — with a vocabulary of models that you resonate with more.
Used as a framework with interchangeable mindsets, this model has a much broader scope than originally intended
I’ve personally found as many as five different mindsets. One of these is a "making cookies" mindset
In a nutshell, learning to master atomicity is like learning to master photography or OOP development.
Same thing, same dynamics, same learning path, same "thinking in objects" once the highest level reached.
And if someone is lucky enough to know how to do either of the latter two, I think they’ve already got a clear path ahead.
Many thanks for your kind words.
Even as a non-programmer (I only learned Pascal and a bit of Delphi), I envision the process very similar to coding. The similarity stems from a specific shared pattern of information mapping that is beneath both processes. I can't summarise it enough to make it part of a post here, but to give you a preview: It has to do with the strange fact that mathematics doesn't care about nature, yet nature seems to speak math perfectly. More: I don't think that the Logical Empirism is as dead as it is proclaimed.
The notion that knowledge is a malleable social construct is as bizarre as stating that 2+2=4 is a social construct.
You are correct. This is already planned in two dimensions:
My focus stems likely from two sources:
I don't understand. You mean the above?
Atomicity is not a mere metaphor. My claim is that knowledge is organised in discrete building blocks that serve a specific function (taken directly from the article). Knowledge is not like atoms. Knowledge is atomic.
The atomic model of knowledge is not a metaphor. The difference between a model and a metaphor is that a model is based on assumption about reality, a metaphor is an epistemic/didactic device to give you a feel and a rough direction to start your thinking process.
The similarity of both introduce two fallacies:
The photography metaphor works great as many level 2 approaches work great. However, as a metaphor it still is subject the the level 2 problems as layed out in the article.
"Showing" would mean that you convince by providing learning experiences. The How depends on understanding the underlying learning reality.
It seems to me that something got mixed up because of the AI-translation.
I have to cite myself: The individual in individualisation is the specific task and not the individual person.
I am not 100% confident in the completeness of the inventory of knowledge building blocks. But the underlying reality of knowledge isn't anything that you can avoid. Take arguments a an example: There are languages that work (first/second order logic, syllogisms, etc.). All of them are annoying if you are not in love with math. But you can use some vivid metaphor about logic and argumentation to understand it. The same is true for any knowledge building block.
Hopefully not.
I am a Zettler
From my point of view, this is what made all my note-taking eventually transform from having a small Wikipedia to the system I currently have.
It’s possible that someone took the concept of subjectivity too literally, but for me it was a fundamental mental switch to move from representing information to representing thought in my notes.
Of course, you always have to make distinctions depending on the context. In some branches of knowledge, you can’t be too subjective—a logical argument remains a logical argument. Subjectivity, at most in this case, comes into play in deciding which problems in your own life you apply that piece of knowledge to. There are different requirements of truth in different areas.
Besides, "my point of view", is alway a frame with high risk of biaes, of course.
In the video accompanying the article, you showed that even though you used a process that develops “objective” thinking (I’m not sure if that’s the correct term) on the Reverse Flynn Effect, you didn’t settle for—or even focus on—simply capturing the “truth” of that effect. Instead, you made a subjective derivation toward what was useful for you (for your own use and for your children).
I really liked that part, and for me it represents an important “my own view” that I often develop in my Zettelkasten.
The problem, however, is that this dynamic is made explicit only in the last few minutes of the final piece of this huge work, and I fear that not many people reach that last piece with the mental freshness to notice that small detail. I’m writing this specifically to highlight how important it is :-)
From my experience reading various questions, I’m afraid many have interpreted “my own view” as simply paraphrasing what they read, capturing the “truth” of what they read, and stopping there. That’s a good start, but it can be done better. You can capture that idea and then introduce it in the sphere of your personal needs, goals, beliefs, perspectives, and so on.
I think with photography you could reach highest level, too.
I’m a photographer. A very, very mediocre photographer, actually :-) but I’ve studied a significant amount of photographic theory in the past.
I am absolutely convinced that a photographer (and skilled photographers are like this) can reach the same maximum level you presented. The same, of course, applies to a software developer. A good photographer learns to think about reality in terms of photographs before the shot, before technique and heuristics. The same goes for a developer with his "thinking in objects".
