»Einen Finder zu erfinden für alle Dinge« (G. Chr. Lichtenberg, ca. 1791)
Abstract
This article sheds new light on the material history of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s proverbial wit and demonstrates how the note-taking technique that he called »sudeln« aided his inventiveness. The epistemic effect of the Sudelbücher, or waste-books, lies in the interaction between conflicting modes of knowledge production. While the waste-books stand in the tradition of reformed commonplace books – notebooks intended to be discovery devices that encouraged unlikely combinations of entries – they were at the same time modeled upon strictly codified early-modern methods of notation (e.g. »learned bookkeeping«). This tension increased the waste-books’ epistemological effectiveness, turning sudeln into an experimental procedure that reliably led to »sagacious combinations of thought« and thus the production of witty ideas. In this function, sudeln informed both Lichtenberg’s own research and his pedagogy as a physics instructor. The Sudelbücher should therefore be seen not as a collection of aphorisms, but as media with an epistemic impact and intellectual tools of writing.
Zusammenfassung
Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet die Materialgeschichte von Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs sprichwörtlichem Witz und zeigt, wie sudeln als Notationspraxis seinen Einfallsreichtum förderte. Die epistemische Wirkung der Sudelbücher basiert auf dem Zusammenspiel verschiedener Modi der Wissensproduktion. Während die Sudelbücher in der Tradition reformierter commonplace books stehen, d.h. Notizbücher, die durch überraschende Kombinationen von Einträgen als Findwerkzeuge dienten, folgen sie zugleich streng geregelten frühmodernen Notationsmodellen (wie z. B. »gelehrte Buchhalterey«). Genau diese Spannung ließ die Sudelbücher epistemologisch effektiv werden und machte aus sudeln ein experimentelles Verfahren, das zuverlässig in »scharfsinnigen Gedankenkombinationen« und witzigen Einfällen resultierte. In dieser Funktion hatte sudeln sowohl für Lichtenbergs Forschung als auch seine Pädagogik als Physikprofessor große Relevanz. Die Sudelbücher sollten daher nicht als Aphorismensammlung aufgefasst werden, sondern als intellektuelle Schreibwerkzeuge und Medien mit epistemischer Durchschlagskraft.
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Notes
In this essay, »wit« [Witz] is used in the German eighteenth-century sense to designate the ability to discover surprising similarities between two things where others see none. See »Witz«, in: Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, 33 vols., fotomech. Nachdr. d. Erstausg. 1854, ed. Arbeitsstellen des Deutschen Wörterbuches zu Berlin und Göttingen, München 1960–1984, XXX, 861–888, here 874. A more extensive discussion of the concept follows below. – Quotations from the waste-books are taken from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher (SB) I, II und Registerband, ed. Wolfgang Promies, München 2005. They are referenced according to the editorial conventions of Lichtenberg scholarship through alphanumeric itemization (here: D 349, SB I, 284). Lichtenberg used Latin cursive [lateinische Schreibschrift] for some waste-book entries, mostly methodological maxims, which Promies’ edition renders through italicizing. This formatting has been retained. – I am indebted to Nikolaus Wegmann, Bruce Duncan, Sabine Groß, and Michael McGillen for their insightful comments and their encouragement during the long gestation of this project.
Lichtenberg served for more than two decades as the editor-in-chief of the Göttinger Taschen-Calender, for which he also produced virtually all the content. For five years, moreover, he was the main editor and contributor to the Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, and he wrote a number of prose essays, such as a polemic against contemporary physiognomics, and provided commentary on William Hogarth’s engravings. For this and other biographical information, see »Einführung«, in: Franz H. Mautner (ed.), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Schriften und Briefe, 6 vols., Frankfurt a. M. 1983–1992, I, 7–62, here 8.
