Where Did Our Understanding of Memory Come From?

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Editor’s Note: This book excerpt has been reorganized to fit the needs of the article.

Evolution of Our Understanding of Memory

Collapse of a Banquet Hall

Many current principles used to strengthen our memories can be traced back hundreds or even thousands of years. And although I don’t think it’s necessary to learn everything some of the wisest minds have written about memory over the years, some familiarity with their approaches and their concepts makes it easier today to understand and strengthen your memory.

To the ancients, memory was not just a means of preserving the past but was considered a tool for what we would now call creative thinking. By constructing within the mind a structured and orderly memory, the ancients thought it possible to forge new thoughts and establish original and creative connections.

Commenting on the depth and power of his memory, Saint Augustine wrote: “The vast mansions of memory were treasured in innumerable images brought in from objects of every conceivable kind perceived by the senses. In these mansions are hidden away the modified images we produce when by our thinking, we magnify or diminish or in any way alter the information our senses have reported. In the immense court of my memory, sky and earth and sea are available to me, together with everything I have ever been able to perceive in them.”

The Greeks were among the first to use special techniques to perfect the faculty of memory. The key discovery can be traced to the collapse of a banquet hall. The poet Simonides (556–468 B.C.) was performing at a banquet and survived the collapse of the building (luckily, he had been called outside a few moments before the collapse). Using his memory, Simonides was able to identify the dead based on his recall of the places where each of them had been sitting during the banquet. Traditionally, many have claimed that he was not only able to envision and name the positions of the attendees but could identify what they were wearing and other indicators that differentiated one attendee from another. This remarkable performance suggested some of the principles of the art of memory. Here is Cicero’s description of Simonides’ insight:

“He inferred that persons desiring to train the faculty of memory must select places [the seats at the banquet hall] and form mental images of the things that they wish to remember [the identity of the banqueters].”

By restoring the images of the banqueters sitting at their places at the banquet table, Simonides made it possible to use the order of the places as a means of preserving the order of the individual banqueters. The key principle of Simonides’ memory method was the formation of mental images coupled with their orderly arrangement.

Thinking in Pictures

Another Greek insight into memory can be dated to Aristotle (382–322 B.C.) in De Anima. In a profound insight, Aristotle asserted that perceptions are transferred to the mind (we would now say the brain), where they are elaborated into mental images. To Aristotle, the formation of mental images was similar to a tracing made on wax by a signet ring; whether a memory result depends on the conditions of the wax (the brain) and the signet ring (the stimulation). In this analogy, the experiences conformed to the signet ring, and the wax to the brain.

“Some men in the presence of considerable stimulus have no memory owing to disease or age, just as if a seal were impressed on flowing water. With them the design makes no impression because they are worn down like old walls in buildings or because of a hardness of that which is to receive the impression. For this reason, the very young and old will have poor memories; they are in a state of flux, the young because of their growth, the old because of their decay.”

To Aristotle, images formed by imagination became the basis not only for memory but for all thinking. Indeed, Aristotle believed that thinking cannot take place without pictures. “The thinking faculty thinks of its forms in mental pictures.” Each memory becomes part of one or more networks associated with a particular past experience, and each person possesses unique networks. For instance, while one person raised in a northern climate may associate the word “white” with snow, another person not accustomed to wintry weather would be more likely to associate it with “milk.”

Over the next 2,000 years, Aristotle’s linking of thought with the formation of mental pictures gave rise to the development of various memory techniques.

Notice that all of the methods for enhancing memories discussed so far emphasize the central importance of concentration and repetition. “If you pay attention (direct your mind), the judgment will better perceive things going through it (the mind),” according to an ancient fragment of the Dialexis written in 400 B.C. Later, Saint Augustine referred to memory as venter animi, “a kind of stomach of the mind.” He compared the establishment of memory by reading and rereading a particular text to the action of a cow chewing a cud. In this pastoral comparison, readers “digested” their text by saying it aloud while meditating on it.

Rather than a “mindless” exercise, such focused concentration was considered a creative act leading to imagination, innovation, and invention. But before making an original creative contribution on one’s own, it was necessary to master the works of earlier thinkers by committing their words to memory. “From antiquity, the arts of memory were conceived of as investigative tools for recollected reconstruction and selection, serving what we now call creative thinking,” according to Mary Carruthers, an international authority on memory. “Memory craft was practiced as a tool of invention discovering and recombining things that one had previously learned.”

Thomas Bradwardine’s Advice

Here are specific instructions for forming such images by the 14th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bradwardine. The images of what one tends to learn should be: “wondrous and intense because such things are impressed in memory more deeply and are better retained. Such things are for the most part not moderate but extreme, are something greatly beautiful or ugly, joyous or sad, worthy of respect or derision, a thing of great dignity or vileness.” In other words, in order for the images to be remembered, they should be as dramatic and exaggerated as possible.

If we consider our own memory for a moment, Bradwardine’s advice turns out to be true. We tend to remember things and events that arouse our emotions at the moment of memory formation. Thus we may not remember what we ate for lunch yesterday, but we will remember with great clarity a near accident we experienced while driving to the restaurant. “Extreme things excite the human senses and the human mind with greater force than do average things,” wrote Jacobus Publicius in the “Art of Memory” published in 1475. “The reason for this is that things which are great, unbelievable, previously unseen, new, rare, unheard of, deplorable, exceptional, indecent, unique, or very beautiful, convey a great amount to our mind, memory, and recollection.”

Over the centuries, various objects served as placemarks for memorization. “The domestic and familiar species of a Roman house—the type of architecture most commended for memory work by ancient writers—were replaced by divine structures derived from descriptions in the Bible, such as the Ark, the Tabernacle, the Temple of the Heavenly City ... the cosmos itself,” according to Mary Carruthers, author of “The Medieval Craft of Memory.”

Metrodorus of Scepsis, a Greek scholar known for his works on rhetoric, relied on his knowledge of astrology to devise a memory system based on the 12 signs of the zodiac. Included with each of the signs of the zodiac were the decans, a subdivision of a sign divided into three equal parts of 10 degrees each. Both the astrological signs and the three accompanying decans functioned as memory placemarks. To increase the number of placemarks, Metrodorus assigned 10 background images for each decan. This resulted in a series of loci numbering from 100 to 360, which he could employ as a memory aid. (Three decans for each of the 12 signs of the zodiac multiplied by 10 images assigned to each decan).

As Quintilian described it, Metrodorus “found 360 places at the 12 signs to which the sun moves.” And since all of the loci were arranged in numerical order, Metrodorus could find any number of them by their number. By using this framework, Metrodorus could remember vast amounts of data and perform astounding feats of memory.

Perhaps at this point, you are thinking, whoa! Enough already. That’s pretty heavy stuff. And it is. But it only hints at the power certain mystics and philosophers suggested memory could achieve. As you will see, these ancient and honored systems and beliefs have been transformed and still linger today as the basic tenets of the art of memory.

Richard Restak is an American neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, and professor. He is also a bestselling author of over 20 books on the human brain.

This excerpt has been adapted from “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind” by Dr. Richard Restak. To buy this book, click here.