Luhmann's random browsing
In @Sascha's nice translation of “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen” (much thanks!), Luhmann speaks much of randomness in ways that are not clear to me. I've read somewhere that I can no longer find – bad note-taker! bad! – that Luhmann would sometimes browse the Zettelkasten with no fixed purpose, moving about it more-or-less at random to see what his "communication partner had to say." Does anyone have a citation or pointer to more details?
One thing Luhmann says in "Kommunikation" is that a good communication partner should be able to surprise you. I doubt that means he was surprised at what card 17.a3b8 contained, so much that his browsing process caused him to make a new connection between two cards that had perhaps never been considered together before. Plausible?
Thanks.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Some dynamics have been highlighted in this discussion:
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2868/kommunikationspartner
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/3045/on-the-search-for-the-ghost-in-the-box
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while in the past, and I believe I’ve identified several dynamics behind why this happens. Personally, I think they can be grouped into two main families. To summarize roughly:
When a Zettelkasten reaches a critical mass (in terms of ideas and connections), it tends to become a complex system. And in a complex system, behaviors cannot all be predicted from its internal components and/or from the system’s past behavior.
(To put it very simply) In a complex system, the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, because the overall behavior emerges from nonlinear interactions that cannot be reduced to or predicted by analyzing the individual components separately. In the context of our case, we might say (again, greatly simplifying) that a single zettel on its own should show what we have planned for it at the moment of writing, but when combined with others it begins to display behaviors we did not foresee and could not have predicted. In particular, as it comes into contact with other zettels over time, it takes on unexpected directions.
Just to give a very simple example: if yesterday I inserted a note A and today I reread what I did, I expected the effect would only be rereading the note itself. But I realize that this note, as it comes into contact with others during reading today, generates unforeseen effects—even to the point of reshaping an entire area of my Zettelkasten
The Zettelkasten is an intermediary with my past self — and that past self (the one who created and developed the notes at that specific time) can be a very different person from who I am today. Different experiences, different moods, different attitudes, different perceptual sensitivities, different needs. And this difference makes what we wrote in the past feel “different” to us. An Idea I've taken six months ago, It takes on a new light in my eyes, not because the idea has changed, but because I have changed. Even simply being in a different moment ourselves for a different task (when we write down ideas versus when we reread or want to reuse them) changes the way our brain works.
The line of thought I’ve developed over time is much longer and more elaborate, but I’ll only touch on it briefly here.
Essentially, the Zettelkasten “can surprise us” both because over time it becomes a complex system (that begins to show other emergent behaviours, too, not only chaotic behaviour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) and because it becomes the medium through which we interact with another person — a different version of ourselves, with a different internal state.
Luhmann, in his publication, spoke of communication occurring when two partners are different, and this can be said when there are different internal states.
And, in essence, having (a big) Zettelkasten, even two internal states change: that of network of zettels itself (due to its nature as a complex system, the network of zettels can behave differently in each interaction) and our own internal state (time variable and complex itself, too).
This “new discovery” doesn’t come for free: it requires us to engage directly with our written ideas, and browsing through our notes is perhaps the most effective way to re-engage with them.
Thanks.
Your comment about "it tends to become a complex system" makes me wonder about the connection between Zettelkasten and cybernetics, especially the British variant Andy Pickering writes about. Ashby's Law says (roughly) that a controlling system has to be as internally complicated as the system it controls.
With respect to Zettelkasten, we could say that it has an internal linking structure that's related to the linking structure encoded in the brain. I tend toward an associationist way of thinking about thinking, so that makes me think of the Zettelkasten as a means of controlling the less complex (forgetful of connections) brain.
Re: "An Idea I've taken six months ago, It takes on a new light in my eyes, not because the idea has changed, but because I have changed." Starting from the idea that our memories are not stored, but rather constructed as needed in the moment, I have an unthought-through notion that a particular notecard acts to generate an understanding rather than retrieve it. The new understanding is closely related to the original, but it's not the same.
I personally know little — actually nothing — about cybernetics (it’s a topic I’d like to explore further, and I’ll probably use your references as well). But, for example, my idea that the author of a Zettelkasten “is part of” the Zettelkasten in systemic terms — something I wrote in a discussion on the forum — I later found described as second-order cybernetics.
Yes, there are probably some connections between cybernetics and the Zettelkasten
Honestly, I have always been a bit skeptical about considering the Zettelkasten effective because it is based on connectionism, when which is meant 'how the brain works.'
In my opinion (but this is only a feeling, not a study about), both are networks of a big number of nodes, but these networks develop different dynamics.
They have one thing in common: they are both systems that generate emergent behaviors (but I don’t know, and I don’t think they are the same).
Having studied emergence a bit, I can easily recognize in my Zettelkasten practice several emergent behaviors resulting from its growth.
Rules of zettelkasten are pretty simple, but iterated a lot ot times develop many interesting effects on both the slip box and the author mind.
In light of this feeling of mine, I am definitely against calling systems like these "second brain." They are not brains :-)
Agreed. I always thought the 'build a second brain' idea was just a marketing gimmick. It shouldn't have been taken seriously. I much prefer the 'integrated thinking environment' definition from Sascha, it's more realistic.
I’ve been reflecting a bit on Ashby’s Law, and I think that, if I play with the idea of applying it to the Zettelkasten, my intuition (which I had already developed a few months ago) is that the Zettelkasten is able to follow the complexity of knowledge thanks to its implicitly fractal nature.
To explain myself better: in the Zettelkasten, starting from an idea I’m examining, I can both zoom in — developing the inner cosmos contained within the idea itself (for instance, by exploring its parts) — and zoom out — by considering that idea’s participation in broader concepts. And I move back and forth between these zoom levels, developing notes and creating connections at every level, repeatedly, always with the same simple tools.
Knowledge behaves, after all, in much the same way, so the Zettelkasten somehow manages to stay aligned with it.
I see in this recursive nature of the Zettelkasten the very requirement defined by Ashby’s Law — the idea that a system must be “complex enough” to match the complexity of what it aims to regulate or pursue.
This is a thought I developed months ago, but now that I’ve learned about Ashby’s Law, I feel I can connect it to an interesting reference point — and to a piece of cybernetics.
I like sharing this thought of mine, now (still definitely quite rough).
Keep in mind that Luhmann had a specific Zettelkasten with specific traits. His notes are very sparse and incomplete (https://zettelkasten.de/posts/luhmanns-zettel-translated/).
His Zettelkasten needs to be understood in light of his then constraints of working (for example: mostly reading in the library away from his ZK taking notes during reading, no digital bibliographical management)
His ZK is more a prompt machine than a thinking environment. It is more for stimulating his mind and not for processing information.
I am a Zettler