At the highest levels, I see the same concept of “mastery” across all three profiles, and therefore the same applies to the metaphors.
Now, as I said, I’m a poor photographer and wouldn’t be able to teach others how to reach that level of maturity, but noticing the same dynamic in experts across the three different contexts (system modeler, photographer, developer), I trust that even using a model for photography it’s possible to reach the final stage. I kind of know how a photographer's mind works, even though I don’t have a very good one :-)
I don’t have the knowledge resources to provide a complete representation of such a model, but I’ve gathered some promising elements. For example, two blocks you mentioned in your article (“idea in context” and “structure”) I have cited as photographic patterns somewhere as portrait photography and landscape photography.
A photographic model could be useful for minds that are more accustomed to thinking “in images” rather than through decomposition, for example.
I’ve been thinking about the topic of adequacy and completeness of knowledge representation through blocks over the past few days. Even though I deeply feel that it doesn’t work 100%, I have to accept that representing knowledge in discrete units inevitably involves some approximation.
After all, it’s the same effect as converting an analog signal into digital.
From a practical point of view, if what you get is sufficient for your purposes, that’s perfectly fine—you don’t need to reconstruct everything exactly in the representation.
In fact, I would even say that, at a certain point, a reduced but easy-to-apply vocabulary is decidedly better than a very complex one that creates friction in making choices.
The topic of atomicity in Zettelkasten is already considered quite tricky. Adding even more complexity becomes counterproductive. I think that a model of six blocks is quite enough in general. When needed, everyone can add other types of cognitive tools, rather than blocks or, such as patterns or various kinds of mental models, can provide additional support.
For instance, from your article, I explicitly formalized the Problem-Solution pattern, which I often use, but unconsciously. It's a very small pattern that in practice can solve a critical representation many times.
If it helped you, awesome.
I think we have misunderstanding on terms. You seem to use "subjective" as in you do something to the material that is not found in the text. I use subjective as in the source of truth being the subject ("I like tomatoes.", "I perceive the color as green.")
If it was like that. But the many examples that I see is that capturing the idea is not done diligently in the first place.
If you use photography as a metaphor, you are bound to level 2, because with a metaphor you cannot reach any higher level. You need to develop a model of knowledge to reach level 3.
It seems that you ignore my distinction between model and metaphor.
The complexity of the model depends on the complexity of the underlying reality, not on the needs of people first and foremost.
As I explained in the article: Relying on heuristics becomes a problem quickly.
I am a Zettler
Oh, it's possible that into traslation italian term "soggettivo" doesn't perfectly map to "subjective". It can sometimes be difficult to translate above-average concepts into another language. "Soggettivo" in italian carries a range of many different nuances.
I think that if today I had to rely solely on the photographic model, without any other tools available, I would genuinely aspire to bring it to a level 3 — moving beyond metaphors in a way similar to what you’ve shown.
Over the past few months, I’ve gathered a few seeds that suggest this potential.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the Zettelkasten method when I studied photography somewhat seriously. If I had had the understanding of Zettelkasten that I have now, I almost certainly would have tried to map the photographic mindset onto it — and I would have learned photography in a much more effective and, above all, long-lasting way than I did back then.
I don’t think I’ll ever take on that challenge, since by now I’ve also developed too many concepts about Zettelkasten. In particular, I think I’ve completely exhausted the topic of atomicity
Still, I’ve come to believe that (1) it’s possible, and (2) it’s not perfectly equivalent to a formal or structural (block/pattern-based) model, since in photography the concepts of representation through framing are much more relevant than decomposition — as well as the idea of the lens placed between the eye and the observed reality.
I haven’t overlooked the leap between metaphor and model — I’m truly convinced that one could develop a similar framework drawn from photographic expertise, mastery, far beyond the metaphor.
Photography is a remarkably broad theoretical and formal field — there’s a lot of stuff to draw from.
Again, it would have different potential than the rational decomposition typical of block-based models. Maybe it is not the best mindset for decomposable knowledge (systems modeling, reasoning modeling, for example).