The term »aphorisms« for Lichtenberg’s waste-book entries, though common in literary studies, is misleading insofar as it focuses only on those entries with literary or philosophical qualities. (Lichtenberg himself understood the term in the ancient Greek sense, i.e. as the concise expression of a scientific principle, and called his entries »Bemerkungen«.) The point of the waste-books, however, is their all-inclusiveness and the extreme generic variety of the noted material. I will therefore speak of »notes,« »remarks,« or »entries« rather than »aphorisms« throughout this article unless an entry does have aphoristic qualities that are relevant to the argument. Lorraine Daston unpacks the implications of the term »aphorism« in »The Disciplines of Attention«, in: David E. Wellbery (ed.), A New History of German Literature, Cambridge, Mass. 2004, 434–440.
This term is borrowed from Bruno Latour, »Drawing Things Together«, in: Michael Lynch, Steve Woolgar (eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice, Cambridge, Mass. 1990, 19–68, here 44.
In particular, I am building on methodological suggestions made by Peter Becker and William Clark in their introduction to Little Tools of Knowledge. Historical Essays on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices, eds. Peter Becker, William Clark, Ann Arbor 2001, 1–34; Ann M. Blair, »Note Taking as an Art of Transmission«, Critical Inquiry 31 (2004), 85–107; Lorraine Daston, »Taking Note(s)«, Isis 95/3 (2004), 443–448; Rüdiger Campe, »Die Schreibszene, Schreiben«, in: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, K. Ludwig Pfeiffer (eds.), Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche. Situationen offener Epistemologie, Frankfurt a. M. 1991, 759–772; Christoph Hoffmann, »Wie lesen? Das Notizbuch als Bühne der Forschung«, in: Birgit Griesecke (ed.), Werkstätten des Möglichen 1930–1936: L. Fleck, E. Husserl., R. Musil, L. Wittgenstein, Würzburg 2008, 45–57; Karin Krauthausen, »Vom Nutzen des Notierens. Verfahren des Entwurfs«, in: Karin Krauthausen, Omar Nasim (eds.), Notieren, Skizzieren. Schreiben und Zeichnen als Verfahren des Entwurfs, Zürich 2010, 7–26; and Anke te Heesen, »The Notebook. A Paper Technology«, in: Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge, Mass. 2005, 582–589.
For a compelling example of how to situate notebooks in a whole array of other media of notation and working methods, see Christoph Hoffmann, »Umgebungen. Über Ort und Materialität von Ernst Machs Notizbüchern«, in: Martin Stingelin, Matthias Thiele (eds.), Portable Media. Schreibszenen in Bewegung zwischen Peripatetik und Mobiltelefon, München 2010, 89–107.
Ulrich Joost gives a detailed description of the waste-books, their contents, and their materiality in »›Schmierbuchmethode bestens zu empfehlen.‹ Sudelbücher?«, in: Ulrich Joost et al. (eds.), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1742–1799. Wagnis der Aufklärung, München 1992, 19–48.
For an excellent historical overview of commonplace books, see Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age, New Haven, London 2010.
See Hans-Georg von Arburg, »›Der Mann, der erst in seine Excerpta steigen muß oder in seine Bibliothek, ist gewiß ein Artefakt.‹ Lichtenberg, das Exzerpieren und das Problem der Originalität«, in: Elisabeth Décultot (ed.), Lesen, Kopieren, Schreiben. Lese- und Exzerpierkunst in der europäischen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts [Lire, copier, écrire], trans. Kirsten Heininger and Elisabeth Décultot, Berlin 2014, 161–186, here 165.
See Heike Mayer, Lichtenbergs Rhetorik. Beitrag zu einer Geschichte rhetorischer Kollektaneen im 18. Jahrhundert, München 1999, 30.
Qtd. in Ann Blair and Peter Stallybrass, »Mediating Information, 1450–1800«, in: Clifford Siskin, William Warner (eds.), This is Enlightenment, Chicago 2010, 139–163, here 143.
Blair (note 8) gives a detailed account of the material features of commonplace books in Chapter 3.
Mayer (note 10), 85–89.
Daston (note 3), 438.
Mayer (note 10), passim.
