Note Taking Traditions

Note Taking Traditions

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Note Taking Traditions
Note Taking Traditions
Mortimer J. Adler's (Zettelkasten) Syntopicon

Mortimer J. Adler's (Zettelkasten) Syntopicon

A topically arranged collaborative card index

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Chris Aldrich
Sep 09, 2023
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Note Taking Traditions
Note Taking Traditions
Mortimer J. Adler's (Zettelkasten) Syntopicon
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Mortimer J. Adler holding a pipe in his left hand and mouth posing in front of dozens of boxes of index cards with topic headwords including "law", "love", "life", "sin", "art", "democracy", "citizen", "fate", etc.

Robert Hutchins, former dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929), president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon. It touches on the unreasonable value of building and maintaining a zettelkasten:

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