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Metaphors of Memory a HISTORY of IDEAS ABOUT the MIND

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Metaphors of Memory a HISTORY of IDEAS ABOUT the MIND Metaphors of Memory A HISTORY OF IDEAS ABOUT THE MIND DOUWE DRAAISMA Translated by Paul Vincent published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge cb2 1rp, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, cb2 2ru, United Kingdom www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011–4211, USA www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Originally published in Dutch as De Metaforenmachine – een geschiedenis van het geheugen by Historische Uitgeverij 1995 and © Douwe Draaisma 1995, 2000 First published in English by Cambridge University Press 2000 as Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas About the Mind English translation © Cambridge University Press 2000 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge This translation was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research Typeface Swift 10/13 pt. System QuarkXPress™ [se] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Draaisma, D. [Metaforenmachine een geschiedenis van het geheugen. English] Metaphors of memory: a history of ideas about the mind / Douwe Draaisma. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. isbn 0 521 65024 0 1. Memory – History. I. Title. bf371.d6813 2000 153.1Ј2–dc21 99-088502 isbn 0 521 65024 0 hardback Contents List of illustrations page x Acknowledgements xiv Introduction 1 1 The Mystic Writing-Pad 7 The metaphor as smoked glass. Three theories of metaphor 9 A brief psychology of metaphor 13 The metaphor as a heuristic tool 17 2 Memoria: memory as writing 24 Like a seal in wax 24 An inner place that is not a place 27 The book as memory, the memory as book 31 Ars memoriae: the palaces of memory 38 Fludd’s theatre of memory 41 The persistence of writing 44 3 The splendour of the Bologna Stone 49 Phosphorus and memory 50 The microcosm of memory 53 ‘Only by Similitude’ 62 A physicist’s memory 64 4 A vast labyrinth 68 The decline of the mechanistic approach 70 Romanticism: the landscapes of memory 72 Localisation: Gall, Flourens, Broca 78 ‘Mental physiology’ 83 Phonograph and memory 85 vii viii List of contents The brain as a conscious phonograph 90 Hermann Ebbinghaus: the mathematisation of memory 93 5 A mirror with a memory 103 The camera obscura 104 Photography: the chemical memory 110 The memory as a photographic plate 119 The pictorial statistics of memory 125 Photographic memory: mathematical prodigies and blindfolded chess players 129 Stationary trace, frozen image 133 6 Digital memory 138 The mechanism of behaviour 139 The electronic brain 142 Psychology and the computer 151 The elementary perceiver and memoriser 152 The computer metaphor 155 The computational paradox 160 7 The holographic memory 165 Photographing with laser light 165 The hologram as a metaphor 168 Eclipse 171 The brain as a Fourier hologram 172 In search of the engram 173 Holography and heuristics 176 Stagnation? 181 8 An enchanted loom 185 Neurology and psychology 185 The brain metaphor 190 The networks in the memory 194 The general dog 195 Claparède’s drawing-pin 197 Neural networks, computers and holograms 199 The line of least resistance 204 9 The homunculus 212 Who looks at the hologram? 217 Descartes on memory 218 Homunculus and the computer 221 List of contents ix Optical neural computers 223 Mnemosyne’s gift 226 Epilogue 230 Index of names 234 Index of subjects 238 Illustrations 1 A cabinet from Freud’s consultation room. E. Engelman, Sigmund Freud. Wien IX. Berggasse 19, Vienna, 1993, p. 51. page 10 2 Frontispiece to Corporis humani disquisitio anatomica, The Hague, 1651. 19 3 Late medieval drawing of the human mind. G. Reisch, Margarita philosophica, Basle, 1503. 26 4 An extract from the book of hours made for Catherine of Cleves. J. Plummer, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, London, 1966, pl. 121. 35 5 An extract from the book of hours made for Catherine of Cleves. J. Plummer, The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, London, 1966, pl. 128. 36 6 Drawing of the fool posing as a scholar. S. Brant, Das Narrenschiff, Basle, 1494. 37 7 Mathias Holtzwart’s depiction of the book as an emblem of constancy and protection against the vicissitudes of fate. 38 8a–b Illustrations from J. Romberch, Gongestorium Artificiose Memorie, Venice, 1533. 40 9 Diagram of the human mind. R. Fludd, Utriusque cosmi . Historia, Oppenheim, 1617–1619. 42 10 Engraving of the theatre as an artificial memory. R. Fludd, Utriusque cosmi . Historia, Oppenheim, 1617–1619. 43 11 Illustration of Fludd’s tripartite division of the human mind. R. Fludd, Utriusque cosmi . Historia, Oppenheim, 1617–1619. 45 12 The Alchymist in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone Discovers Phosphorus. Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771, possibly reworked in 1795. Derby Museum and Art Gallery. 51 13 Allegorical print by Corbould. A. Bettex, De ontdekking der natuur, Hoofddorp, 1977, p. 40. 54 14 Engraving illustrating the Cartesian explanation of the perception of distance. R. Descartes, Traité de l’homme, Paris, 1664. 59 15 Engraving of Descartes’s analogy of the perception of distance. R. Descartes, Traité de l’homme, Paris, 1664. 60 x List of illustrations xi 16 Painting by Carl Gustav Carus entitled Cemetery at Obyn in Winter, 1828, now hanging in the Arts Museum of Leipzig. From M. Prause, Carl Gustav Carus, Leben und Werk, Berlin, 1968, p. 30. 74 17 Illustration of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s death mask. C. G. Carus, Neuer Atlas der Cranioskopie, Leipzig 1864, pl. vii. 78 18 J. C. Spurzheim’s diagrams of cranial maps from the frontispiece to Phrenology, or, the Doctrine of the Mind; and of the Relations between its Manifestations and the Body, London, 1825. 81 19 Nineteenth-century engraving from Le Courrier véritable of 1632. D. Marty, The Illustrated History of Phonographs, New York, 1981, p. 8. 86 20 The ‘phonautograph’ of Leon Scott de Martinville, 1857. D. Marty, The Illustrated History of Phonographs, New York, 1981, p. 12. 87 21 Front view of Thomas Alva Edison’s phonograph. A. M. Mayer, ‘Edison’s talking-machine’, Nature, 11 April 1878, 469–71: 470. 88 22 Side view of the mouthpiece from Edison’s phonograph. A. M. Mayer, ‘Edison’s talking-machine’, Nature, 11 April 1878, 469–71: 470. 89 23 Engraving of a demonstration of Edison’s phonograph at the Académie des Sciences, 11 March 1878. D. Marty, The Illustrated History of Phonographs, New York, 1981, p. 20. 90 24 Engraving of the public listening to Edison’s phonograph at the World Exhibition of Science and Technology, Paris, 1889. D. Marty, The Illustrated History of Phonographs, New York, 1981, p. 73. 91 25 Woodcut of the rotation apparatus for the study of memory in the 1903 Zimmermann catalogue. E. Zimmermann, Preisliste, Leipzig, 1903, p. 13. 96 26 Engraving of a camera obscura in use as an instrument for astronomical observation. A. Bettex, De ontdekking der natuur, Hoofddorp, 1997, p. 334. 105 27 Engraving of the camera obscura as an analogy for the optical processes in the human eye. M.-L. von Plessen (ed.), Sehsucht. Das Panorama als Massenunterhaltung des 19 Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1993, p. 98. 106 28 Engraving of Descartes’s representation of the eye as a camera obscura. R. Descartes, Discours de la méthode (La Dioptrique), Leiden, 1637. 107 29 Engraving explaining the inverted retinal image. R. Descartes, Discours de la méthode (La Dioptrique), Leiden, 1637. 107 30 Engraving explaining the Cartesian theory of binocular vision. R. Descartes, Traité de l’homme, Paris, 1664. 107 31 Eighteenth-century engraving showing how with the aid of a mirror and a prism, the image of a camera obscura could be projected onto a flat surface. U. Tillmanns, Geschichte der Photographie, Stuttgart, 1981, p. 15. 108 xii List of illustrations 32 An exposure by Joseph Niépce around 1826 to 1827, is regarded as the ‘first photograph’. U. Tillmanns, Geschichte der Photographie, Stuttgart, 1981, p. 27. 112 33 A daguerreotype of the Paris boulevard du Temple (1838). The close-up shows the gentleman pausing to have his shoes shined. U. Tillmanns, Geschichte der Photographie, Stuttgart, 1981, p. 31. 114–15 34 Portrait of John William Draper (date unknown), illustrating the principle of ambrotype photography. R. Taft, Photography and the American Scene. A Social History, 1839–1889, New York, 1942, p. 125. 117 35 Frontispiece to Francis Galton’s Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, London, 1883. 126 36 Francis Galton’s composite portraits of criminals. K. R. Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, vol. ii, London, 1924, pl. xxvii. 127 37 A grid of twenty-five numbers used by Alfred Binet in his investigation of the memories of mathematical prodigies. A. Binet and L. Henneguy, Psychologie des grands calculateurs et joueurs d’échecs, Paris, 1894, p. 146. 131 38 A chess position along with a mental representation of the same position drawn by the blind chess player, Sittenfeld. A. Binet and L. Henneguy, Psychologie des grands calculateurs et joueurs d’échecs, Paris, 1894, p. 300 (chess position), p. 301 (mental image). 132 39 Drawing of a tri-dimensional maze used for research into motor-skills learning. D. P. Boder, ‘A tridimensional maze’, American Journal of Psychology, 42 (1930), 107–8: 108. 139 40 An electro-chemical model for the conditioned reflex. R. G. Krueger and C. L. Hull, ‘An electro-chemical parallel to the conditioned reflex’, Journal of General Psychology, 5 (1931), 262–9: 263. 141 41 Drawing of one of Wilkins’s procedures for the encoding and decoding of secret messages.
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