Books as Networks

A book is not just a book.

What do I mean by this? Well, the author's ideas are probably in response to some other author's ideas—or a many other authors' ideas. And those authors, in turn, are replying to other ideas.

So a book is just one node in a huge web of thought:

If you read without understanding how the book connects with the rest of the web, you're going to (a) lack the proper framework for understanding, (b) miss out on a lot of applications, and (c) forget what you read much faster.

To understand why not having a network is problematic, take these two quotes from Reading Difficult Texts.

Missing cultural context:

"Students do not always have access to cultural codes within a text. In other words, students may not fully understand the background information, the literary allusions, or the "common knowledge" of the time that an author assumes the reading audience would know."

Missing historical context:

"Students have trouble seeing what conversation texts belong to. In particular, students might not realize that texts actually talk to one another throughout time and thus authors shape questions and problems within this ongoing conversation as part of belonging to a particular political camp or academic discipline. They have trouble seeing a real author writing for some important reason out of a real historical context."

As we read, we want to be able to connect ideas in the text to the rest of the web.

How do we do this?

(to be continued)