"Ceci tuera cela"

The latin phrase in the title of this post comes from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame De Paris and means "The printed book will destroy the building." (Yates, 124).  Hugo makes this remark after the first printed book enters his manuscript library.  He sadly meditates on the loss of thousands of Memory cathedrals due to the creation of the printed book.  While this metaphorical meaning to the phrase certainly rings true, I immediately thought of the literal implications of the phrase.

With the creation of the printing press, the nature of society shifted drastically in Europe.  Translations of the bible became widely available in native tongues of the lay people.  The social position of the latin literate clerical elite shifted.  These newly printed bibles allowed people to study religion without the need for a chapel. Suddenly the building representing the whole religious order became less essential.  Furthermore, the printed bible ignited the protestant reformation.  The battle between the catholic old guard and the new upstart protestant feuded for generations.  How many buildings were destroyed during the conflict?  Buildings destroyed thanks in part to the printed word.  

It might be a bit of a stretch but project the nature of the printed word a couple of hundred years into the future.  Where are libraries when the entire written cannon becomes accessible on the the web?  How about Museums?  What other buildings will become obsolete as they transition to Cyberspace?  

I dont really know the answer to any of these questions but they are certainly interesting to think about with the ever advancing nature of the print culture.

Test Review

Kane
1. Moonbone- example of repetition
2.Property???- from prologue
3. Agriculture??? -from prologue I think its what ruined myth according to Kane
4. Practical - White berry story
5. Caribou/Frogs
6. Definition of Myth "Song the Earth sings to itself"

Ong
1. Primary Orality- not contact with writing at all
2. Secondary Orality- those that choose not to write
3. Chirographic- Writing culture
4. Typographic- Print Culture
5. Vision vs. Sound
6. Pg. 79 on Plato

Yates
1. Simonides the story of the first memory system
2. Transition Retoric -> Ethics -> Cosmos
3. St. Agustine pg 47 Read, its a short passage about the Trinity

Questions.
1. The Liberal Arts- (GGRANMAD)
2. Neoplatonism and Mysticism (your guess is as good as mine)
3. Feb 20th John Nay's Birthday
4. Anamnesis- recollection of all things forgotten (Plato pg. 38)
5. Feb 17th 1600 Bruno burned at the stake
6. Parataxis- additive, Ong, Stanley Fish
7. Bicameralism (Ong end of First Chapter)
8. Esoteric- mysterious, secret, info not for unwashed masses
9. Imagination- 1 hour photo of memory
10. Sharhar Azad- physical embodiment of storytellers (1001 Arabian Nights)
11. Artificial vs. Natural Memory
12. Plato's Phaedras "write it down, Look it up"
13. March 17th Sexson gives blood (Green Blood)
14. Memory--Imagination--Soul My trinity of things (not to be confused with Augustine's on Yates page 47)
15. Epithets- Sturdy Oak, Beautiful Princess, Brave Soldier, Keen Kenning Ben, Kate with the Beautiful Eyes

Images and memory in action

I think the best way to work into using images to create lasting memories starts on a small level. As great as reading about the masters ability to create these vast mental memory metaphors is, the actual practice of image memory must be built up. We in the modern age don't naturally think in these terms so I believe small exercises building to bigger ones will make the process easier. I had a Spanish test today and while I studied last night, I used flash cards. Many of the words I knew just from frequent use in class and conversation but a few words, especially verbs proved difficult to remember. So I employed the Artificial memory and related them to images.

Here are some examples

Lograr- to attain
Here I pictured a log roller working hard to attain the championship of log rolling. Instantly I remembered the verb

llorar- to cry
the Spanish word for raining is llover the two words look similer and so I pictured tears streaming down a persons face like rain drops.

parecer- to seem
I pictured my mother sewing up a pair of pants for me after I ripped a seam

pertenecer- to belong
A thief with a black mask and a bag of money "belongs" in jail

The method worked so well I will be using it on tests in every class from here on out. Now I just have to build up to the 50 meaningless things.

The Soul, the Guts of Memory, and my increasingly sore brain

Time and time again, Francis Yates, either in her own argument or by channeling others, connects the three ethereal concepts of Memory, Imagination, and Soul.  I commented on this pattern in a previous post however as I continue reading, more and more material reinforces my claims.  Based on Yates' book, the true Guts, the meat and potatoes of the Artificial Memory reside somewhere in the cross-roads of the the Imagination and the Soul.  The development of Memory not only proves useful but is of ultimate utility because of the supremely beneficial effects on the soul.  Maybe then, in the constant moral battle of souls, salvation lies in the memory.  This certainly played a huge part in Thomas Aquinas' treatise on memory.  More rationally, the better someone remembers sin the easier one can repent and work to prevent repeating the sin.  

