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I discovered an error in the previous comment. It should read "Yes. That is the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge." Not: "language".
And the comment was a bit too short. :-)
It's one thing to learn from explicit knowledge provided by others, e.g. trying to understand and absorb the concepts presented in The Guide.
It's another thing to make your own thinking explicit during your learning or design process. Here you can choose your priorities. Some people might like to reflect on the question "What is a Zettelkasten?" Others might ask "What definition of Zettelkasten would be useful for my purposes?" or "What mental model do I want to construct?"
And it's yet another thing to make your own thinking explicit in a conversation with others, e.g. here in the forum. Can I phrase my thinking in a way that others understand it as intended? If not, what can I learn from the feedback? Do we simply disagree on something? Did I write badly? Did the readers discover holes and contradictions in my thinking that I wasn't aware of?
Even if you don't manage to achieve perfection, trying and only getting partial results is, I think, an important part of understanding the method.
And realizing that you don't need a perfect result , but just enough to get the job done, is also, I believe, part of learning how the job is done.
If (someone say) the Zettelkasten is dealing with "ideas", you still need to understand at least a little bit what is being covered and what is being left out. If only to eventually be able to disagree, if you feel that.
Having good definitions (if not shared, at least clear ones) is also important for communicating with others, for explaining things to others (and also for explaining them to oneself), for writing about them.
How do you know that you're getting closer to perfection?
Do you have an epistemological goal? Do you want to find the "essence" of concepts like "Zettelkasten method", "Zettelkasten", "atomicity", or "knowledge"?
Or are you striving for consistency and cognitive closure? The pieces of the puzzle fit. You understand well enough what the puzzle is about and how it can be solved, so that you can stop puzzling?
Or are you experiencing a sense of competence? It feels like you get the method. It works for you.
I think these are different goals. The first one is about Zettelkasten as an idea that exists beyond people or sources. It leads to conversations like "What is a Zettelkasten?"
The second one is much smaller in scope. I'm striving for the second one. I only want to understand The Guide as it was intended by its author. Here the question is "What does the author mean when using terms like 'Zettelkasten', 'atomicity' or 'knowledge'. How does the author define The Zettelkasten Method."
The third one is more practical. Whatever works, works. :-)
Yes!
When I say something like that, I don't have any philosophical ideal in mind. It's a conventional phrase that expresses an orientation.
Yes, one can read the phrase as a conventional idiom. For example, "perfect" can indicate striving for mastery, as in "tonight I'm going to prepare the perfect omelette." :-) This is more about skill level and everyday challenges rather than metaphysics.
However, we're having this conversation in the context of The Guide, a text that talks about "atomicity" of ideas as an ideal to strive for. I was wondering if @andang76 meant "perfection" in that sense. The Guide states: "The more you approach the atom, the essence of the idea, the better you understand it." This implies the belief that there is something like an essence.
Do you believe in such an "essence"? And if so, does that belief guide your note-making in the way The Guide describes its Principle — as "not a rigid law, but a guiding compass"?
In these specific cases, I'd say you really can't reach the perfect solution :-)
You might be convinced you're getting there when you first approach the problem.
I think almost all of us zettelkasters at some point asked ourselves the question:
"Yeah, but what actually is an idea? Let's try to figure it out".
...realizing soon that it's not simple at all
Personally, I stopped when I realized, one day, "'okay, for my use what I've achieved is enough". And I've stopped to try to improve my definitions further.
I need to think about "essence" for a moment.
It might be another one of those terms that seem simple but actually hide unexpected depth.
At first glance, I don't think a universal essence exists. Not always, at least.
Two Zettelkaster, with different purposes, skills, and attitudes, might formulate an essence that is even profoundly different.
Thinking is intrinsically subjective, so I'd say most of the results of its application are too.
I think that a belief has an emotional aspect. You can understand one or another concept well without being particularly attached to it. In that case, the question of "belief" will be basically irrelevant. It's only when one gets invested or attached that belief enters the picture. Having a belief does not make the concept more "true".
Based on many years of experience, I think that by revisiting concepts (or whatever one wants to call them), one can simplify, clarify, or distill them. Sometimes I call the process "whittling". The basic elements can become more and more clear, and I suppose one could say that the atoms also become more apparent (and usually fewer). Often more consequences and offshoots become apparent. They enrich or extend the concept without complicating the starting point.
This kind of clarity takes effort, though. It doesn't usually happen without intention.
Does this whittled concept amount to an "essence"? I don't know. The process affects a particular model or concept. You know, I'm sure, the maxim that all models are wrong but some are useful (apparently originally formulated by George Box).
It's also easy to over-complicate the matter. In this case the clarity and simplicity get reduced over time, not increased.
