Lines of Thought

"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"--