Summarizing tightly coupled if-then ideas

Mummel

This isn't a question of atomicity so much as what does and doesn't go in the cabinet in the first place. Despite reading quite a lot about ZK systems, this seems really fundamental and I'm not getting it. I might be misunderstanding the purpose of a ZK entirely.

I have to read philosophical essays. Philosophy is a bit unique academically in that it's "primary units of thought" aren't particularly "atomic" facts about the world that can be paired down into index card sized notes. They're (often poorly written) rants where ideas stretch over several pages or whole chapters of a book. They only make sense if you're aware of their context, and their context is itself usually pretty complicated.

Reading that sort of thing is hard which is why I started thinking about note-taking methods in the first place. Scrunching ideas down so that they fit in my head all at once is the only way to process books like this.

So I end up with summaries. Gigantic files where I've compressed the actual thought process in the text. I need these. I could split them up by section or something, but the structure of the original text is important in itself.

It seems like zettelkasten as an idea is fundamentally opposed to long-form summarizing like this. The expectation seems to be that if there's any rote facts for you to reference, you're either putting a dictionary definition in a ZK note or just doing a bibliographic reference (on the assumption that you already have what's being referenced in your head). This can't possibly be right. It seems totally backwards. What am I missing?

GeoEng51

@Mummel
I feel your pain, but I also think you must have a very over-simplified idea about the components of a Zettelkasten and how it works. However, I'm not the right person to tackle answering your question - I believe @Sascha could give you much better advice.

Edmund

@Mummel said:
It seems like zettelkasten as an idea is fundamentally opposed to long-form summarizing like this. The expectation seems to be that if there's any rote facts for you to reference, you're either putting a dictionary definition in a ZK note or just doing a bibliographic reference (on the assumption that you already have what's being referenced in your head). This can't possibly be right. It seems totally backwards. What am I missing?

How a workflow for a difficult philosophy essay might look like:

1. Read & make a long literature note (your gigantic file, preserving original structure, context, flow). This is essential.

2. After finishing the essay, go back through that literature note and extract 3–12 “atomic-ish” notes—each capturing one claim, distinction, or argumentative move that you might want to link to other ideas later.

3. Write a structure note that lists those atomic notes in the original order, with short connective text. That structure note is your compressed map of the original’s rhetorical arc.

4. Keep the original long literature note as a reference. Don’t delete it. The ZK doesn’t replace the summary. It indexes it and allows you to recombine its pieces.

I also like to create „Exploration Maps“ to help me „seeing“ complicated structures on one page: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/3289/zettelkasten-exploration-maps

harr

@Mummel said:
So I end up with summaries. Gigantic files where I've compressed the actual thought process in the text. I need these. I could split them up by section or something, but the structure of the original text is important in itself.

Same here. I create a note for each source. These source notes can get really long. It works for me, because it's a good tool to really understand a source. I keep those notes in my zettelkasten.

@Mummel said:
It seems like zettelkasten as an idea is fundamentally opposed to long-form summarizing like this.

Depends on who you ask. Not everybody has the same opinion on this.

@Mummel said:
The expectation seems to be that if there's any rote facts for you to reference, you're either putting a dictionary definition in a ZK note or just doing a bibliographic reference (on the assumption that you already have what's being referenced in your head). This can't possibly be right. It seems totally backwards. What am I missing?

You're missing that this process does work for some people. Many years ago Sascha wrote: "I generally don't link to definitions because I expect me to know all the definitions."

You're missing that some people combine Zettelkasten with other tools. They write and sometimes even archive reading notes, but they do it outside their actual zettelkastens.

Sascha

@Mummel said:
This isn't a question of atomicity so much as what does and doesn't go in the cabinet in the first place. Despite reading quite a lot about ZK systems, this seems really fundamental and I'm not getting it. I might be misunderstanding the purpose of a ZK entirely.

I have to read philosophical essays. Philosophy is a bit unique academically in that it's "primary units of thought" aren't particularly "atomic" facts about the world that can be paired down into index card sized notes. They're (often poorly written) rants where ideas stretch over several pages or whole chapters of a book. They only make sense if you're aware of their context, and their context is itself usually pretty complicated.

Reading that sort of thing is hard which is why I started thinking about note-taking methods in the first place. Scrunching ideas down so that they fit in my head all at once is the only way to process books like this.