Whittling guides my note-making more than anything else. I seek to simplify and enrich when I can. That plus a desire to be able to find things I can't remember; this includes the fruits of my own thinking and whittling.
It does. :-) Philosophers have discussed this a lot. Here's a prompt for your chatbot:
"What are the most common debates about the philosophical question 'Do ideas have an essence'? Elaborate on the positions of Aristotle, Plato, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, William James, Gottlob Frege, Rudolf Carnap, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle, Edmund Gettier, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Kuhn, Jacques Derrida, Saul Kripke, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, analytical philosophy, logical empirism."
Deep waters. :-)
I like the metaphor. It reminds me of a quote sometimes attributed to Michelangelo: “You Just Chip Away Everything That Doesn’t Look Like David.” :-)
However, how do you know what to take away? How do you know that you removed too much?
I'm familiar with the idea, but I had to look up the quote. Didn't know that it has it's own Wikipedia entry. Thanks for the hint!
Instead, how about "Is there a widely accepted resolution to the philosophical question 'Do ideas have an essence'?" I put this version to Lumo Chatbot. Here is its summary (after a cogent rundown of the main strands):
IOW, entertaining to speculate about but not something to depend on day to day.
In my experience, when a question fails to be resolved after a long time, it very likely is not well-posed: it's just the wrong question.
I think it's an excellent question, because philosophers are still coming up with new answers. ;-) It also shows that at some point the answer becomes a matter of belief.
Personally, I don't believe in the "essence" of ideas. I'm more interested in their practical value. (Is this what James and Dewey are saying?)
Ah, therein lies an art informed by practice. You may never know if there's more that could be done. But if you get to a point where the streamlined, whittled concept loses its informative power, that was too far. David will have left the room.
Into my Zettelkasken I remember I've written something regarding a parallelism betwen what said Michelangelo and some dynamic of Zettelkasten.
I think it is appropriate.
I'm still trying to relate The Guide to philosophical traditions. I'm getting increasingly more useful results from my chatbot. Here's a prompt I used in the same chat after the previous prompt:
Here's an excerpt from one of the responses in one of the chats. I don't think of it as the ultimate answer, but as a useful step towards further clarification (emphasis added):
That would explain why some of the discussions about atomicity feel so heavy. They aren't just about note-making. They are tied into a much bigger philosophical debate.
I misunderstood some arguments, because I lacked the philosophical background knowledge to recognize the references.
@harr your interesting post made me realize that I think about everything surrounding the atomicity of ideas in a rather different way. :-)
My approach is based very little on philosophy, epistemology, or related fields. Instead, my background as an engineer (and, later, as a photographer) has led me to develop a rather different kind of internalized understanding.
I draw many of my concepts from programming: separation of concerns, reuse, modularity, and, in particular, the idea of blocks, which I tend to associate with the world of patterns.
Other important influences from engineering are optimization, heuristics, models, and the constant question of what is actually needed and useful in practice. Something to photography, too (title principle, focusing, framing, bokeh model, landscape model).
In short, in my approach as a "technical person" rather than a philosopher or academic scholar, the decomposition of ideas is primarily driven by "What do I need, and what is useful to me?", rather than by the search for the best possible form in some more general or foundational sense.
This doesn't mean that I consider more philosophical perspectives less effective or less valuale. It simply means that my starting point and the conceptual tools I use maybe are very different.
I would describe it as a very technical activity, rather than a philosophical one.
Exploring these other perspectives could be interesting, though. They might help me understand some of the assumptions behind my own approach, too.
To be honest, I struggle to follow the whole atomicity thing when it gets mixed up with very high-level or very complex concepts. In the end, I've just simplified it all in my head to something much more down-to-earth :-)
This is also why I often say that sharing the the deeper and subtler mechanisms of a Zettelkasten between different people can be quite challenging. What works naturally for one person may feel rather foreign to another, because our underlying ways of thinking and organizing ideas can be fundamentally different.
I think we all zettelkasters can reach some "agreement" on the basic principles underlying how a Zettelkasten works. Beyond that, however, our different ways of thinking will inevitably shape and influence the finer details, leading us toward quite different implementations and practices.
@harr While the general direction is right of your bot, it is largely typical LLM gobbledygook.
But some points are:
The tie is not that of lineage. The patterns repeat when you try to get to the bottom of things. This is what the actual value of philosophy is: you train yourself in epistemological patterns. You just have to be cautious to not specialize in philosophy because it makes you an IYI (Nassim Taleb).
Other important influences from engineering are optimization, heuristics, models, and the constant question of what is actually needed and useful in practice. Something to photography, too (title principle, focusing, framing, bokeh model, landscape model).
