A bit more on noticing and collecting notes

The poet Winfield Townley Scott wrote this:

“I am trying to put down things I have thought — collecting them as well as I can remember … It is more fun than writing essays: arrangement, progression, transition, are hard for me to manage …

“One reason for writing these notes: I love to read this sort of thing when somebody else writes it. Almost, I think, no matter who.”

I love to read this sort of thing too. Really good notes — observations about the laws of nature or the laws of human nature — are often distilled into aphorisms, parables, anecdotes, sayings. I like to read all of them.

Wittgenstein, the philosopher, expressed his thoughts in this way. He called them remarks or zettel. On most days, I think this is the way philosophy should be done. I find remarks on concrete examples that illuminate problems in thought more compelling than treatises.

I like to read the notebooks of poets, naturalists, scientists, historians, philosophers — any good thinker. Some of them end up in 818 (American) and 828 (British) section of the library, if your library uses the Dewey Decimal System.

The lines quoted above came from A Dirty Hand: The Literary Notebooks of Winfield Townley Scott, University of Texas Press, 1969.