In Reassembling the Social Latour, after having stated that ‘tracing social connections’ in effect means ‘writing down accounts’ (p. 122), and after having said that “good sociology has to be well written; if not the social doesn’t appear through it” (p. 124), tells us that as good sociologists, researchers, scientists, we should keep four different notebooks — manual or digital:

1. “a log of the enquiry itself (…) to document the transformation one undergoes by doing the travel.” (p. 134)

2. one for “gathering information”, both structured chronological as well as dispatched into categories, that can be refined.

3. one for “ad libitum writing”, to record haphazardly the ideas that occur while studying and researching.

4. one “kept to register the effect of the written account on the actors whose world has been either deployed or unified.” (p. 135)

I’m a worthless researcher…

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social, Oxford UP, Oxford, 2005.

[Another digest of an article in quotes — here with many good quotes in the quotes…]

“Since the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory do not allow all things which are written to be equally retained in the mind, I decided to reduce in one volume in a compendium and in summary order some flowers selected according to my talents from all the authors I was able to read.” [Vincent of Beauvais in the preface to his four-volume Speculum maius (1255)] p. 11

“The premise of this study is that the experience of overabundance not only fostered the diffusion and development of various aids to learning or “reference genres” but also affected the way scholars worked, from reading and taking notes to composing books of their own.” p. 12

“By the eighteenth century we have a well-studied case in point with Samuel Johnson who, in addition to reporting that he “read like a Turk by tearing the heart out of a book,” when lying sleepless in bed, also used distinct terms to refer to at least four different ways of reading: “hard study” (which included taking notes), “perusal” (punctual consultation), “curious reading” (engrossed in a novel) and “mere reading” (browsing, as in journals).” p. 12

“[O]ne finds similar and quite explicit distinctions made by Francis Bacon in his Essay “Of Studies” (1612): ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.'” p. 13/14

“Like that other Jesuit, Antonio Possevino, who recommended a select (and aggressively purged) rather than a universal library, Sacchini emphasized choosing and reading carefully a core of “good” books—by which he meant books that would further piety and the ancient classics which were to be read with great care. ‘I urge that when a young man finds himself with some free time, he conscientiously devote himself not to reading new books but rather to re-reading and going over attentively those books which he knows already from the guidance of his teacher…. It is much better in the beginning to learn a few things well, than to taste many things…. Therefore if you set out to read a book, order requires that you read it from beginning to end: in this way you will understand more easily and retain much better the whole subject of the book.'” p. 15

“One of the main functions of marginal annotations made in early modern books was to flag the topics treated in the text, to be able to find one’s way back to a particular passage. The most interesting topics might then be gathered by page number in the fly-leaf.” p. 17/18

[Hmm, compare tagging].

“[T]he Jesuit Jeremias Drexel explained: ‘Reading is useless, vain and silly when no writing is involved, unless you are reading [devotionally] Thomas a Kempis or some such. Although I would not want even that kind of reading to be devoid of all note-taking.'” p. 19

Then Blair goes on to give examples of the note-taking methods of scholars like Sacchini, Drexel, Placcius (with his ‘scrinium literatum’), Gesner, Cardano and others. Till she hits on the 20th century practice of copy&paste — using scissors, glue & index cards:

“Indeed one Renaissance scholar has told me that he was advised as a graduate student to purchase a cheap edition of his main source in order to cut out quotations and paste them onto index cards from which to compose his dissertation.” p. 28

Ann Blair, ‘Reading Strategies for Coping With Information Overload ca. 1550-1700’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 11-28

Also: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_ the_history_of_ideas/v064/64.1blair.htm.

“In the writings of Erasmus and others who cultivated this practice [of keeping a commonplace book], the image of the bee as a clever borrower and collector had positive connotations.”

“In his De Copia (1512) Erasmus wrote: ‘The student, diligent as a little bee, will flit about through all the gardens of authors and will attack all the little flowerlets from whence he collects some honey which he carries into his own hive; and, since there is so much fertility of material in these that they are not all able to be plucked off, he will select the most excellent and adapt it to the structure of his own work.'” p. 66

Richard Yeo, ‘ A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728) as “the Best Book in the Universe”‘, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 61-72

“[Ann Blair] argues that historians have paid disproportionate attention to what she calls “literary reading” and not enough to other modes of encountering and engaging textual materials ranging from browsing and skimming to buying and collecting to annotating, cutting and pasting, and dog-earing. For Blair these other modes of acting upon texts are important in all historical moments, but in situations where readers feel themselves overwhelmed by information, they become all that much more crucial and telling.” p. 1

“According to her [Ann Blair] argument, an explosion of book production during the early modern period led to the development of a broad discourse on modes of textual practice. In some instances the problem of “information overload” led to a new emphasis on readerly “diligence” as in the cases of the theologians Francesco Sacchini and Johann Heinrich Alsted. In other instances, the same problem led to new theories and practices of consultative and instrumental reading such as those of Francis Bacon or Samuel Johnson.” p. 1/2

“In a world of rapid change, quick access to knowledge becomes as important as knowledge itself. During the early modern period, the encyclopedia survived by adaptation. If the Medieval encyclopedia aimed to reflect the universe itself, more and more, the early modern encyclopedia aimed to reflect the possibilities of knowing a changing universe of representation.” p. 4