Programming means to speak/write in an artificial language. Knowledge's intimate ties to language make it a perfect source of inspiration for any epistemological endeavor.
Btw. for the next book, I am working on another approach to atomicity that is based on rhetorics and not the philosophy of knowledge.
I still hold on to sources for photography as the visual arts will be essential to abstract from the language of words to a more holistic approach to atomicity.
I am a Zettler
@Sascha That makes perfect sense. Thank you for the answer
And thank you all for your responses as well. @andang76 @harr
Thanks for confirming that the general direction is okay.
Yes. Christian came from programming, not from philosophy. His recommendation to put together what belongs together references a well-known programming practice.
The philosophical "underpinnings" are exactly what I'm looking for!
I had to look it up. Are you referring to the biogenetic law? I don't see how it would apply here.
I'd rather call it reinventing the wheel. You are facing similar problems as others who were working on similar questions, so you (re-)discover similar solutions. If I had to choose a biological parallel, it would be convergent evolution. Similar patterns emerge from different starting points.
These philosophical waters are too deep for me. ;-) I had to look up some terms.
The concept ontological status is beyond my grasp. Can you recommend an article that explains the term for laypeople who haven't studied philosophy?
I found the term mind-world problem, but I haven't found a good introductory text or overview article.
And I don't understand the Luhmann reference.
I don't claim lineage as in standing on the shoulders of giants. (Do you stand on their shoulders? You seem to be quite familiar with the bigger philosophical debate.) I claim that your philosophical position can be compared to well-known philosophical positions.
My point is that many debates about atomicity are tied into bigger debates. Talking about "epistemological patterns" and the "actual value of philosophy" is an example of what makes some discussions feel so "heavy".
It's hard work for me to figure out what you might mean by "epistemological patterns". Are we talking about knowledge building blocks in particular or about something else more generally? What do you mean by getting "to the bottom of things"?
"IYI" was easier to look up. :-) It refers to "Intellectual Yet Idiot". The relevant chapter of Taleb's book can be found here: https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577. However, I wonder how Taleb's social critique of "paternalistic semi-intellectual experts" without skin in the game applies here.
In my opinion, an academic who specializes in philosophy is not an IYI. A real expert has substance and professional ethos. IYIs don't specialize, they only pretend to work scientifically: "They can’t tell science from scientism — in fact in their image-oriented minds scientism looks more scientific than real science."
More deep philosophical waters.
This looks like an interesting topic for a new thread.
More deep philosophical waters.
For the time being, I find it challenging enough to understand the current concept of atomicity as you present it in The Guide. :-)
Here's an updated prompt. I've tried it with various bots. While the initial replies are interesting on their own, I found the prompt more useful as a starting point for nuanced chats about atomicity from the perspective of academic philosophy. Have fun!
I am applying a somewhat Platonian approach. The phylogenesis is the general pattern evolution of these ideas, the ontogenesis is the variation how the pattern repeats itself here.
The ontological status simply refers to the ontological properties asigned to the entity. Here, the question whether it is a mind-dependent or mind-independent entity.
Start with the mind-body-problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_problem
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reentry_(Erkenntnistheorie) (don't see an English article)
Recursions are plenty in Luhmanns work. Another example is his definition of system as boundary between system and environment.
I owe to philosophy my style of thinking. But I didn't particular used any philosophical sources for my theory of knowledge atomicity. I am yet to connect it back to the body of philosophical classics.
For sure.
I think that it has something to do with me. I think enough is said on level 2 (with the rhetorical version of atomicity being the last thing I can think of). Level 3 is dependent on level 4. Level 4 is where your knowledge theory sits.
Epistemiological patterns is a rough translation of the German "Denkfiguren". Another translation could be "epistemiological shapes". The mind-body-problem for example has a lot in common with the phenomenon of epistemiology itsel which only makes sense based on the assumption that there is an epistemiological subject and an epistemiological object.
Looks like a true Scottsman fallacy to me.
But I don't think that the inherent mental damage that pure academic work can do (it is a risk factor. There are perfectly grounded academics as there are perfectly healthy heavy smokers) is relevant to the topic here. I got off-track.
It will be a chapter in the new book and then later re-purposed for my theory of knowledge atomicity.
The guide is the tip of the iceberg. I put my philosophical background to use. A lot of claims and assumptions are not throroughly justified. The justification, however, is on level 4. So, it is heavy by nature.
PS: Your prompt delivers output that is interesting, but is pretty inaccurate. At least, using Gemini. It sounds like a drunk philosophy student who likes to use the big words.
(I don't think that LLMs work well here).
I am a Zettler
Updated prompt. Tested with multiple bots. As before it's most useful as a starting point for longer philosophical chats about atomicity.