Why a Zettlekasten Has No Hierarchy

bone

At the top of a hierarchy one can find the hierarchy’s concept of truth. Is thinking possible without a hierarchy?

Hierarchy provides order; without it, there is disorder. How can disorder generate knowledge?
• A zettle has one or more references to its sources (hierarchy/ truth).
• A zettle without a source has relationships with other zettles (which do have sources) and with notes and productions.
In short, a zettle can prove its origin but is no longer part of it.

Each knowledge item in a hierarchy carries the entire history of its domain. Making this knowledge difficult to use.

Reliable knowledge is knowledge that is part of a hierarchy. It adheres to a concept of truth, gains social approval, and is created through approved and enforced processes and procedures that produce truth within the framework of a hierarchy.

To understand a knowledge item, the user must understand the hierarchy to which it belongs. Understanding something means knowing the essence of a complete hierarchy.

A knowledge item in a Zettlekasten becomes an independent knowledge unit. It acknowledges its origin but is no longer part of it, forming new connections instead. These connections maintain its reliability.

A new note causes disruption and chaos. It forces reflection and evaluation of existing knowledge items. The new note finds a place in the Zettlekasten if it shares meaning with the keyword that other zettles use or if it introduces a new keyword. The existing zettles determine its integration.

A knowledge item in a zettle must explain its relationships and establish new ones. On its own, outside a hierarchy, it has no meaning.

A knowledge item that wants to gain admission to a hierarchy must seek approval. The use of a knowledge item within a hierarchy is determined and limited by that hierarchy. The user can agree with it, introduce something new, or disagree with it—these are the possible interactions with a knowledge item that is part of a hierarchical structure.

One could argue that a knowledge element in a hierarchy can only make emotional relationships: compliant, antagonistic, or submissive.

Traditional notes are part of a subject’s hierarchy and are therefore difficult to manage. However, they can support learning.

In a Zettlekasten, the user gives meaning to the knowledge item.

This is why a Zettlekasten has no hierarchical structure. A zettle is a record of exploration.

When knowledge is sought with a direct goal, exploration becomes impossible.

Exploration challenges the Zettlekasten user to integrate each new piece of information into the system. Each zettle address is the result of thought and decision-making.

Examples of the way Niklaus Luhmann has used independent knowledge items; his concept of communication and his concept of autopoiesis.

31/3/2025

Andy

Welcome to the forum, @bone! I see you're interested in the questions of applied epistemology that we often discuss here, and it looks like you've shared some of your own thoughts.

I must admit that I'm perplexed by your first sentence: "At the top of a hierarchy one can find the hierarchy's concept of truth." Typically when we speak of a hierarchy, what is at the highest level of the hierarchy is not a "concept of truth" but the most general concept or category. See, for example, the entry on hierarchy in the Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization. As that article explains it, relations between items in a hierarchy are relations of subsumption. One can indeed establish such relations in a Zettelkasten. One can establish as many kinds of relations in a Zettelkasten as one wishes. However, it seems that typically when many people create a Zettelkasten, most of the relations between items (Zettels) are not well defined with a formal schema of any kind.

bone

Thanks for the welcome, @Andy. At the top of every hierarchy, one can find a truth concept. Take botany, for example. Why is it that within this hierarchy, one can find extensive information about trees—such as the nutritional facts of their fruits or nuts—but no mention of making cabinets? Within this hierarchy, it is normal to discuss nutrition but not carpentry. Is this a matter of logic or a truth concept?

To put this another way; the hierarchy in botany isn't illogical; it's just structured for a specific purpose. But it does reveal how truth is context-dependent and shaped by disciplinary boundaries. So in a way, hierarchies of knowledge can obscure certain connections, reinforcing particular "truth concepts" while ignoring others.

Andy

@bone said:

At the top of every hierarchy, one can find a truth concept.

On first reading, I still don't understand what you mean by "a truth concept" that would be "at the top of every hierarchy", so I'm going to think through this "out loud". When I hear the term "concept of truth", I think of a concept as defined in some theory of truth. A hierarchy as a purely formal structure doesn't entail any theory of truth, and so doesn't entail any concept of truth. So you can't be talking about a hierarchy as a purely formal structure. I think a purely formal approach to hierarchy is the one that will be most useful for thinking about organizing a Zettelkasten, but let's continue to engage below with your substantive conception of hierarchy.

