Note-Taking and the Organization of Knowledge

Abstract

First paragraph: Note-taking was an essential prerequisite to both knowledge and textual production in early modern Europe. Highly codified, widely theorized, and commonly taught in schools and universities, methods of note-taking were shared by scholars and students across the continent. At the local level, though, those methods varied considerably, as individuals adapted them to suit their own intellectual interests and devised their own, often ingenious material practices to organize the notes that they took from their reading, the observations that they made and the knowledge that they otherwise collected and gathered. From commonplace books and diaries, to records of experiments and ledgers and accounts, manuscript culture was essential to the early modern organization of knowledge.