The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be recalled. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second). Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast thinking and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less. (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.") The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), the stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall occurs from brain activity.
It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human memory performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that memory is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that memory is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human mental performance. The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to recall too quickly for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do, or humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do, the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon. In part 1 and part 2 and part 3 of this series, I gave many newspaper clips giving examples of such exceptional human memory performance. Let us now look at some more of such newspaper clips.
The 1906 account below is one that is rather hard-to-believe, as it is a claim that a man memorized the entire Bible.
You can read the claim on the newspaper page here:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026843/1906-08-24/ed-1/seq-5/
It is well known that quite a few Muslim scholars memorized the entire Quran, a work of 6236 verses. In the newspaper story here, we read of a 90-day scripture memorization contest; and we have the claim that the winner memorized the entire New Testament (a work of 7,957 verses) and also a good deal of the Old Testament:
"On the day of the award it was found that among the older competitors the winner was Miss Leste May Williams, a young woman 16 years of age. With these ninety days, during which she had an attack of measles, she committed to memory and recited to the committee 12,236 verses of Scripture, covering the entire New Testament ...and including liberal selections from Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and other parts of the Old Testament."
The length of memorization claimed above (roughly 10,000 verses) is in the same league as the claim made in a scientific paper that between age 59 and age 67 a person memorized all 10,565 lines of Milton's Paradise Lost, recalling the entire work over a three-day period. But the total number of verses in the Bible is about 31,102. So a person memorizing the entire Bible would seem to display an unprecedented human ability of memorization, in terms of the total length.
The 1923 news story here in the Washington Times claimed that H. H. Halley had memorized the entire New Testament. The 1926 newspaper account here claims that H. H. Halley of Chicago, USA memorized the entire Bible. The same paper (the Indianapolis Times) had made the same claim in the 1925 newspaper account here.
In the 1888 newspaper article here, we read of a Rev. Nathan Smith here, and it claimed that he had memorized the entire Bible. We are told he can name the verse, chapter and book of any Bible quotation.
The newspaper page here has in its "Lived Under All Presidents" article a claim that an old woman named Elizabeth Freeman "memorized nearly the entire Bible."
"Germans believe that a member of the staff of the Prussian State library has the finest memory in the world. He has specialized in weather reports and from memory he can describe the weather of any day from 1881 up to the present time. His wonderful memory recently was tested by the Berlin Meteorological society and he came through with flying colors. Colonel Charratle of England once memorized the entire Issue of a newspaper on a wager; a stoker memorized Haydn’s 'Dictionary of Dates,' and Lord Randolph Churchill, also of England, was able to repeat a page of print after a single reading."
You can read the account on the page below:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83032307/1925-08-27/ed-1/seq-5/
The account above refers to a perfect recall of weather reports over a period of 44 years (1881 to 1925), involving about 16,000 days. If we assume that each weather report would require on average a number of words equal to a single verse, the claim above is roughly equivalent to a claim that a man memorized a body of material about as long as 16,000 verses.
Below are some accounts of extraordinary memory powers held long ago, from the newspaper account here:
The newspaper account claims that Thomas Cranmer memorized an entire translation of the Bible, and that Lord Granville memorized the entire New Testament. We also have a claim that a Corsican could repeat in order 36,000 names, and could also repeat the names in reverse order.
In the newspaper account below, from the page here, we have a claim that a man memorized a catalog of more than 1,100 pages, and that he demonstrated his memorization of the catalog:
In the 1963 newspaper account here, we read of a man who every week would memorize the entire Saturday Evening Post, a magazine that at that time would have very many pages in each edition, with a page typically consisting of three of four columns of small print adding up to more than 700 words per page.
In the newspaper account here, we read of an opera singer with an astonishing memory:
"Julia Rosewald, the prima donna with the Abbott opera company, has, perhaps, the most astonishing memory on the lyric stage. Her repertoire consists of sixty-eight operas, in nine of which she sings double roles. Besides this marvelous selection she adds ten oratorios, and what is more wonderful still, she memorizes the entire work and will instantly detect the slightest error in harmony or instrumentation. The rapidity with which she studies is almost incredible. On one occasion, to save the company, she studied an entirely new role in twenty-four consecutive hours, and without rest appeared in the part without an error. This is vouched for by the conductor, Tomasi, and the entire company."
Derek Paravicini was born 25 weeks early, with severe brain damage, but he has reliably demonstrated countless times the ability to very accurately play back on a keyboard any song that is played to him, note for note, even if he has never heard the song before. In the newspaper account below, which can be read here, the claim is made that such an ability was demonstrated repeatedly by an entire orchestra, which could play from memory some newly written march it had only heard once.. We read this:
"Practically all Latin Americans possess, in marked degree, what is known as ‘musical memory'....This ability to memorize has been exemplified on many occasions in San Antonio, Tex., when the visiting Mexican band has been asked to ‘stand by’ while the latest march from the United States is being played by the American band. With all standing at attention, the Mexican bandsmen have waited until the finish of the first strain and then came the marvelous test; the playing of this number in harmony by the entire group. Audiences have been astounded at this exhibition and some in the audience have expressed the thought that ‘there was some trick in it.’ That is absolutely true, for there is a trick, but it has taken thousands of years to produce it, and it is in the form of this musical memory . .. Leaders of the great orchestras in Latin America, with but little effort, are able to memorize the entire scores of dozens of operas.”
In support of such a claim, you could cite the huge number of opera roles memorized by Placido Domingo, who knew 151 opera roles in several different languages.
On the newspaper page here, we have the claim that the Belgian shcolar Joest Lips (also called Justus Lipsius) memorized the entire text of the Histories of Tacitus, a work of 50,000 words. The page also claims that he once challenged a man to stand over him with a dagger, and to stab him if he transposed a single word.
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