5.8 Zettelkasten

Luhmann wrote by communicating with his slip-box.

The scaffold described in Chapter 2 creates a topics-based outline from scratch, assuming I already know quite a bit about a project, and I want to start writing. I use the Chapter 2 method to bootstrap my manuscript’s outline; I do not use the method to collect or organize information long before writing can begin. However, other scaffolds exist for organizing knowledge for later use.

Richard Rhodes describes how he collects information and ideas for potential writing projects (Rhodes, 1995). Rhodes keeps pencils and blank index cards throughout his house. Whenever an idea occurs, he fills out an index card. He stores his index cards in a file he calls ‘Futures’ which provides materials for potential projects. “I have ten years of notes on three-by-fives toward a work of fiction I’ve been planning” (Rhodes, 1995, p. 32). Rhodes’s system requires him to return regularly to the Futures file to read his filed cards.

Rhodes (1995) also developed a physical system for classifying cards by topic, and for removing topic-related cards from his file. He used index cards with numbered holes punched around the edge. He associated each hole with a particular topic. He coded topics covered by a particular card by using a notching punch to remove the top of the hole which corresponded to a card’s topic. The notches enabled Rhodes to remove all the cards related to a topic from his system: he lined up all his cards, threaded a knitting needle through a topic hole, and shook the stack. Those cards which had notched holes (because they were related to the topic) fell out.

Rhodes’ (1995) method resembles another system for storing and organizing ideas, zettelkasten, which is German for ‘slip-box’ (Ahrens, 2022; Helbig, 2019; Kadavy, 2021; Krajewski & Krapp, 2011; Luhmann, 1992). We most closely associate Zettelkasten with German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (Luhmann, 1992). Beginning in the early 1950s, he began a filing system called a slip-box, which contained notes (e.g., index cards). Luhmann’s slip-box would grow to hold over 90,000 notes.

Each note in a slip-box holds a single idea expressed in complete sentences. Each note has a unique identifying number which only identifies a note; the number provides no information about a note’s content. Later, Luhmann browsed through his slip-box, searching for related ideas. When he discovered a relationship, he added the links to the notes. For instance, if Luhmann found a relationship between note 65 and note 97, he added the number 97 to note 65 and he added the number 65 to note 97.

While discovering links between notes in the slip-box, Luhmann also developed a parallel filing system for topics. Luhmann created a note for each topic which interested him, labelled the note with the topic, and added the numbers of topic-related index cards in the slip-box to the topic’s index card. Luhmann could then use the topic card to retrieve a set of notes, as well as linked notes, from the slip-box.

Luhmann used his zettelkasten to discover new ideas. He did so by pulling a note from the slip-box and by then following the note’s links to other notes. He also searched for new links between existing notes by browsing through filed cards – sometimes randomly – searching for new relationships to record.

Luhmann used his zettelkasten to write. When he retrieved related notes, he had links between ideas laid out in a sequence, and each note in the sequence contained full sentences. “Every question that emerges out of our slip-box will naturally and handily come with material to work with” (Ahrens, 2022, p. 46).

Rhodes’s Futures file and Luhmann’s zettelkasten relate to the Chapter 2 method because both scaffold memory for ideas. Because both systems succeed by searching through filed information, both can benefit by being converted into digital file systems. Rhodes (1995) has transcribed his notes into a computer; many digital zettelkasten also exist (Ahrens, 2022; Kadavy, 2021).