“The art of memory is like an inner writing. Those who know the letters of the alphabet can write…”
“The art of memory is like an inner writing. Those who know the letters of the alphabet can write down what is dictated to them and read out what they have written. Likewise those who have learned mnemonics can set in places what they have heard and deliver it from memory. ‘For the places (of memory) are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters. The arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading.’”
- Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, 6-7. Yates is paraphrasing the Ad Herennium, the medieval source for mnemonics. Its author here exemplifies a civilized folk belief about the nature of the mind; the civilized mind is a written thing. The question is, does this comport with states of the brain, or states of mind?
- Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, 6-7. Yates is paraphrasing the Ad Herennium, the medieval source for mnemonics. Its author here exemplifies a civilized folk belief about the nature of the mind; the civilized mind is a written thing. The question is, does this comport with states of the brain, or states of mind?
Matthew Battles on 19 May 2009 at 12:13 am #
posted from softball practice on my phone; managed to misspell Herennium and belief, and couldn’t edit. Sometimes writing is indelible.