For an in-depth explanation of »inventio,« see Manfred Kienpointner’s eponymous article in Gert Ueding (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, 10 vols., Tübingen 1998, IV, 561–587.
Markus Wilczek, »Ab. Lichtenberg’s Waste«, The Germanic Review 87 (2012), 305–324, here 305.
See, for example, the beginnings of waste-books B and F, and entry D 667. SB I, 45, 338–339, 455–456.
Anke te Heesen, »Die doppelte Verzeichnung. Schriftliche und räumliche Aneignungsweisen von Natur im 18. Jahrhundert«, in: Harald Tausch (ed.), Gehäuse der Mnemosyne. Architektur als Schriftform der Erinnerung, Göttingen 2003, 263–286, here 273.
For a history of double-entry bookkeeping and its spread across Europe, see Jane Gleeson-White, Double-Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance, New York 2012.
William Webster, An Essay on Book-Keeping According to the True Italian Method of Debtor and Creditor by Double Entry […], 13th ed., London 1759, 1. I owe the reference to Webster’s essay to te Heesen (note 19).
Webster (note 21), 2–4.
te Heesen (note 19) explains the potential of double-entry bookkeeping through a case study of Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, a natural scientist who carried out fieldwork in Siberia from 1720–1727 and who used the method in order to develop a taxonomy of the flora and fauna that he explored.
On systematic note-taking in astronomical record books, see William J. Ashworth, »The Calculating Eye. Bailey, Herschel, Babbage and the Business of Astronomy«, British Journal of the History of Science 27 (1994), 409–441; on »learned bookkeeping« in philological research, see Klaus Weimar, »Johann Caspar Hagenbuchs ›gelehrte Buchhalterey‹«, in: Décultot (ed.) (note 9), 93–110.
Johann Heinrich Zedler, »Excerpiren«, in: Großes vollständiges Universal-Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste […], vol. 8, Halle and Leipzig 1734, col. 2321–2322, qtd. in Weimar (note 24), 93.
This is not to say that other scientific traditions of note-taking, such as laboratory protocols and descriptions of experiments, were unimportant to the development of sudeln; it would be fruitful to compare the waste-books to the laboratory protocols of contemporary physicists such as Antoine Lavoisier and Luigi Galvani. See, for example, Frederic L. Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity, Madison 1985; Marco Bresadola, »At Play with Nature: Luigi Galvani’s Experimental Approach to Muscular Physiology«, in: Frederic L. Holmes, Jürgen Renn, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (eds.), Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History of Science, Dordrecht 2003, 67–92.
On Lichtenberg’s Pietist background and its secularized afterlife, see Paul Requadt, Lichtenberg, zweite erw. Aufl., Stuttgart 1964, 20–47.
Peter Pütz, »Lichtenberg und der Pietismus«, Deutsche Beiträge zur geistigen Überlieferung 7 (1992), 110–121, here 114. The extent to which Lichtenberg was influenced by Pietism is a controversial topic in the scholarship. Joost claims that Lichtenberg’s Pietist roots have been »erheblich überschätzt« by Requadt and Pütz, although he does not give a compelling reason for this assessment and concedes that Lichtenberg himself repeatedly connected his »Trieb zum Schreiben« with religion. Joost, »Tagebücher? Verstreute Beobachtungen zu Textsorte, Technik und Funktion. Ulrich Bräker, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg und einige ihrer Zeitgenossen«, in: Alfred Messerli, Adolf Muschg (eds.), Schreibsucht. Autobiographische Schriften des Pietisten Ulrich Bräker (1735–1798), Göttingen 2004, 49–71, here 58.
Pütz (note 28), 116–117.
In fact, Lichtenberg’s grandfather, Johann Philipp Lichtenberg (1660–1739), kept such a Pietist »Hausbuch«, one that was shaped by regularity paired with self-scrutiny and neutral reporting of domestic events (e.g. weddings, births, deaths etc.). A detailed comparison between this »Hausbuch« and the waste-books is difficult, however, because the original is lost, and it is only available as a partial reprint, with no conclusive information about the material design, in »Das Hausbuch des Amtsverwesers Johann Philipp Lichtenberg«, in: Otto Weber (ed.), Lichtenberg. Spuren einer Familie, Ober-Ramstadt 1992, 9–12, 22–27; reprinted also in Hessische Chronik 1 (1912), 21–27, 132–136, 145–148.