Take botany, for example. Why is it that within this hierarchy, one can find extensive information about trees—such as the nutritional facts of their fruits or nuts—but no mention of making cabinets? Within this hierarchy, it is normal to discuss nutrition but not carpentry. Is this a matter of logic or a truth concept?

Who says that cabinet-making/carpentry has no place in a hierarchical classification of botanical subjects? In fact, there is a place for that subject in economic botany, which would be a subclass of botany! But this is a question of relevance, or even merely a question of convention, not a question of truth. Now, there could be questions of truth when creating a hierarchical classification of botanical subjects—such as: Is it true that cabinets are made of wood?—but these are questions that are asked when classifying any item; such questions are not "found at the top of every hierarchy".

To put this another way; the hierarchy in botany isn't illogical; it's just structured for a specific purpose. But it does reveal how truth is context-dependent and shaped by disciplinary boundaries. So in a way, hierarchies of knowledge can obscure certain connections, reinforcing particular "truth concepts" while ignoring others.

If you follow my thinking above, truth is typically not "context-dependent and shaped by disciplinary boundaries". You could use the same concept of truth when asking questions about the classification of any item in any discipline/context, when that concept of truth is relevant.

You may want to find a better term than "concept of truth" for what you are trying to describe.

zk_1000

Most of what you attribute to hierarchy is true for any type of connection. Hierarchy provides a perspective to look at things in a certain way. You can form hierarchies in your Zettelkasten if you want, however, thinking is possible without hierarchy by looking at things from another angle.

Andy

I agree that the metaphor of different perspectives is helpful here, and @zk_1000 said it in an elegantly simple way.

Since I always have to make things more complicated than necessary with a reference to the literature, I will add that the perspective metaphor is also used in the article on the notion of knowledge organization system in the Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization, which discusses the notion of "classificatory perspectivism". That article says (emphasis added):

There could be many different ways to classify and divide it [the world] into discrete parts [...] Although recognizing the perspectival (i.e. not a priori) nature of all types of relations (something that, of course, reflects a specific theoretical view), it is also supposed that, depending on the conceptual features of the terms involved, different relations show different degrees of "stability" [...] and that by virtue of this they can play different roles in KO [knowledge organization]. For example, whereas logically based relations, such as genus-species (e.g. Arthropoda / insects), are particularly useful for allowing automated applications (which require inheritance properties), and achieving semantic interoperability (which usually involves mapping between the terms/concepts of different KOSs), relations that function more contingently, like "perspective" hierarchies (e.g. agricultural pests / insects or disease carriers / insects), could instead provide contexts that specify the viewpoint from which a given topic/subject is considered, enhancing the expressiveness of the system (Svenonius 2004). Pluralism is here integrative because it is acknowledged that the standpoints of both logic and perspectivism (usually seen as conflicting) are significant for KO. They could complement one to another and as such be, at least pragmatically, integrated. Generally speaking, on one hand, without logic it would be difficult to identify common or stable language/conceptual structures. On the other hand, without a hermeneutical attitude it would be difficult to grasp historical or contextual information.

Hierarchical and nonhierarchical relations, and relations with different degrees of stability, "could complement one to another and as such be, at least pragmatically, integrated" in a Zettelkasten.

JasperMcFly

Luhmann just said he fit a new note behind the one it was most associated with (local fit) and that the position of the note relative to any other should not lead one to construe by its position that it was any more or any less important than any other note (no privileged position), thus the slip box is a free, open, heterarchical network of ideas.

Andy

The Wikipedia article on heterarchy notes:

A heterarchy may be orthogonal to a hierarchy, subsumed to a hierarchy, or it may contain hierarchies; the two kinds of structure are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each level in a hierarchical system is composed of a potentially heterarchical group.

At times in the original post, @bone seems to assume that hierarchy and heterarchy are mutually exclusive, which would be the reason why "a Zettelkasten has no hierarchy". However, as both my first comment and the Wikipedia article on heterarchy point out, this need not be the case: a heterarchy may contain hierarchies.

JasperMcFly

Agree, can have hierarchy within. Anytime Luhmann had a note with essentially bullet points and wanted to pursue each item in more detail he would write a red letter on each point and then append that letter to a nearby note to continue that sub-point. See ZK I note 17,11e for example- it arrays out to 17,11eA, 17,11eB etc. I feel like that is a little hierarchy.

ZettelDistraction

@bone said:
When knowledge is sought with a direct goal, exploration becomes impossible.

So much for literature searches. A bone of contention. Perhaps you refer to motivated reasoning.