Saint Augustine instructs Francesco Petrarch on the ZKM
Critique my zettel.
This one is an atomized idea from my reading of _Manguel, Alberto. A history of reading. 2014. _ It is longish at 436 words and includes AI help with translation, a Wikipedia link, the relevant quote, and my assimilation into my ZK. With your help, it can be improved.
The content of this note might be of interest to those who like to follow the history of what has evolved to become the ZKM.
Let me know what you think of the form and the content of this note. Do you have any questions? I frantically created it yesterday. The energy of the idea was brain-boffing, mind-mashing, and the incarnation of amazing.
UUID: ›[[202311152018]]
cdate: 11-15-2023 08:18 PM
tags: #proofing #zettelkasting #note-taking #history
Mid 1300s ZKM Advice
Subatomic: A very early take on reading and the ZKM by St. Augustine.
Beauty
I find this interesting because... It shows the idea of the zettelkasten is an old idea.
- Acquire Knowledge From Readings [[202311042102]]
- The purpose of taking notes is to gain a deep understanding of what you’ve read.
Translate from Latin to English Secretum meum
The Latin phrase "Secretum meum" translates to "My secret" in English. This phrase is associated with Francesco Petrarch's work "Secretum" or "My Secret Book," which is a trilogy of dialogues in Latin written by Petrarch between 1342 and 1353. The work explores Petrarch's inner conflicts and self-examination during a critical period of his life, providing insights into his thoughts and beliefs.
- It is Solved By Walking [[202208310751]]
- Enlightenments from Lives on the Road by Paul Theroux
In the Secretum Meum(My Secret Book), Petrarch (under his Christian name, Francesco) and Saint Augustine sit and talk in a garden. There is a dialog between Saint Augustine and the Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch. 1
Augustine: This manner of reading is now quite common; there’s such a mob of lettered men… but if you’d jot down a few notes in their proper place, you’d easily be able to enjoy the fruit of your reading.
Francesco: What kind of notes do you mean?
Augustine: Whenever you read a book and come across any wonderful phrases that you feel stir or delight your soul, don’t merely trust the power of your intelligence, [[202112071618]] but force yourself to learn them by heart and make them familiar by meditating on them, so that whenever an urgent case of affliction arises, you’ll have the remedy ready as if it were written in your mind. When you come to any passages that seem to you useful, make a firm mark against them, which may serve as lime in your memory less otherwise, they might fly away. 2
Petrarch's interpretation of Augustine's ideas suggests a new way of reading. Instead of using a book to support one's thoughts or blindly trusting, we can extract ideas, phrases, or images from reading and connect them with similar ones from other texts. Adding personal reflections, the reader can create new and novel ideas unique to them.[@manguel:2014 63]
- How-to: Read And Extract Ideas From Non-fiction [[202105121729]]
PKM vs Personal Journaling §[[202311160751]]
- Clarify the purpose of the ZK, developing a hybrid synergy of knowledge and experience. You can keep knowledge work separate from personal journaling but link ideas back and forth. #ZK_ChatGPT
Habitually reviewing notes yields rewards [[202305050616]]
- Magic is created with repetitive regular reviews, expanding the ideas expressed in notes.
––––
Works Cited
- The History of Reading [[202311151742]]
- Manguel, Alberto. A history of reading. 2014.
-
Petrarch, Secretum meum, II, in Prose, ed. Guido Martellotti et al. (Milan, 1951). ↩︎
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
@Will Thanks! I very much like this Zettel, particularly the historical context.
As an aside, the idea expressed in your zettel runs a strong parallel to the idea of not just hearing a concept and liking it, but also doing something about it, to ingrain it into your being. I just happened to be reading about that a couple of days ago, in James 1:22-25.
You can take that in its spiritual context or generalize it into any aspect of your life. It's worth a zettel on my end, connecting the two concepts. A serendipitous meeting of two ideas - thanks!
Exposure in General Physics
My first exposure to James 1:22 was in a General Physics class taught by a stern professor, who slowly repeated the passage at the beginning of the first class. It was intimidating and paralyzing for someone so shy and uncertain of his abilities. I have never been religious, but the moralizing tone of the professor and even the warning in the class handout suggesting that those who do not master physics are a menace to society left me terrified that ending up on the wrong side of the tracks was only a failure away. Years later, James 1:22 became one of my favorite Biblical passages. I strive to live up to it in my work.
GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.
Commenting without the context of the rest of the quoted text, but does it really suggest a "new way of reading" historically? Florilegia and commonplacing were regular practices amongst the learned. Similarly the canons of rhetoric included a heavy reliance on memory and in religious contexts readers where regularly marking passages (often with Greek letters or manicules (literally an index!)) and using ars memoria (the art of memory) to commit passages to memory for later contemplation and meditation. Raymond Llull was certainly doing this sort of thing in the 11th century. Frances Yates (University of Chicago Press, 1966) is usually the canonical reference here, but Mary Carruthers's work will have something useful to say regarding these timelines with respect to the 4th canon of rhetoric and mediation as well.
I appreciate the spirit of your zettel (at least the portions which I have the context to judge), but I'm not sure you've got all the evidence to support all your claims. The quote certainly does provide an interesting piece for underpinning a larger argument.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
Content
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Schlagwörter
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On the level of the content: I agree with @chrisaldrich that the note is not about the Zettelkasten Method but about some other idea. However, the core idea of the Zettelkasten is to build a coherent system. It is a remarkable different idea compared to common place books or non-Luhmannian Zettelkastens. So, keep in mind that the very idea to create an actual system and not just a systematic collection is exemplified by Luhmann. Not every note box with paper slips in it is a Zettelkasten. In a way, Luhmann's Zettelkasten and other note collection are as different as a horse and a car. Both are means for transportation. But there is a qualitative difference between using something powered by a living being and a machine.