Here I should call upon the support of a photographer with great experience — someone who has gone beyond heuristics and principles, and would be able to clearly explain how their mind works before, during, and after taking a shot. How they translate their idea about the world into an image with that meaning, or how they capture a theory into a complete portfolio o photobook.
Just as, quite naturally — since that’s my line of work — I’ve brought much of OOP into Zettelkasten.
It’s an idea that fascinates me, but at the moment I don’t have the resources to devote to it
My message is meant as a note of encouragement for those who don’t feel comfortable with block-based models: if framing comes more naturally to you, give it a try and share your experience
It is analytically impossible to move beyond level 2, because photography is not dealing with knowledge. You only can move to level 3 if you become the scuba diver. Another term is "first principle thinking" that describes what you have to do.
Level 2 outcomes can be amazing. I was, for example, impressed by the clarity of thinking that Morgan shows in her video with her mother. But there are natural talents that can party, do drugs and still fight on the highest level in MMA. That doesn't mean that this is sound practice to just stop at level 2.
Heuristics and metaphors will only take you to a certain point. The problem with your encouragement is that leaning towards what feels comfortable is creating the very stagnation that many experience.
The notes you are writing (more precisely: you can write) are a tight correlate of the quality of your thinking. In this section, I wrote about this:
Avoiding mastering the building blocks means avoiding developing critical thinking and system thinking skills. Critical thinking is term for one's ability to observe and create the flow of truth from empirical evidence, arguments to one's opinion. System thinking is a term for one's ability to observe patterns of feedback loops, relationship of wholes and parts and make sense of complexity.
I am a Zettler
(I translate using chatgpt, too long...)
mmm, no I don't think it is true. Photographers with their work observe, identify, model, and need to represent aspects of both of the "world" and their mind, using their particular language. And with this work can trasfer their capture and development to other or themselves in the future. It is dealing with knowledge. Different from other approaches, but it is knowledge. The derivable part by the observed reality, the part involved during the process, including the own photographer’s intentions, and finally what remains as the photo’s meaning and how it will be interpreted by whoever looks at it. That’s a lot of stuff
Good photographers are scuba drivers. They don't watch, they think. There is a relevant thought, involved during the process and represented by the photo, when a photo is taken (and also when it’s decided that it’s not worth taking or it’s discarded after made).
Photography is another process that let you observe, model and represent the world (and adding the author’s reflections and ideas). Physical world, if we consider "conventional" photography, but it should be simple to translate that "framing process" to metaphysical field, using an abstract camera.
The evidence that photography doesn’t stop at level 2 is simply that photographers that don’t take photos at level 2 (at least the good ones don’t) exist. They go well beyond that. Even in my experience as a mediocre photographer, it’s not enough to just know and apply a handful of heuristics and principles — that’s merely the beginning of the path toward mastery, not the highest aspiration.
I probably haven’t managed — and still can’t manage — to explain what I have in mind clearly enough.
I’ll try to express it, in the future, with something much more solid in hand, but I need to work on it a bit. I have to turn ideas and intuitions into a structure that is not only solid, but above all clear. It’s a stimulating challenge.
Let me give a brief preview, an anticipation, though.
To have a meaningful discussion, it’s necessary to structure it in an orderly way, developing at least the following points:
At the actual stage, I’ve gathered strong clues — from the experiences I’ve had in the three worlds I’ve practiced — that make me believe that the photographer, in their craft, undergoes an evolution similar to that of the other two figures (the modeler and the developer). The beginner approaches photography by “learning it from the camera’s instruction manual” , then begins to acquire simple rules and apply them mechanically without understanding them. The next step is to understand the reasons behind the rules and start applying them consciously (even knowing when to break them) as principles. The photographers can further evolve by learning and developing higher-order models beyond simple heuristics, and ultimately reach mastery — being able to see photographs directly within their flow of thought.
And in all our discussion about levels, I also think we’ve forgotten that there is a level beyond mastery — that of "genius". The level at which an author not only performs their modeling at the highest level, but also affects reality itself by creating something really new, never seen. And the photographer, like the other figures, can rise to that level too.
