Your subject is memory, but not the kind of memory that automatically embeds itself in our minds, like a first kiss.
The original Latin memory treatises speak of a distinction between natural memory and artificial memory. natural memory is like the basic cable package. it is the biological capacity of our brain to remember. artificial memory is what you are able to do with your natural ability through training, practice, and the use of mnemonic techniques.
You are reading: Best books about memory
You wrote that memorizing is a “primal ability that many of us have grown distant from.” please explain.
one of the things that surprised me in my research was that although the idea of a trained and disciplined memory seems new to us today, it was commonplace in ancient history. Once upon a time, people treated their memories with more sanctity. They nurtured their memories. today we don’t think about furnishing our minds, and few schools emphasize memorization.
so how do we distance ourselves from this “primal ability?”
Our culture changed. technology allowed us to externalize our memories. I mean technology in the broadest possible sense, encompassing everything from the alphabet to the blackberry. these technologies remember for us. once he had printed books, it was no longer important to keep the thoughts in his mind because he could refer to them externally. we no longer needed to exercise our memory to the limit of its capacity. To some extent, we have forgotten how to remember.
Let’s move on to those artificial repositories of thoughts and facts: books. starting with the art of memory by frances yachts.
is the book that started the entire field of academic research on the art of memory. for anyone interested in the subject, it is the first thing to read. yachts begins with the ancient greeks and tells the story of how the art of memory began, then went through a series of transformations. in the middle ages it was associated with religious remembrance. during the renaissance he got involved with a lot of kabbalistic and hermetic ideas that were in the air at the time. yachting history ends with the renaissance, but the mnemonic story continues and subsequent scholars have updated the story.
yates writes about a mental memory retrieval device called a “memory palace.” what is this?
A memory palace is an imagined building in your mind that you use to structure and store information. In Cicero’s case, that information was a speech. in the case of mental athletes, it could be the order of a shuffled deck of cards. The memory palace is a device that was invented, at least according to legend, in the 5th century BC. Simonides, the famous Greek poet, had an old-fashioned epiphany after a traumatic event. moments after he left a banquet, the ceiling collapsed, killing everyone inside and shattering the bodies beyond recognition. According to legend, though almost certainly apocryphal, Simonides used the power of his memory to identify the bodies because he could see in his mind where each of the guests had sat. what simonides realized, after the event, was that our visual and spatial memories are powerful. this is the story of the birth of the “memory palace”. it seems that we are innately good at remembering things visually. figuring out how to remember things is what a lot of these ancient memory techniques are all about. if you can engage the visual part of your brain in remembering, it makes things stickier.
So how do you build a memory palace?
The idea is to take a building that you are intimately familiar with and deposit images in that building that are so vivid that you cannot forget them. By placing the memories inside this building, you are bringing them together and keeping them in order. mnemonics say his abilities have as much to do with creativity as memory.
please explain the role of creativity in the art of memory?
many memory techniques involve creating unforgettable images, in your mind’s eye. that is an act of imagination. creating really weird images very quickly was the most fun part of my training to compete in the usa memory competition. uu.
yates writes that the earliest known memory advice book dates from 90 B.C. as one of the first skills of essence, is mnemonics one of the first sources of self-help literature?
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rhetorica ad herennium, the book you speak of, is actually a guide for speakers. embedded in this long book on rhetoric is a section on how to remember the things you are going to talk about. it is one of the only descriptions of ancient memory techniques that survived into the middle ages. clearly there were many others. When Cicero wrote about memory techniques, he basically said that they were so well known that he wouldn’t review them in detail. his assumption was that everyone knew these things.
let’s move on to the memory book of medievalist mary carruthers.
This is the best study of the role memory plays in medieval culture. we reserve the term genius for people who are creative, who are innovative, who think in completely new ways. In the middle ages, the term genius was reserved for people with the best memory. that’s revealing.
How did medieval mnemonics borrow and add to ancient memory systems?
mnemonic techniques became more and more rare. once you get to renaissance thinkers like giordano bruno, a leading figure in the history of the development of the art of memory, these mnemonic techniques become incredibly esoteric and nearly impenetrable.
Tell us about the illustrations in this book and what we can learn about memory from medieval illuminations.
during the middle ages they understood that words accompanied by images are much more memorable. By making the margins of a book colorful and beautiful, highlights help make the text unforgettable. it is unfortunate that we have lost the art of illumination. the fact that today’s books are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the ipad and the future of the book being reimagined, I wonder if we will rediscover the importance of visually enriching texts.
