Lines of Thought: Branching Diagrams and the Medieval Mind

"Lines of Thought is the first book to investigate the surprisingly prevalent yet poorly studied habit of drawing horizontal tree diagrams in manuscripts. The branches of these diagrams ultimately evolved into what we know today as curly brackets. By following this notational practice from its earliest confirmed instances around 1200 up to the introduction of print, and by combining quantitative approaches with thorough case studies, the book provides a deep description and analysis of the peculiar thinking, reading, and writing practices of students and scholars of all faculties at a crucial phase in the Western intellectual tradition. Lines of Thought defines and explores the different cognitive functions such diagramming served and the manners by which it represented, clarified, and shaped conceptual structures in theology, philosophy, law, and medicine"--
We think with objects&;we conduct our lives surrounded by external devices that help us recall information, calculate, plan, design, make decisions, articulate ideas, and organize the chaos that fills our heads. Medieval scholars learned to think with their pages in a peculiar way: drawing hundreds of tree diagrams. Lines of Thought is the first book to investigate this prevalent but poorly studied notational habit, analyzing the practice from linguistic and cognitive perspectives and studying its application across theology, philosophy, law, and medicine. These diagrams not only allow a glimpse into the thinking practices of the past but also constitute a chapter in the history of how people learned to rely on external devices&;from stone to parchment to slide rules to smartphones&;for recording, storing, and processing information. Beautifully illustrated throughout with previously unstudied and unedited diagrams, Lines of Thought is a historical overview of an important cognitive habit, providing a new window into the world of medieval scholars and their patterns of thinking.