Personally, I find it stimulating to identify the elements of this journey.
All three figures, after all, observe a reality and simultaneously reduce it into a model, following their own working framework, and they can reach the same levels doing that.
As I said, I’ll take some time to develop all these points — I believe it’s going to be a long process.
Probably, but there are important points to consider:
I'm wondering if anyone else is reading this exchange of ideas (which is very valuable to me)
I don't get why you are that insistent on such an idea. You are not dealing with my individual points. This is the core issue:
You have to directly deal with knowledge itself. Anything else is not sufficient to reach level 3.
Being the scuba diver means that you directly deal with the elements of knowledge.
If anyone can point to my fallacy or the misunderstanding, I'd be happy.
I am a Zettler
Are you convinced that photography doesn’t deal with knowledge? That taking photographs is purely an exercise of eyes and fingers?
That’s not a problem for me.
We simply start from two different visions of that world.
Photography is a language, is a way of modeling world, has models, photos have meanings, they can express interpretation of reality, author feelings, and even both in the same frame.
Honestly, I don’t understand the arrogance of a post like that.
I’m not attacking the proposal you presented. I’m not invalidating it.
Your value is safe.
I’m trying to have a conversation to see if something else interesting might emerge.
If it annoys you, I’m sorry; for me, it was still useful, and I remain happy.
I might have made some imperfect logical arguments, but honestly, who cares?
1) We don’t share the same cultural background, we don’t speak the same language, we’re dealing with a complex topic. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and different perceptions of aspects that don’t mix well seem normal to me. It's not like talking about milk and coffee.
2) I’m not a philosopher; I’m someone who is enjoying developing a practical model to improve their own practice.I can tolerate very well both the roughness of other people's ideas and, above all, my own. Even partial ones could work perfectly fine; I just need to write notes, not the Bible.
3) If there aren’t any valid ideas, someone can discard them, trusting your authority.
Perhaps someone else, starting from my mistaken ones, will develop better ideas.
It is all an approximation. even yours. There is no scuba diver of knowledge.
We are trying to reach models. Simplifications.
Anyway, if the problem is the scuba diver, there can be the photographer above the water’s surface and the underwater photographer. They really see very different worlds, not in a metaphorical way, and this happens because scuba photographer has a really different mindset from the amateur above the water. The quality of his pictures reflect his cognitive skills.
I'm expressing ideas emerged during a random conversation in an online forum. Not a work developed in years of study and practice of that model. Not a refined product to sell.
We can stop here. Amen.
@andang76 said:
I have been away for some weeks, but I just now skimmed the discussion above. On the issue of photography, I am reminded of what I said to @GeoEng51 last month in a comment about a disanalogy between aerial photos and granularity of knowledge: from the position of the human viewer of the photograph (not the photographer), the photo is uninterpreted visual data, not the kind of knowledge (interpreted conceptual structures/systems) that we put in our ZK. (By the way, we could include cinematography, video production, in the analysis as well. Most digital cameras today can record videos as well as photos.)
I was reminded of the book description of Luciano Floridi's book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design (Oxford UP, 2019), which uses the contrast between photography versus conceptual knowledge:
(Contra that last sentence, I tend to define representation more broadly in a way that includes conceptual models, but Floridi's point is clear enough in context.)
Photographers use conceptual (and other kinds of) knowledge when they create photos. But for the viewer, a photo is uninterpreted visual data upon which the viewer has to perform cognitive operations to extract conceptual knowledge. Photographers who wish to communicate a specific message (i.e. who are visual communication designers) therefore have to know to how reduce the ambiguity in the visual data they are producing, using the kind of principles to which @andang76 alluded above, in the example of documenting lions. This is similar to what we do when we communicate using speech or writing, but it is dissimilar enough that using one mode of communication as an analogy for the other can obscure as much as it reveals.
