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Observations on memory...
Dec. 31st, 2011 07:38 pmMy first attempt to read A Study in Scarlet was a failure. I don't know why, it just was. The story obviously didn't grab me, so I put the book back on the shelf.
Unlike the Mark Twain's cat, who gives all stove tops a wide berth after having once sat on a hot one, I found myself, a year or two later, sitting down again with my mother's single-volume book of Holmes tales, and this time, I just about inhaled that first story, and then tore through the rest of the book as if I were possessed. (Arguably, one might say I was possessed, by a thirst for more tales about Holmes and Watson, but I digress...)
As a result, I've never developed a tendency to regard books that "didn't work out" upon first reading as not worth revisiting some time later.
One such book is The Art of Memory, by Frances A. Yates, which is—in my opinion—a rather dense work that has defied my previous repeated attempts to penetrate its scholarship. Over the past week or so, I've managed to read the first few dozen pages of the book without my eyes glassing over, which represents progress, and even better, I've managed to relate what I have read to some life experiences.
The "plot" of the Yates book so far has covered a description of classic memory techniques as set forth by Roman writers, who are basically recapitulating techniques that go back to ancient Greece, which rely on the use of familiar "places" (said to be the source of expressions such as "in the first place" when presenting one's point of view), and on the creation of mental pictures to populate those places.
Back then, as now, there were people who didn't put universal stock in mnemonic techniques. Yates notes that the rhetorician Quintilian, for example, didn't think techniques involving imagery were very useful for memorizing speeches (i.e., precise sequences of words), although he did allow that, when learning a passage by heart, it made sense to do so using the same tablets on which the passage has been written, as the speaker
The first time was in elementary school, during a flash card session with our teacher. The subject was arithmetic, a subject that I really didn't master until some time in junior high school. (My approach to addition in elementary school was to mentally count my way to the answer, and to do so fast enough with no betraying physical "tell" that I was doing so, lest I provoke a reprimand from the teacher for not answering "reflexively.")
After a number of such sessions, you see, I noticed that a crease had developed in the corner of this particular card, and while I could not—for love ormoney—tell you what was printed on the question side, I can still tell you that the answer to the question was "8". (That card, BTW, never popped up while I was being quizzed.)
Since then, from time to time, I've been able to successfully associate other flash card answers with physical characteristics of the questions, and to visualize snippets of text that I was trying to memorize (as was the case with Wordsworth's I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o'er vales and hills..., in sixth grade).
In her text, Yates asks an interesting question:
More about which later. Maybe.
Cheers...
Unlike the Mark Twain's cat, who gives all stove tops a wide berth after having once sat on a hot one, I found myself, a year or two later, sitting down again with my mother's single-volume book of Holmes tales, and this time, I just about inhaled that first story, and then tore through the rest of the book as if I were possessed. (Arguably, one might say I was possessed, by a thirst for more tales about Holmes and Watson, but I digress...)
As a result, I've never developed a tendency to regard books that "didn't work out" upon first reading as not worth revisiting some time later.
One such book is The Art of Memory, by Frances A. Yates, which is—in my opinion—a rather dense work that has defied my previous repeated attempts to penetrate its scholarship. Over the past week or so, I've managed to read the first few dozen pages of the book without my eyes glassing over, which represents progress, and even better, I've managed to relate what I have read to some life experiences.
The "plot" of the Yates book so far has covered a description of classic memory techniques as set forth by Roman writers, who are basically recapitulating techniques that go back to ancient Greece, which rely on the use of familiar "places" (said to be the source of expressions such as "in the first place" when presenting one's point of view), and on the creation of mental pictures to populate those places.
Back then, as now, there were people who didn't put universal stock in mnemonic techniques. Yates notes that the rhetorician Quintilian, for example, didn't think techniques involving imagery were very useful for memorizing speeches (i.e., precise sequences of words), although he did allow that, when learning a passage by heart, it made sense to do so using the same tablets on which the passage has been written, as the speaker
will have certain tracks to guide him in pursuit of memory, and the mind's eye will be fixed not merely on the pages on which the words were written, but on individual lines, and at times, he will speak as though he were reading aloud. [...] This devices bears some resemblance to the mnemonic system which I mentioned above, but, if my experience is worth anything, is at once more expeditious and more effective.Upon reading this, I interpreted it to mean that, instead of relying on places and images, one should use other visualizations as a memory aid. And then it occurred to me that I have "experienced" this kind of memory aid—or something close—in various contexts and various times.
The first time was in elementary school, during a flash card session with our teacher. The subject was arithmetic, a subject that I really didn't master until some time in junior high school. (My approach to addition in elementary school was to mentally count my way to the answer, and to do so fast enough with no betraying physical "tell" that I was doing so, lest I provoke a reprimand from the teacher for not answering "reflexively.")
After a number of such sessions, you see, I noticed that a crease had developed in the corner of this particular card, and while I could not—for love ormoney—tell you what was printed on the question side, I can still tell you that the answer to the question was "8". (That card, BTW, never popped up while I was being quizzed.)
Since then, from time to time, I've been able to successfully associate other flash card answers with physical characteristics of the questions, and to visualize snippets of text that I was trying to memorize (as was the case with Wordsworth's I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o'er vales and hills..., in sixth grade).
In her text, Yates asks an interesting question:
What it would be interesting to know is whether Quintilian envisages preparing his tablet or page for memorization by adding to it signs, notae, or even imagines agentes formed according to the rules, to mark the places where the memory arrives at it travels along the lines of writing.It is an interesting question, and leads—I think—directly to the idea of "mind maps."
More about which later. Maybe.
Cheers...