“… during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries factors such as an increasing production and dissemination of books, developing networks of scientific communication, discoveries and innovations in the sciences, and new economic relationships all conspired to produce such quantities of new information that a substantial reorganization of the intellectual world was required. (…) by the end of the seventeenth century, it was widely understood that “representing and ordering the world” would be “impossible unless the representations themselves were put in order.”” p. 6

From Daniel Rosenberg, ‘Early Modern Information Overload’, in Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) p. 1-9

The area around Kanne — where I live this year — is cycling country. Every day groups of cyclist pass by my apartment. Almost every week there’s a ‘toertocht’ (organized cycling tour) in the area, starting from Oupeye, Bilzen, Tongeren, Vlijtingen etc. In Belgium these rides are — apparently — marked out by spraying signs on the road. Especially at the few places where one can cross the Maas (Meuse) and the Albertkanaal, the road is full of these signs, some old, some new. Riding around the area one comes across the signs everywhere and often I follow the signs for some kilometers.

I’d like to make a full catalogue of all the different signs. I’m a worthless photographer, luckily this is a fairly easy subject. I’m uploading the pictures at my hardly used Flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ariealt/.

Klein ochtendrondje, “om het zuur uit de benen te rijden”. 10.00 – 11.30. Bewolkt, kans op buien, vrij koud. Kanne – Lanaye – Lixhe – Moelingen – Vise – Mons – Bombaye – Dalhem – Vise – kanaal – Kanne

From the excellent music-blog http://destination-out.com/, I learn that Ornette Coleman’s current band is a three bass-affair. Two acoustic basses & one electric. Plus Denardo on drums. The live recordings from his Carnegie Hall performance — although taped from somewhere in the audience — make you believe that this band is even better than his early sixties quartets… Awesome.

(A friend of mine used to play in a Frisian hardcore-punk band with a line-up of three basses and a drummer — I still have a demo-tape. They were called Slaghuuske (sp?).)

Yes, having 3 basses makes sense.

Leonardo Sciascia, De Raad van Egypte (1963) — Dutch translation of Il Consiglio d’Egitto, buy it here: http://www.serenalibri.nl/romans.php. Sciascia continues to amaze me. This is a short historical novel, based on facts, set in Sicily (of course) at the end of the 18th century. A ‘fake translation’ of an Arabic manuscript about the history of Sicily disturbs the balance of power.

James Boswell, Life of Johnson (well, abridged version, until halfway and the rest via the index). Picked up a few old Penguin pockets, apart from this one also Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson. Why would I be interested in Samuel Johnson? Because he operated, euhm.. wrote at a moment when the press was changing, growing, becoming popular; when a General Reading Publick emerged. And because he was a voracious reader.

In Boswell’s Life Johnson comes across as, well, exactly the journalist type — spending to much time in the Coffee-House, talking too much, with controversial opinions. A quite unsympathetic conservative knowitall. But that’s Boswell’s fault as well, I understand — he met Johnson very late in his life, after Johnson did all the hard writing work — sort of defining modern journalism, modern criticism, etc.

This seems to be a good introduction to Samuel Johnson: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/.

Texts here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/j.html#johnson

“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.”

Wrote Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, 1755

Verslechterende weersvoorspellingen (kun je dat zo zeggen?) voor de rest van de week. Dus: een lange tocht. Plan: richting Selfkant, Schinveldse Bossen, Brunsummer Heide. Plekken waar ik nog niet ben geweest. Bewolkt, maar het bleef droog — tot Klimmen. Daarna motregen, overgaand in een kleine bui en vervolgens gewoon neerkletterende regen. 19 graden. Weinig wind. Uitstekend fietsweer (ja, ook met die regen op het einde). Tot Tüddern volgde ik de fietsknooppunten — een succes, vlakbij Geleen rijd je steeds over schitterende weggetjes. Daarna reed ik half op goed geluk half navigerend op de — uitstekende — Duitse fietsroutes langs een beekje en door het landbouwgebied. Best aardig. Tot bij Koningsbosch. Toen had ik er genoeg van, sloeg een grote weg in. Vervolgens vanaf Mindergangelt over de — weer prachtige — fietspaden door het natuurgebied van de Rodebach en de Schinveldse Bossen. Tot Brunssum. En toen raakte ik de routes kwijt (hier en daar ontbreekte wel eens een bordje). Reed heen en weer en snapte niet meer welke kant ik op moest. Zo verloor ik een half uurtje. Vond toch de goede weg. En de rest van de route was maar matig. De Brunsummer Heide is aardig, maar niet meer. Daarna volgt een vrij vervelend stuk. Vanaf Voerendaal kun je weer mooie routes opzoeken, maar ik koos voor de snelste weg terug. Vanaf Klimmen begon de regen.

Kanne – Maastricht – Rothem – Meerssen – Waterval – Uelestraten – Klein Genhout – Spaubeek – Thull – Oirsbeek – Windraak – Doenrade – Hillensberg – Süsterseel – Tüddern – Höngen – Havert – Isnebruch – Ijzeren Bos – Koningsbosch – Mindergangelt – Schinveldse Bos – Brunssum (v.v.) – Brunsummer Heide – Heerlen – Voerendal – Klimmen – Valkenburg – Houthem – Geulhem – Berg – Maastricht – Kanne.

Pff, ook dit stuk staat niet op mijn scans…