To reach a "level 4" understanding of the relation between photography and writing, you need models that are general enough to explain both of them, and you can find such models in semiotics, which studies types of signs and systemic cognitive operations with signs.1
An example that comes to mind is how Frederik Stjernfelt, elaborating on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce, showed how diagrammatic reasoning operations are involved in two Peircean types of signs: (1) icons and (2) symbols. See: Frederik Stjernfelt (2007). "Moving pictures of thought: diagrams as centerpiece of a Peircean epistemology". In: Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics (pp. 89–116). Dordrecht; London: Springer. I don't know what is the best general textbook on semiotics today. ↩︎
I have to rush out and I only noticed this little piece. I’m writing immediately, otherwise I’ll lose the thought.
Your observation about the photography seen from an external observer is correct, but for me the same principle applies to written notes.
I consider one of my own written notes a true zettel, while a note written by Luhman, a fragment of text. Information to reprocess. There could be the same asimmetry.
A photo, for the photographer themselves, is equivalent to a zettel.
Photography and writing are both ways of fixing into a permant support what primarily resides in our head, and both language; I’m not sure if they are exactly equally powerful, but at least of the same order of magnitude. final form could be considered and transfered as information, but during the process at least one mind (the author's) is involved, two if that image is shared with another one.
I’ll read the rest tonight :-)
@andang76 said:
If a zettel is just a paper card or slip with some marks on it, then yes, a small printed photo really is equivalent to a zettel. I don't see any point in trying to argue against that.
If a zettel is a knowledge atom, a fundamental element of a level-3-and-above conceptual system with types of knowledge building blocks, then you would have to do more work to show that such types exist for photos, and that your photos conform to such types and combine to form a system. I think that this perhaps could be shown, but I am not sure of it. I guess that the types of atoms would be different for photos because photos are not symbols in the usual (e.g. Peircean) semiotic sense unless they are (unusually) being used as such. There are photos that are uninterpretable by anyone and that therefore could not possibly be zettels in this sense, whereas if someone writes just a single word, that is already interpretable as a symbol by anyone who has learned that word.
Oh, yes, of course.
It’s a long journey.
I’ve sketched out several reflections (some of which I had already made in the past), and I’ve found a number of ideas that caught my attention — including those you highlighted.
At this point, my reflections lead me to believe that some “types” belong to both models, while others seem new or different.
For those I feel are present in both, I mainly suspect that it’s actually me, not a photographer, who perceives them that way, since I’m projecting my own experience as a Zettelkasten practitioner onto them. But I think it’s quite likely that a photographer aims for the same kind of outcomes (for instance, "discovering or showing a derived truth" is a common goal for a professional). If I manage to talk to a photographer, and they say, “I learned it like this / let me explain it this way,” and I recognize the same structure I use in the Zettelkasten — that’s interesting; but if they’ve internalized it in a completely different way, that’s even more interesting.
Right now, I enjoy developing thoughts across all three scenarios:
I find all three hypotheses fascinating, and I’m certain that a photographer doesn’t “shoot randomly” if they have a purpose.
Regarding your last point, I can add that photo still can use a private purpose.
I believe that both a zettel (and a photo) should have, as a very strict requirement, the quality of being consistently meaningful at least to its author.
If it isn’t interpretable even by its creator, it’s useless and should be discarded.
Being readable by others is a requirement of a public system (which, for instance, mine is not).
I assume that interpretability by the author is always a given; otherwise, that note or photo is something not worth keeping at all.
But of course, as you pointed out, even a photo with no meaning for a public should be discarded, if that photo was intended for the public.
Another thing that I can add regarding this aspect, often it's not a matter of the single photo, but the complete work (the entire set), the purpose of that work, and the inner state of author and viewer.
For example, if two civil engineers exchange a photo of a small crack in a wall, it could be very meaningful to them, whereas I would almost certainly find it meaningless — I wouldn’t know how to interpret it. It’s true that some photos might not be immediately readable, but the real difference could lie in the context of reference or in how they are interpreted as part of a set of photos.
Most of my (limited) photographic knowledge, unfortunately, has long since faded.
To do serious work, I’d have to relearn photography — or rather, become really skilled in it.
Doing an acceptable work probably exceeds the time I have available, but in full bottom-up Zettelkasten spirit, if I develop ideas along the way, I’ll collect them — one at a time.
