From fragments you can build a greater whole

By explicitly writing down how something connects or leads to something else, we force ourselves to clarify and distinguish ideas from each other.

He realised that one idea, one note was only as valuable as its context, which was not necessarily the context it was taken from. So he started to think about how one idea could relate and contribute to different contexts. Just amassing notes in one place would not lead to anything other than a mass of notes. But he collected his notes in his slip-

This concept—a bunch of smaller things joining together to form a giant that can function as more than the sum of its parts—is called emergence.