Notes on Research, Beauty, and Progress

Open Notebook Issue, 25th September, 2025

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Hi Scholar,

Our Letter today was meant to be an essay. However, the formats we’ve been using — alternating between essay and digest — have started to feel a little constraining. Structure and form are important, of course, but shouldn’t they serve us, rather than the other way around?

So, this week we decided to play with the format of our Letter. We were inspired in part by Gary Hall’s pirate philosophy and his idea of academic work taking the shape of Open Notebooks. You will therefore find that this Letter takes the form of notes. Notes, in the verb sense, mean “to notice or pay particular attention to something” — and it is precisely the things we have recently taken note of that we share here today. One of these, we’re especially excited about: a Letter written to us by one of our readers. This is the first time we’re sharing a Letter not written by us, but to us.

On another note, we’re absolutely delighted to announce that we have launched an online community for scholars united by passion, desire, and a sincere dedication to knowledge. We’ll refrain from going into too much detail here, but only say that it is called Scholar Square — inspired by the Greek tradition of the Agora — and you can read more about it by following the link. An informal session has been scheduled to welcome our 9th member at 2pm (British Standard Time) - we hope to see some of you there!

A Reader’s Letter On The Mark Gable Foundation
— Blanka

The physicist Leo Szilard was also a writer of sci-fi short stories. One particular story The Mark Gable Foundation was brought to our attention through a letter sent to us by Blanka, a reader of The Scholarly Letter, who was reminded of it after reading the essay Doughnut Shaped Scholarship. It did not feel right to include The Mark Gable Foundation in today's newsletter without Blanka's letter alongside it; what follows below are the contents of her letter (very lightly edited by us), which Blanka has kindly agreed to let us publish:

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