Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's IdealsJames, William
Science
Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals
James, William
College students -- Conduct of life; Educational psychology; Teachers -- Professional ethics
We have, then, not so much a faculty of memory as many faculties of
memory. We have as many as we have systems of objects habitually thought
of in connection with each other. A given object is held in the memory
by the associates it has acquired within its own system exclusively.
Learning the facts of another system will in no wise help it to stay in
the mind, for the simple reason that it has no 'cues' within that other
system.
We see examples of this on every hand. Most men have a good memory for
facts connected with their own pursuits. A college athlete, who remains
a dunce at his books, may amaze you by his knowledge of the 'records' at
various feats and games, and prove himself a walking dictionary of
sporting statistics. The reason is that he is constantly going over
these things in his mind, and comparing and making series of them. They
form for him, not so many odd facts, but a concept-system, so they
stick. So the merchant remembers prices, the politician other
politicians' speeches and votes, with a copiousness which astonishes
outsiders, but which the amount of thinking they bestow on these
subjects easily explains.
The great memory for facts which a Darwin or a Spencer reveal in their
books is not incompatible with the possession on their part of a mind
with only a middling degree of physiological retentiveness. Let a man
early in life set himself the task of verifying such a theory as that of
evolution, and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like grapes to
their stem. Their relations to the theory will hold them fast; and, the
more of these the mind is able to discern, the greater the erudition
will become. Meanwhile the theorist may have little, if any, desultory
memory. Unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him, and forgotten as soon
as heard. An ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition may
coexist with the latter, and hide, as it were, within the interstices of
its web. Those of you who have had much to do with scholars and
_savants_ will readily think of examples of the class of mind I mean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account