Joost (note 7), 8.
Joost (note 28), 59. Joost is careful to point out, however, that the waste-books do not participate in diaristic traditions of writing. Lichtenberg kept actual diaries that he carefully separated from the waste-books. Indeed, entries in the waste-books by and large lack features typical of diaries, such as precise dates and what Joost terms »Hier-jetzt-Ich-Referenzen« that draw attention to the location and time of writing (62–63).
Starting with the third booklet, Lichtenberg made efforts to organize the waste-books into a loosely-running series and endowed the booklets’ covers with consecutive letters of the alphabet or special designations such as »Jocoseria«. The series runs from »C« to »L«; the editors later applied letters retroactively to the earliest extant booklets that are now waste-books »A« and »B«. Joost (note 7), 21.
von Arburg (note 9), 166–167. My following remarks are very much indebted to von Arburg’s excellent analysis of the reform that commonplacing underwent in the course of the eighteenth century and its consequences for Lichtenberg.
von Arburg (note 9), 168.
Anthony Ashley Cooper Third Earl of Shaftesbury, »Miscellanoues Reflections on the preceding Treatises, and Other Critical Subjects«, in: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, London 1737, vol. III, 1–344, on p. 6, qtd. in von Arburg (note 9), 169–170.
William Clark gives a full account of the transition from the early-modern to the modern university system in Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, Chicago 2006. Details on Göttingen as a reform university are provided in Thomas A. Howard, Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University, Oxford 2006, 80–129. For an in-depth analysis of how physics became a discipline and the related paradigms in scientific method shifted, see Rudolf Stichweh, Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen: Physik in Deutschland, 1740–1890, Frankfurt a. M. 1984, especially 7–9, 15–23.
Mayer (note 10), 94–95; von Arburg (note 9), 170.
Albrecht Schöne, Aufklärung aus dem Geiste der Experimentalphysik. Lichtenbergs Konjunktive, München 1982, 46.
In Lichtenberg scholarship, there is a tendency to foreground either his investment in pre-modern rhetorical strategies or his modern methods of thought, a problem that Rüdiger Campe briefly discusses in »Vorgreifen und zurückgreifen. Zur Emergenz des Sudelbuchs in Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs ›Heft E‹«, in: Krauthausen, Nasim (eds.) (note 5), 61–87, here 81. My investigation is intended as a third way of approaching Lichtenberg, tracing the interplay of pre-modern and modern forms of knowledge production.
For a survey and analysis of the most important early-modern finding aids, see Blair (note 8), 117–172.
Example qtd. in Campe (note 40), 63. For another example, see D 476, SB I, 302.
Campe (note 40), 61–63.
I follow Campe and Hoffmann in their understanding of the procedure [Verfahren] as a series of actions that organizes itself and gains a stable form through repetition. The procedure is to some extent methodical, yet in contrast to the method, the concept, and the theory, it can never be fully grasped in the abstract, as it remains bound to its execution. See Campe (note 40), 61–62 and Hoffmann, »Festhalten, bereitstellen. Verfahren der Aufzeichnung«, in: Christoph Hoffmann (ed.), Daten sichern. Schreiben und Zeichnen als Verfahren der Aufzeichnung, Zürich 2008, 7–20, here 15.
This is also the moment, according to Campe, at which sudeln receives its name, so that Lichtenberg would write Sudelbuch on the title page of the next booklet in the open series ([note 40], 73).
The notes have the archival signature VII F: 1, Bl. 1–50, Nachlass Lichtenberg, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen. They are reprinted, including facsimiles and commentary, in Horst Zehe, »Ich habe selbst offt über die Compendienschreibung gelacht«: Etwas über Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs Notizen zu einem Compendio der Physik, Berlin, New York 1994.
