Page 52 - Use Your Memory

USE YOUR MEMORY
Another great philosopher, who went along with the tide, was
Thomas Hobbes, who discussed and considered the idea of
memory but contributed little to what had already been said. He
agreed with Aristotle's ideas, rejecting nonphysical explanations of
memory. He did not, however, specify the real nature of memory,
nor did he make any significant attempts to locate it accurately.
It is evident from the theories of the seventeenth-century intel-
lectuals that the inhibiting influence of Galen and the church had
been profound. Practically all these great thinkers accepted with-
out question primitive ideas on memory.
Transitional Period - the Eighteenth Century
One of the first thinkers to be influenced by the Renaissance and
by the ideas of Newton was David Hartley, who developed the
vibratory theory of memory. Applying Newton's ideas on vibrating
particles, Hartley suggested that there were memory vibrations in
the brain that began before birth. New sensations modified exist-
ing vibrations in degree, kind, place and direction. After being
influenced by a new sensation, vibrations quickly returned to their
natural state. But if the same sensation appeared again, the vibra-
tions took a little longer to return. This progression would finally
result in the vibrations remaining in their 'new' state, and a
memory trace was thus established.
Other major thinkers of this period included Zanotti, who was
the first to link electrical forces with brain functions, and Bonnet,
who developed the ideas of Hartley in relation to the flexibility of
nerve fibres. He felt that the more often nerves were used, the
more easily they vibrated, and the better memory would be. The
theories of these men were more sophisticated than previous ones
because they had been largely influenced by developments in
related scientific fields. This interaction of ideas laid the
groundwork for some of the modern theories of memory.
The Nineteenth Century
With the development of science in Germany in the nineteenth
century, some important advances occurred. Many of the ideas
initiated by the Greeks were overthrown, and work on memory
expanded to include the biological sciences.
Georg Prochaska, a Czech physiologist, finally and irrevocably
rejected the age-old idea of animal spirits on the grounds that it
had no scientific basis and that there was no evidence to support it.
He felt that limited existing knowledge made speculation on the
location of memory in the brain a waste of time. 'Spatial locali-
sation may be possible,' he said, 'but we just do not know enough
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