Page 47 - Use Your Memory

3 The History of Memory

From the time when man first began to depend on his mind for
coping with his environment, the possession of an excellent
memory has been a step to positions of command and respect.
Throughout human history there have been recorded remarkable
- sometimes legendary - feats of memory.
The Greeks
It is difficult to say exactly when and where the first integrated
ideas on memory arose. The first sophisticated concepts,
however, can be attributed to the Greeks, some 600 years before
the birth of Christ. As we look back on them now, these 'sophisti-
cated' ideas were surprisingly naive, especially since some of the
men proposing them are numbered among the greatest thinkers
the world has ever known.
In the sixth century BC, Parmenides thought of memory as
being a mixture of light and dark or heat and cold. He believed
that as long as any given mixture remained unstirred, the memory
would be perfect. As soon as the mixture was altered, forgetting
occurred. Diogenes of Apollonia advanced a different theory, in
the fifth century BC. He suggested that memory was a process that
consisted of events producing an equal distribution of air in the
body. Like Parmenides, he thought that when this equilibrium
was disturbed, forgetting would occur.
Not surprisingly, the first person to introduce a really major
idea in the field of memory was Plato, in the fourth century BC. His
theory is known as the Wax Tablet Hypothesis and is still accepted
by some people today, although there is growing disagreement.
To Plato, the mind accepted impressions in the same way that wax
becomes marked when a pointed object is applied to its surface.
Plato assumed that once the impression had been made it
remained until it wore away with time, leaving a smooth surface
once again. This smooth surface was, of course, what Plato con-
sidered to be equivalent to complete forgetting - the opposite
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