Weimar (note 24) gives an instructive example of the application (and aporias!) of »gelehrte Buchhalterey« for the sake of creating a closed order of knowledge.
Christoph Meiners, Anweisungen für Jünglinge zum eigenen Arbeiten besonders zum Lesen, Excerpiren und Schreiben, zweyte vermehrte Ausgabe, Hannover 1791, 91–92.
Joost (note 7), 21.
Campe (note 40), 85–86. This idea is intriguing, but upon a closer look at the history of modern disciplinary formation, Campe’s statement seems too general. I suspect that it is not so much the differentiation between the humanities and the sciences that becomes visible in the waste-books but the separation of physics from (and combination with) changing neighboring fields within the philosophical faculty. For details on the place of physics in the philosophical faculty, see Stichweh (note 37), 318–393.
Ralf Simon, »Witz«, in: Jan-Dirk Müller (ed.), Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, 3 vols., Berlin 2003, III, 861–864, here 861.
Simon (note 51), 863.
»Reliably« is not to imply that the process is fool-proof. In fact, Lichtenberg at times describes it with the terminology of risk-taking and potential failure, as in F 321 and 327, SB I, 505–506; F 424, SB I, 518; H 168, SB II, 202.
J. S. T. Gehler, »Versuch, experimentum, experience,« Physikalisches Wörterbuch oder Versuch einer Erklärung der vornehmsten Begriffe und Kunstwörter der Naturlehre mit kurzen Nachrichten von der Geschichte der Erfindungen und Beschreibungen der Werkzeuge begleitet in alphabetischer Ordnung, 6 vols., Leipzig 1798, IV, 469–472, here 470, emphasis added. Available online at http://www.mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10131079-3.
Famously, Schöne has made the connection between Lichtenberg’s waste-book entries and experimentation ([note 39], 49–54, 75–102). Schöne, however, argues for »strukturelle[] Analogien« (159) between Lichtenberg’s mode of thought and natural-scientific principles on the basis of close reading and stylistic analysis. He considers neither the materiality of the waste-books nor the actual writing procedures that lie underneath those »structural analogies«.
This reading of the waste-books also helps to explain why Lichtenberg simultaneously endorsed and scoffed at erudite practices such as excerpting and commonplacing. For an illuminating analysis of Lichtenberg’s stance on excerpting, see von Arburg (note 9).
Lichtenberg took over the lecture course on experimental physics from his Göttingen colleague J. P. Erxleben in 1778 and continued to teach it on the basis of Erxleben’s textbook until 1799. For more details on his scholarly vita, see Joost’s »Einleitung«, in: Gottlieb Gamauf: Erinnerungen aus Lichtenbergs Vorlesungen. Die Nachschrift eines Hörers, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Vorlesungen zur Naturlehre, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 5 vols., Göttingen 2008, p. VII–XL, volume henceforth cited as VNat II.
Lichtenberg expresses these goals in his lecture notes. See Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Notizen und Materialien zur Experimentalphysik, Teil 1, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Vorlesungen zur Naturlehre, 5 vols., ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Göttingen 2007, 26–27; volume henceforth cited as VNat III.
For an overview of this research, see the editors’ introduction to the volume Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment, eds. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Christine Blondel, Aldershot 2008, 1–10; and William Clark, Jan Golinski, Simon Schaffer (eds.), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, Chicago 1992. For a closer look at Lichtenberg’s experimental performances at the Georgia Augusta, see for example Claire Baldwin, »Performance and Play: Lichtenberg’s Lectures on Experimental Physics«, in: Mary Helen Dupree, Sean B. Franzel (eds.), Performing Knowledge, 1750–1850, Berlin, Boston 2015, 193–220.