What can we learn about memory from psychologist David Rubin’s treatise on oral traditions?
this is such a good book. applies cognitive science learning to help us understand oral traditions, stories passed down by word of mouth, including the Iliad and the Odyssey. adopts an interdisciplinary approach. one of the things he writes about is that the ancients understood things about cognition that have only recently been rediscovered.
one of those things is that they rhyme and
rhythmic speech is not only for euphony but also for memory. right?
correct. the use of visual images to imprint memories is not the only mnemonic device. rhyme and rhythm are also mnemonic. one of the best ways to make something memorable is to use rhyme and meter and rhythm and song. this seems to be how the odyssey and the iliad were transmitted.
How does psychology confirm and challenge the art of memory?
Scientists have tested mnemonic techniques and shown that they work. Studies show that older people can be easily taught to use memory techniques, but once they leave laboratory conditions they forget to apply the techniques. Cognitive science has taught us that learning to retain information is easy, but remembering is hard. It’s intuitive, but it’s important to keep in mind that if you don’t try to make things memorable, you’ll forget them.
to another book based on the science of the mind. tell us about the memory metaphors of douwe draaisma?
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This is a book that should be better known. Draaisma is a Dutch historian of psychology and ideas who has written a couple of books on the mind that are full of wonderfully bizarre anecdotes and fantastic insights. memory metaphors is a story of how we have talked about memory over time. today we talk about photographic memory or digital memory; we compare our memories with the technologies of our age. that has always been true. the Greeks spoke of memory as if it were a wax tablet. in the middle of the last century thinkers saw memory as a hologram. draaisma writes about how these metaphors shape what we think about memory.
draaisma points out that for Socrates, memory was an aviary. For Saint Augustine it was a treasure house. Freud called memory a mystical notebook. what is the most resonant metaphor for memory that you have found or devised?
memory is a playground. It’s not my own metaphor, that’s what the man who trained me to become a mental athlete once told me. the act of making something memorable involves finding what is meaningful, significant, and colorful in a piece of information or experience. the more fun you have with this, the stickier your memories will be.
Is the metaphor also a mnemonic tool?
yes. Let’s go back to that story of simonides. although it is probably apocryphal, it has never been forgotten because it is a useful way of understanding mnemonic principles. I mention this again to point out that comprehension and retention are facilitated by association with stories or mere metaphors. So yes, analogized images in metaphors make ideas and information easier to remember.
finally, back to the mind of a mnemonist, a monograph by a renowned russian neuropsychologist, alexander luria. he subtitles it “a little book about a vast memory”. tell us about the luria theme.
This book created the entire genre of humanistic case histories. Without Luria, there could be no Oliver Sacks, the British neurologist who wrote Awakenings. For 30 years, Luria studied a journalist named Solomon Shereshevsky or simply ‘S’. supposedly, he had a vacuum cleaner memory. he could remember anything.
luria is an excellent writer, but he didn’t document s’s abilities in the kind of detail required to compare s with people living today. Luria is so concerned with telling a good story that she does not rigorously describe S’s abilities. we have no other record of s, this apparently unique character in the history of psychology. As a result, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from this book.
What does Luria’s study teach us about the human condition?
s seemed to remember too well. he was ineffective as a journalist and ultimately could make a living only as a stage actor: a memory nut. I think that points to something deep. forgetting is an important part of learning, it teaches us to abstract. Because he remembered too much, he couldn’t process what he witnessed and, as a result, he couldn’t make his way in the world.
what’s the first thing you remember memorizing?
When I was four or five years old, my overzealous older brother sat me down with a map of the United States and a mission to memorize the capitals of each state. that was my first memorization feat.
Do you remember how you fixed it in your mind?
I don’t remember anything from that period. except state capitals.
In the course of writing your book, you won the title of American Champion of Memory in 2006. What stuck in your mind about that experience?
What stuck with me the most about the whole experience was not the contest, the training or even winning the trophy. It’s a guy I knew who had no memory at all. His brain was attacked by a virus that cut him like an apple: it took away his ability to remember everything that happened since about 1950, as well as his ability to form new memories. it was an amazing window into how our memories make us who we are. Although he couldn’t remember me for more than five minutes, I will never forget him.
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