So I end up with summaries. Gigantic files where I've compressed the actual thought process in the text. I need these. I could split them up by section or something, but the structure of the original text is important in itself.

It seems like zettelkasten as an idea is fundamentally opposed to long-form summarizing like this. The expectation seems to be that if there's any rote facts for you to reference, you're either putting a dictionary definition in a ZK note or just doing a bibliographic reference (on the assumption that you already have what's being referenced in your head). This can't possibly be right. It seems totally backwards. What am I missing?

Let me ask some questions to clarify:

1. What is a typical example of a philosophical essay you are processing?
2. What is the exact scope of a "gigantic" file? (word count)

The Zettelkasten Method is agnostic towards the length of the note. I think that it is just about focussing each note on one unit of knowledge. Based on my theory of knowledge, a unit of knowledge is called a knowledge building block. This is what I hashed out in the guide to atomic note-taking

I am quite surprised that you encounter this problem in philosophy. My experience is that philosophical knowledge is easier to process into atomic notes because of the heavy focus on arguments.

So, I have a hunch that you are not processing individual arguments but complete and comprehensive lines of argumentation. However, I am waiting for your answers before I can dive deeper.

harr

@Mummel said:
This isn't a question of atomicity so much as what does and doesn't go in the cabinet in the first place. Despite reading quite a lot about ZK systems, this seems really fundamental and I'm not getting it. I might be misunderstanding the purpose of a ZK entirely.

The questions what goes in, what is the purpose of a zettelkasten and what does atomicity mean to you are related.

Niklas Luhmann had the perspective of "a permanent, open, thematically unlimited (only self-limiting) communication system" ("eines auf Dauer angelegten, offenen, thematisch nicht begrenzten (nur sich selbst begrenzenden) Kommunikationssystems").¹ The focus was on a particular form of interaction with the zettelkasten. He didn't mind "black holes".² Luhmann's notes weren't "atomic" in Sascha's or Christian's sense of the term.

Sascha's Zettelkasten has a different approach, especially in the more recent variants. His Zettelkasten is all about some kind of "atomicity" that reminds me of Taleb's "Platonicity": "the desire to cut reality into crisp shapes".³ In Sascha's own words: "Knowledge is organised in discrete building blocks called knowledge building blocks."

The tension between Luhmann's zettelkasten and later zettelkastens was summed up nicely by Nori after a coaching session with Sascha:

(…) 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 think you're struggling with a problem, that is quite common in conversations about "Zettelkasten". The word can mean pretty much anything to anybody. :-)

@Mummel said:
It seems like zettelkasten as an idea is fundamentally opposed to long-form summarizing like this.

I find it interesting that you talk about zettelkasten "as an idea". If you like to get "the idea" of something, then Sascha's approach could work for you. He doesn't keep reading notes in the "cabinet", but his system allows for various kinds of notes outside the zettelkasten. Recently he also wrote about "thinking notes".

---

1. Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/literatur/item/luhmann_1981_AB46 ↩︎

2. Niklas Luhmann‘s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine. https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475 ↩︎

3. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan. 2nd edition. 2010. Chapter 1, Section Clusters. ↩︎

Sascha

@harr said:
Sascha's Zettelkasten has a different approach, especially in the more recent variants. His Zettelkasten is all about some kind of "atomicity" that reminds me of Taleb's "Platonicity": "the desire to cut reality into crisp shapes".[^taleb2010] In Sascha's own words: "Knowledge is organised in discrete building blocks called knowledge building blocks."

This is not correct.

• If you are talking about my actual Zettelkasten: Atomicity is one of the possible guiding principles. I use multiple approaches on all levels of atomicity in practice. In my Zettelkasten, there are notes that are diary entries (for example: dreams that I have), scenes and story beats, streams of consciousness, etc.
• If you are talking about the flavor of the Zettelkasten Method, I am presenting: The skill of identifying and working with knowledge based on the idea of knowledge building blocks is a specific skill that is immensely helpful. But what I am presenting is not all about it. Atomicity Zealotry is unhelpful.

Please refrain from framing my work.

We may discuss this in another thread.

This thread is about helping @Mummel which needs a far more measured approach. So, either wait until @Mummel's problem is sufficiently solved or open another thread.