Back to memory and the soul.  Yates makes an interesting observation critical to the development of memory.  "(1) that images are an aid to memory; (2) that many propria can be remembered through a few images; (3) that although the propria give more exact information about the thing itself, yet the metaphorica 'move the soul more and therefore better help the memory'." (pg. 65)  This statement helps refute the "clutter" argument posed in class if we conclude that memory derives from creations from the soul.  (I examined this in my previous post Mnemonic Soul Searching).  Agree or disagree, fundamentally this logic makes sense.  People commonly think of the Soul as a life force.  It plays a role in the development of personality, spirituality, relationships.  For me and my guess most people as well, these aspects of the soul provide incredibly vivid, personal memories.  I remember fondly watching sports next to my Dad as a very tiny kid which led to my passion for all sports.  I remember my first kiss, my first girlfriend, my first communion, the first time I questioned my spirituality and countless other aspects of my "Soul".  If one subscribes to the belief that the soul creates both the "human" and the "being" in the word "human-being" I would venture to guess that person can remember most of the climatic occurrences that shaped their existence.  

"What then is memory?  It is in the sensitive part of the soul which takes the images of sense impressions; it therefore belongs to the same part of the soul as imagination, but it also per accidens in the intellectual part since the abstracting intellect works in it on the phantasmata." (pg 71)  To be quite honest I don't know exactly what this quote means but it seems that Memory rests deep in the core of a person where the Soul, Imagination, and Intellect meet.  An exercise in any one of these four applications then involves some input from the other three.  Reasonably, the entire core of Academic thought no matter what kind or what subject relies completely on seamless cooperation of The Memory, The Soul, The Imagination, and The Intellect.  While this concept is a bit chewy, its kind of fun to think about.  My guess as we keep reading more and more of this will hash itself out.

My Fifty Things

I don't know if this will count because they are not quite completely discrete Items but I am going to use all of the US Ski Team Alpine medal winners as well as the year and location they won the medal.  I picked this set of items because of my mother is apart of the list and because I grew up idolizing these ski racers and even had many opportunities to meet them.  I have a signed poster in my room with almost every single one of their signatures and have some great memories of some of the personalities.  Every year my family and I would go to either Vail, CO or Jackson Hole, WY for the annual ski team reunion and charity race and I remember as a Bright eyed and bushy tailed grommit ski racer getting to shake the hands of many of these Racing Icons.

Heres the list, it comes out to about 53 items.

1948	St. Moritz, Switzerland	Gretchen Fraser	Gold, slalom; silver, combined
1952	Oslo, Norway	Andrea Mead-Lawrence	Gold, slalom; gold, giant slalom
1960	Squaw Valley, California, USA	Penny Pitou Betsy Snite	Silver, downhill; silver, giant slalom Silver, slalom
1964	Innsbruck, Austria	Jimmy Heuga Billy Kidd Jean Saubert	Bronze, slalom Silver, slalom; bronze, combined Silver, giant slalom (tie); bronze, slalom
1972	Sapporo, Japan	Barbara Cochran Susie Corrock	Gold, slalom Bronze, downhill
1976	Innsbruck, Austria	Greg Jones Cindy Nelson	Bronze, combined Bronze, downhill
1980	Lake Placid, New York, USA	Phil Mahre Cindy Nelson	Gold, combined; silver, slalom Silver, combined
1984	Sarajevo, Yugoslavia	Debbie Armstrong Christin Cooper Bill Johnson Phil Mahre Steve Mahre	Gold, giant slalom Silver, giant slalom Gold, downhill Gold, slalom Silver, slalom
1992	Albertville, France	Hilary Lindh Diann Roffe	Silver, downhill Silver, giant slalom
1994	Lillehammer, Norway	Tommy Moe Diann Roffe-Steinrotter Picabo Street	Gold, downhill; silver, super G Gold, super G Silver, downhill
1998	Nagano, Japan	Picabo Street	Gold, super G
2002	Salt Lake City, Utah, USA	Bode Miller	Silver, combined; silver, giant slalom
2006	Torino, Italy	Julia Mancuso Ted Ligety	Gold, giant slalom Gold, combined

Conversations with God...I mean a classmate

I too, like Alex, originally thought the "mental image" to remember clutters the space in our seemingly packed college student brain.  Why isn't the constant repetition of objects the superior method of memory building.  Every other time I had to memorize anything I would simply repeat the task over and over until it stuck.  Sometimes this method took a bit longer than desired but it seemed effective.  However, Francis Yates set me straight in Chapter 2 of The Art of Memory. she writes "Aristotle's statement that it is impossible to think without a mental picture is consistently brought in to support the use of images in mnemonics."  The answer seems almost too easy.  One cannot even conceptualize an "apple" without a mental picture of what an "apple" is.  This idea applies with every word in the English language.  In order to conceptualize a word, one must conjure up a mental picture that relates to the meaning of the word.  This can be as simple as a direct mental photograph as in my "apple" example or it can be a complex image with motion like for instance the phrase "running a marathon."  It would be pretty hard to understand what the phrase "running a marathon" meant without visualizing "running" and "marathon."  It stands to reason then that taking this process one step further allows the brain to connect created images that relate to a memory.  Further more this step is natural and rather than cluttering the brain with too many associations, it meshes seamlessly with natural brain function.  I suspect this also accounts for the reason obscure images from obscure places become the easiest to remember.  Using an image of an "apple" to remember a person named Adam because of the same initial letter proves a bit more difficult because there is already a clear and frequently used mental picture of an "apple" to represent an actual "apple."  Where as using a mental image of the up and down motion of an "Adam's apple" while swallowing will probably be an easier association for remembering Adam's name because of the more obscure image and reference.