Even if no complete theory comes out of it, that doesn’t matter much: I’m already noticing that the journey itself is worthwhile.
Yes. My first purpose could be understanding how the photographer's mind work, and how translates his ideas to images.
Having done this, I could consider the common things I find in both photographer and zettelkasten (not the all photographer model), in order to create a “common shared model”; then, if there is something useful that could be transferred from one to the other, trying this; and not least the relevant differences, to better understand the limits and peculiarities of all the tools at play and to avoid distortions.
One of the many peculiarites that emerges quite clearly is exactly the one you indicated.
A single photo could be either barely interpretable or, on the contrary, multi-meaning (polysemous, in english?). For example, a photo of a lion eating a gazelle could literally mean “the lion is eating the gazelle,” (a fact, maybe) or “the lion’s typical prey is the gazelle,” or “the lion is carnivorous.” This is an aspect that the photographer must anticipate, guiding the correct interpretation by placing the photo in a broader context.
That apparently silly example about lions has much to say.
A newly taken and observed lion photograph could generate the intuition to go look for the next shot, something unplanned.
Another interesting thing is that the experience gained during shooting and evaluating photos tends to teach the photographer themselves how to move and act more effectively in order to capture better shots. Photographer has to align his behaviour to the animal behaviour during the work. So, taking photos over time influences the process itself. It’s something similar to a double feedback loop. For me, these are very interesting aspects to grasp.
How a photographer has internalized things like "how do I effectively capture the essential behaviour of a wild animal with a bunch of shot, in a sound way?" is one of my many questions to answer. That answer has a form, still don't know why, but it exists. I already take into account that it might be something we already know, but who knows.
An internalization could be: 'I need to capture what it eats, how it reproduces, how it communicates, the male/female/offspring dimorphism, his hideouts.' It could be this schematic (I don’t think so trivial form), or it could be an open model, or definitely more sophisticated.
This seems like a straw man to me. Saying that photography isn't a framework for first principles of knowledge doesn't imply that it is mindless.
Photography doesn't deal with knowledge, or it would be the philosophy of knowledge, the aesthetics of knowledge, the ethics of knowledge, etc.
Photography deals with a certain visual art.
There is knowledge that can be visualised, there is knowledge on how to visualise, etc. But that doesn't mean that photography is aiming at knowledge itself, which would be necessary to reach level 3, going to first principles.
Think about me trying to argue that boxing is a framework to reach level 3 of photography. Instead of ratios, focus, backdrop and such terms, I am insisting that I can think from first principles to create photos by jabs, blocks and side-steps.
The whole point of level 3 is leaving heuristics behind and directly address what you are working with. This is why it is analytically impossible for photography providing a level 3 framework for knowledge (as said above two times) and vice versa.
Photography is surely a good source for supporting concepts to the first principles. It may be a great source on how to present knowledge. But unless anyone can show that photography deals with the first principles of knowledge, you can't reach level 3 understanding for knowledge.
@Andy made a very good point:
The levels are based on a rough scale for understanding:
This is why @Andy's point was very good. He addressed the first principles on how to bridge the gap between two domains.
Sure. Nobody is denying that.
I don't see any arrogance, since I don't put any value judgement on you or me.
I am just baffled that you are insisting on the idea that photography holds an alternative set of concepts that could be an alternative to concepts that are specifically aimed at what we are dealing with: knowledge.
I don't know the reason why you are not addressing the individual points I am making. So, I think we are talking past each other.
Never assumed that.
I am not annoyed with that. Rather, I am impatient, because I make points that you don't care to address. But this would be necessary for collaborative thinking. So, I get the impression that you aren't in the mode of collaborative thinking.
I am a Zettler
You have absolutely no idea what photography is (this statement makes it clear), yet at the same time you presume to know its limits. That’s enough for me. I won’t read and write any more posts on the subject. I'm wasting my time.
I can suggest that you apply first principles thinking to understand photography, instead of just talking about it. And if you’ve already done that and these are the results, you might want to reconsider its effectiveness.
Then please point me to a source that help me out of my ignorance.
I am a Zettler