That the roles of notation and textbooks in Lichtenberg’s lectures have received such minimal attention is perhaps due to Lichtenberg’s remark that he was in favor of lecturing like the London physicist James Ferguson, who allegedly used neither textbook, nor blackboard, nor chalk. The truth, however, is that Lichtenberg dropped the project of lecturing without a textbook after only one semester and explicitly accounts for this decision (VNat III, 6–8, 13, 16). A lecture course without a mandatory textbook was thus an anomaly in his teaching. One insightful study that actually does focus on Lichtenberg’s use of textbooks is Dieter Kliche’s »Litterärgeschichte der Naturlehre und Experimentalphysik. Zum Verhältnis von Lehrbuch und Experiment in Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs Physik-Vorlesungen«, Cardanus: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 5 (2005), 39–62. Yet Kliche sees Lichtenberg’s paperwork, reliance on a textbook, and erudite practices in opposition to experimental physics as a practice of open-ended inquiry and speculation (48–49). Contrary to Kliche, I contend that the relationship between paperwork and experimental physics is not oppositional but supplemental.
Stichweh (note 37), 337–351; Gustav Beuermann, »›Sie schwänzten aber jetzt schon, bis es blitzt und donnert.‹ Physikprofessor – Lichtenbergs Beruf«, in Ulrich Joost et al. (eds.), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1742–1799. Wagnis der Aufklärung, München 1992, 346–364.
Joost (note 57), XIX.
Lichtenberg’s letters document the never-ending worry about enrollment, money, and the pressure to outdo his rival colleagues. See, for example, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, 4 vols., ed. Franz H. Mautner, Frankfurt a. M. 1983, IV.1, 296, 330, 360, 391.
Stichweh (note 37), 252–253.
From the third edition through the sixth and final one in 1794, Erxleben’s compendium appeared as Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre. Mit Zusätzen [with additions] von G. C. Lichtenberg, Göttingen 1784, 1787, 1791, 1794. It grew from approximately 650 to 800 pages. One of Lichtenberg’s richly-annotated personal copies of Erxleben’s compendium – his working copy – has been reprinted, with excellent commentary, as Lichtenbergs annotiertes Handexemplar der vierten Auflage von Johann Christian Polykarp Erxleben: »Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre«, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Vorlesungen zur Naturlehre, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 5 vols., Göttingen 2005, henceforth cited as VNat I. For analysis of Lichtenberg’s additions to Erxleben’s textbook, see Kliche (note 60), 41–45.
Qtd. in Wiard Hinrichs, Albert Krayer, Horst Zehe, »Einleitung«, in: VNat I, IX–XX, here XVII.
Joost (note 57), XXXI.
Albert Krayer, Horst Zehe, »Einleitung«, in: VNat III, X–XIII.
According to the editors, the lecture text gained more firmness after 1785, yet there is still evidence of later changes. See Krayer and Zehe (note 68), XIII–XIV. Kliche, too, speaks of a »erweiterten Textsituation« and »mündlich-schriftlichen Kommunikationssituation« in the lectures and stresses that when delivering his lectures, Lichtenberg combined his own notes, Erxleben’s text, and spontaneous speech to generate a spoken text full of tensions. See Kliche (note 60), 47–48.
Joost discusses the problems that relying on transcriptions entails. Even though it is sometimes unclear whether a particular formulation is Lichtenberg’s or Gamauf’s, he concludes that Gamauf is altogether a very faithful and authentic source. Joost (note 57), XI–XV, XXXII–XL.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Vorlesungen zur Naturlehre. Notizen und Materialien zur Experimentalphysik, Teil II, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Vorlesungen zur Naturlehre, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 5 vols., Göttingen 2010, 360.
Johann Georg Sulzer, »Witz«, in: Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste. Neue, vermehrte Auflage, 4 vols., Leipzig 1787, IV, 628–631.
The student testimonials have been reprinted in VNat II, XLIX–LXXXII, here LVI. One should not conclude from the remarks on Lichtenberg’s wit that he was in general a brilliant speaker; the testimonials make it also clear that he often got ahead of himself, tried to develop too many ideas at once, and was altogether very self-conscious. See Hans-Joachim Heerde, Das Publikum der Physik. Lichtenbergs Hörer, Göttingen 2006, 20, 26–27.
