Hello,
Hello,
OK for the 'art of memory"
- though I'll make some comments at the end of this message about the
'communication challenge'.
>...the mnemonic models thus showing the
>deep roots of our technology in the tradition.
and
>The connection back to Simonides I had not realized,
>even though it was probably mentioned by Yates.
Yes, if our technology
can find these roots - I believe that reciprocally, it will benefit from
its sap. This is why I suggest PLAN for industry. An industry without sap
dies.. doesn't it?
Yes it is mentioned by
Yates - It makes the opening of her book "The Art of Memory" - and she explain
that she exercised herself the method at the level of Bruno's development.
It is at that level that Yates understood the Art of Memory as the prefiguration
of what she called 'electronic brains".
[NOTE: the excerpt from Yates quoting Cicero in THe_Art_of_Memory at
http://www.dnafoundation.com/priv/yatoplan.htm]
-----------
I agree when you say :
>However I have some reservations about mnemonics
in the sense
>that it is a technique. Technique is what produces nihilism.
Yet I don't think that
a technique ALWAYS produces nihilism - precisely, I believe it produces so,
when it has lost its roots, lack of sap. Nietzsche is a very good example,
when he wrote, in the most arid phase of the repression of Trismegistus'
memory, for Zoroaster/Zarathoustra - as Psychoanalysis make notice, since
the repressed has to come back, even in an hallucinated manner.
All the opposite, when
the Primal Scene is remembered, the technique becomes the tree of life.
I would add another comment
regarding the mnemonics as a technique:
As Yates began to suggest,
the mnemonics aspect of the Art-of-Memory may have been a very limited -
and even resistant - part of it. At one point, "memory became a rhetorical
skill, an aid at cueing orators in the vocal interpretations of texts." -
perhaps do you know the wonderful following pages:
VICO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6212v.htm
BRUNO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6212.htm
CAMILLO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6211.htm
ART
OF MEMORY
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng621.htm
In one of them, the author
confesses his surprise :
Curiously, the use of memory
systems did not become immediately obsolete with the invention of
printing,..
and he continues :
...but instead
became elaborated into yet another
form as a complex, Neoplatonic
magic which would have a far reaching, though somewhat obscured,
influence.
In a sketch I would say
that, after Cicero's execution, the AOM remained in cyst form, until the
Printed Culture released it again (Bruno);
then during two/three centuries it could live by itself, until it needed
to grow/find roots (Nietzsche).
I think that I understand
- a little - what you say by learning by heart ; heart and sap share the
same blood I guess.
You see... we can make
good use of the Lacanian model here:
pic.10 (clik on pic to visit other text where inserted)
The only Lacanians who
would oppose to this illustration would be those who have never read that
the concave mirror represents the neural system - they are many, though it
is clearly written in Lacan's description of his model. This is the problem
with rhetoricians - they ignore what's clear.
Anyhow, here we have a
good base to discuss about heart and sap - especially since this 'drive'
pulses towards existence (whose place is designated by the eye - e.g., the
perspective point of view ; and by the crossed-out
letter
- which means
that the Subject has
ex-ited).
What is Theauxian
{..how far can I go with such a name!..}is the strong emphasis on the fact that there would
have no flux, in the heartbeat, if there were not a Cybernetic machine in
the black box, beyond the mirror. To continue the metaphor, the system would
not work without an income of the venous corrupted blood.
{..sometimes I am amazed how all this is frightening..}
So you say:
>Since mnemonics is a technique we would expect
it to have
>the same aspects as Being, i.e. the kinds of Being.
In my view, the
Being that you describe is the space beyond the mirror. It is where
the Pure Presence is idealized
(is represented
there as S,I - aka Idealized Subject).
I am still working on your
Process Being and Hyper Being (with symbols and places) - that probably matches
with the Freudo-Lacanian process of Displacement (Metonymic) and Condensation
(Metaphor), and are illustrated in the graph as the collusion between the
vase and the bunch.
Certainly, it is worth
to try to reciprocally contribute - as you say :
>>my real contribution to your path of thinking
might lie, merely in pointing out how the kinds of being inform the mnemonic
technique.
This may take time - a
day or two, a year or two. I am looking forward to seeing the light on
cybernetics processes as you have approached them probably more in detail
than I have.
From my side, at that point,
I can feed-back my feeling. I wonder if you do not tend to dichotomize too
rigidly the process of the heart (left in the graph) from the mechanical
mnemonic (right side of the graph). For instance, you write :
>For that person who has memorized by heart either
what he has worked to absorb
>exists in him or not, and he has no defensive technique to protect him
if his memory
>fails. This person is continually facing oblivion while the person using
mnemonics
>attempts to protect himself from oblivion by placing a saving technique
between
>himself and what he is remembering.
I believe that - since
every person has an heart - the person using mnemonics is (on the
left side) facing the mirror at an angle. This is described as the
line [ y to i'(a)] where i'(a)
represents image & place (vase/bunch). In this direction, this person
puts indeed the saving technique (the virtual bunch in
vase) between him/herself and what is remembered (in red).
So what/where is the person
who has memorized by heart - by rote as a machine...?
I guess that his un-natural
thriving has moved him physically, really, in this impossible place which
is Ideal ; this can only happen if it is the mirror which moves with him
- and this is why Lacan presents a second phase
in his model. It presents the person (who has moved at
the former S,I place) facing oblivion - that is is real image AND
his virtual image...
I don't know if you'd agree
that this may represent facing oblivion. Anyhow, it is the
psychoanalytical situation (indeed a memory process where one faces one's
repression).
I hope that this will make
another step.