outlining is historically recent, since particular digital interfaces (such as Workflowy, Org Mode, Dynalist or Ravel) make it orders of magnitude easier to reorganize and nest text.
This seems false, according to Wikipedia, table of contents have existed, for example, since ancient Rome, getting abandoned when the price of paper became too high, and re-adopted in the 12th century once paper became cheap.
An outline is not a table of contents: an outline contains the full text of an article nested and tucked away, expandable on demand; whereas a table of contents contains a listing of text which still requires you to navigate to the actual text.
This seems false, according to Wikipedia, table of contents have existed, for example, since ancient Rome, getting abandoned when the price of paper became too high, and re-adopted in the 12th century once paper became cheap.
An outline is not a table of contents: an outline contains the full text of an article nested and tucked away, expandable on demand; whereas a table of contents contains a listing of text which still requires you to navigate to the actual text.