Kliche (note 60), 42–43.
Examples and quotations taken from Kliche (note 60), 42.
Kliche (note 60), 43.
Zehe (note 46), 114.
The entry also contains the rather cryptic remark, »Döderlein’s Moral wird empfohlen«, which presumably refers to Christoph Döderleins Kurzer Entwurf der Christlichen Sittenlehre (Jena, 1789). The text may have appealed to Lichtenberg, as Zehe suggests in the commentary, because it contains the programmatic statement that lectures require simplicity and unadorned speech in order to communicate truth. See Zehe (note 46), 176n63.
Smail Rapic, building on the work of Lothar Schäfer, characterizes this mode of knowledge production as a modern »Theoriepluralismus«: in his research and pedagogy, Lichtenberg purposefully contrasted competing theories and hypotheses in order to provoke new insights about the phenomenon under scrutiny. See Smail Rapic, »›Man muß mit Ideen experimentieren.‹ Naturwissenschaft und aphoristisches Denken bei Lichtenberg«, Text und Kritik 114 (1992), 14–22, here 17–18.
A cursory glance at the history of physics pedagogy suggests that Lichtenberg’s teaching philosophy anticipates some of the innovations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Resources for a substantial comparison can be found in David Kaiser (ed.), Pedagogy and the Practice of Science, Cambridge, Mass. 2005; Kathryn M. Olesko, Physics as a Calling: Discipline and Practice in the Königsberg Seminar for Physics, Ithaca 1991; Andrew Warwick, Masters of Theory: Cambridge and the Rise of Mathematical Physics, Chicago 2003.
Francis Bacon (1620), The New Organon, eds. Lisa Jardine, Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge 2000, Book I, 33 (Aphorism II). Bacon enjoyed renewed importance during Lichtenberg’s lifetime through the republication of the New Organon in 1733. J. P. Stern analyzes the influence of Bacon on Lichtenberg in Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasion, Reconstructed from his Aphorisms and Reflections, Bloomington 1959, 75–126.
Clifford Siskin, William Warner, »This is Enlightenment: An Invitation in the Form of an Argument«, in: Clifford Siskin, William Warner (eds.), This is Enlightenment, Chicago 2010, 1–33, here 4.
Bacon (note 81), 28.
Immanuel Kant (1784), »Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?« in: Was ist Aufklärung? Ausgewählte kleine Schriften/Immanuel Kant, ed. Horst D. Brandt, Hamburg 1999, 20–27, here 27. For a fuller account of Bacon and Kant’s notions of the machine, see Siskin, Warner (note 82), 2–12.
Sabine Mainberger, »›etwas über Gleise‹ oder Versuchsanordnung öffentlicher Platz. Zu Lichtenbergs Sudelbuchaufzeichnung J 528«, Pandaemonium germanicum 15.1 (2010), 1–17, here 13.
Noel Malcom, »Thomas Harrison and his ›Ark of Studies‹: An Episode in the History of the Organization of Knowledge«, The Seventeenth Century 19 (2004), 196–232; Jean Paul (1778–1825), Exzerpte und Register. Digitale Edition (in progress), eds. Christian Müller-Clausnitzer et al., Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, 1998–, excerpts from 1782–1808 are available online at http://www.jp-exzerpte.uni-wuerzburg.de; Friedrich Nietzsche (1882), Schreibmaschinentexte. Vollständige Edition. Faksimiles und kritischer Kommentar, eds. Stephan Günzel, Rüdiger Schmidt-Grépály, Weimar 2002; Niklas Luhmann (1981), »Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen. Ein Erfahrungsbericht«, in: Universität als Milieu. Kleine Schriften, ed. André Kieserling, Bielefeld 1992, 53–61.
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McGillen, P. Wit, bookishness, and the epistemic impact of note-taking:. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 90, 501–528 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-016-0025-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41245-016-0025-8