I am a Zettler
@Will said:
"Force yourself to learn them by heart and make them familiar by meditating on them" is a principle common to many wisdom traditions or religions. I guess Augustine was following long tradition here. Standardized chants, prayers, psalms, gathas, etc., whatever their other functions, serve to deeply internalize phrases. If you're interested in deeply learning certain phrases by heart, you could try not just writing them but also practice reciting them out loud regularly at standard times when they would be relevant: before sitting down to work, etc.
@chrisaldrich, thanks for taking the time to read and respond. Your comments are helpful. I'm not well-versed in history or religion, but I'm enjoying reading Alberto Manguel's book, A History of Reading which focuses on both. Manguel doesn't make the claim that this is the earliest suggestion of the type of reading. It was me who made that mistake.
Yes, this is overreaching in the sense that it implies historically the first instance of a way of reading. I'll rephrase this.
I am curious about how reading and exchanging ideas developed in the Eastern world.
Your comment inspires me to pay more attention to citing and clarifying my claims.
Thank you.
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
@Sascha, thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my humble attempt at zettelkasting. Your comments have inspired me to spend more time with this idea. You are correct that this is not about the modern idea of the ZKM. It is a precursor, though.
I try to express the core idea with the tagline Subatomic. in this case "A very early take on reading and the ZKM by St. Augustine."
I'm rewriting it
"St. Augustine gives a thesis for marking and connection ideas "otherwise, they might fly away."
How's this for a title that characterizes the note?
"Historical Reference to Marking and Connecting Ideas While Reading"
I don't have many notes on history, so I thought of tagging and tracking them. It might not be a typical way, but it's my way.
True, true, true. I have to also give 'back link' context. This will take some work.
Yes, I, too, agree. Thinking about it now, I was a bit overzealous, and this was more than a little 'click-baity.'
The other idea, you refer to, is the fresh wording of the importance of idea capture while reading. How meditating on them incorporates them into your life. This is what is the core of this note's expression.
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
@Andy, thank you for sharing a moment of your time. I value your comments.
How did this tradition play out in the Eastern world?
Manguel has a chapter in his book "Being Read To" that goes into the personal and historical depth of both reading out loud and being read to. He has another chapter, "The Silent Readers," where he discusses the transition in the religious community of the 'mumblers' reading aloud while transcribing to the quiet rooms of the scribes.
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
I've generally found that this is much easier to do when it's an area you tend to specialize in and want to delve ever deeper (or on which you have larger areas within your zettelkasten) versus those subjects which you care less about or don't tend to have as much patience for.
Perhaps it's related to the System 1/System 2 thinking of Kahneman/Tversky? There are only some things that seem worth System 2 thinking/clarifying/citing and for all the rest one relies on System 1 heuristics. I find that the general ease of use of my zettelkasten (with lots of practice) allows me to do a lot more System 2 thinking than I had previously done, even for areas which I don't care as much about.
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
@Will said:
I'm not a scholar of this, but I can google like anyone, so I googled memorizing + sutras and found, among other things, a 2015 article by David Drewes, "Oral Texts in Indian Mahāyāna", that "argues that like the texts of other pre-modern Indian religious traditions, Mahāyāna sūtras were primarily used orally and mnemically". The article argues for its thesis with meticulous close readings of texts but doesn't say much or anything about the purpose of memorization, apart from its importance in transmitting the text between non-literate people ("it is not clear that many early Mahāyāna authors would even have known how to read or write"). In contrast, the famous modern Mahāyāna monk Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the psychological purpose of oral recitation, which makes sense in a literate world where memorization is not necessary for transmission of the text. But even the early Mahāyāna Buddhists must have conceived, like Augustine, of the memorized phrase as a "ready remedy" for afflictions, given the centrality of the teaching-as-medicine metaphor in the Buddhist traditions?
Drewes has an interesting remark that's relevant to the silent versus vocal reading distinction:
Augustine refers to marking (or noting) ideas but not connecting them. Not unless one equivocates on the meaning of connecting, in one instance, having an idea ready to remediate future afflictions--connecting reading and possible future uses, and in the other instance, joining notes.
GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.
@ZettelDistraction, you are right on target. I'm the one who extended St. Augustine's advice to the idea of connecting ideas. It wasn't there in the original. My bad.
My new title: "St. Augustine's Reference to Capturing Reading Annotations."
How do you suppose "liming" your memory keeps the passages from flying away?
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Doggerel removed.
GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.
The reference is actually to birdlime:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdlime
LOL. That's it from me: no more doggerel. Birdlime completely changes the meaning. Ideas read once are more like birds that fly away than bricks and stones--so much for historical accuracy.
GitHub. Erdős #2. CC BY-SA 4.0. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein.
You and me both! This is what I get for hanging around with real historians and people who operate above my pay grade.
Will Simpson
I must keep doing my best even though I'm a failure. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
My knowledge of this comes more from literature. The idea of trapping using deception appealed very much to the minds of people like Shakespeare and Chaucer. There is a reference to lime somewhere in Othello, and I'm sure you could find it in other authors. Of course, eating small birds for food was more common in ages past than it is now that we have massive beef and other meat production. But I still remember when I lived in Italy that I visited a restaurant out in the countryside that had small birds on the menu (polenta e osei).