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 and part 4 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.
In the news account you can read here, we read of individuals who had memorized the entire Babylonian Talmud, a work of 12 or more volumes, totaling 5422 pages. We read this:
"Some years ago, through the kindness of my friend Professor Hollander, of the Johns Hopkins University , my attention was directed to an achievement, memorizing in which 1 venture to report; since, so far as I know, it has remained unnoticed by psychologists, and yet should be stored among the data long and still richly gathering for the study of extraordinary feats of memory. The facts of the case I can hardly do better than to allow the witnesses themselves to state. And first, Rev. Dr. David Philipson of Cincinnati to whom I was first referred by Professor Hollander.
'The Babylonian Talmud,' he has been good enough to write me, 'consists usually of twelve large folio volumes comprising thousands of pages. All the printed editions of the Talmud with scarcely an exception, have exactly the same number of pages and the same words on each page. This must be borne in mind in order to understand the remarkable feat of memory about to be described. There have been as there undoubtedly still are, men who know the whole text of the Talmud by heart. Some years ago one of these men, a native of Poland, was in this country. I witnessed his remarkable feats of memory. Thus, one of us would throw open one of the volumes of the Talmud, say the tractate Berakhot, at page 10; a pin would be placed on a word, let us say the fourth word in line eight; the memory sharp would then be asked what word is in the same spot on page 38 or 50 or any other page. The pin would be pressed through the volume until it reached the page designated; the memory sharp would then mention the word, and it was found invariably correct. He had visualized in bis brain the whole Talmud; in other words, the pages of the Talmud were photographed on his brain. It was one of the most stupendous feats of memory I have ever witnessed, and there was no fake about it. To the company gathered about the table were a number of Talmudic experts, who would readily have discovered fraud had there been any. The technical name which was used by Jews of aforetimes to designate these memory experts was Shass Pollak; Shass is the abbreviation for the Hebrew terms for the Talmud, and Pollak is Pole; nearly all these memory experts came from Poland. A Shass Pollak then is a Pole who has memorized the entire contents of the Talmud and is able to give exhibitions of his mnemonic powers like those mentioned above.'
And next let me quote from Judge Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia, who in answer to my inquiry wrote as follows: 'I have met but one "Shass Pollak" in my life. He was brought into my library one evening by a friend. I conversed with him and experimented upon him. After he had been introduced as the expert in question, I expressed some curiosity, with perhaps a mein of incredulity. He was eager for the fray. 'You are of course aware that all (or nearly all) modern editions of the Talmud are paged alike and printed alike, each page beginning and ending with the same word in all the editions.' ...He would take a pencil and merely glancing at the page put it down anywhere and without looking told the word on which his pencil had lighted. This he did over and over again. There is no reasonable ground for the suspicion that he saw the words. 1 watched him closely, and am convinced that he did not. He had, I feel sure, a perfect image of the page and the position of every word on it in his "head." '
Finally let me give the testimony of Dr. Schechter of New York, late president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America —testimony the more interesting in that while it depends upon the recollection of an experience of many years ago, yet it is an independent account of the same kind of testing which Dr. Philipson reports — namely, by pricking through the pages —and consequently confirms the opinion of Judge Sulzberger that the success of the 'Shass Pollak' who was tested merely by pencil was not due to a sly catching of the word by the eye. President Schechter stated to me by letter that once he had come across a 'Shass Pollak,' but that it was too long a time ago to give an account of him with definiteness. 'It is at least forty-five years since the incident occurred,' he wrote. 'What I remember was that he could tell you the contents of every page of the Talmud by heart. 1 remember also that the people amused themselves by prying a needle into any volume of the Talmud, and he could tell exactly the word on which the needle touched. But I also recollect distinctly that it was nothing more than a verbal or rather local memory, the students all maintaining that he knew very little about the meaning of the contents, their interpretation and application. I heard afterwards of many similar "Shass Pollaks" but it is a fact that none of them ever attained to prominence in the scholarly world.' This absence of any scholarly grasp of the contents thus memorized, of which Dr. Schechter speaks, also appears in the judgment of Dr. Philipson. 'I looked upon his achievement at the time I witnessed it as purely mechanical,' he writes. 'It is quite likely that he could not interpret the Talmud, though he knew its contents by "heart.” '
And Judge Sulzberger, when proposing to his 'Shass Pollak' that he use his knowledge to some scientific or literary end, was listened to with respect, but nevertheless received the impression that such proposals were deemed by his man to be nonsensical. All of which confirms the oft-repeated observation, that such extraordinary powers of memory may exist in a kind of intellectual disproportion where there is no corresponding development of other powers—where, indeed, there may be an actual stunting of other powers and interests; as though the mind had 'run' to memory, and been enlarged hero at the expense of other functions. As to the more precise amount of Matter that was memorized, it should be noted that a page of the Babylonian Talmud consists, as my colleague, Dr. Popper, has pointed out to me of the text proper, called the Gemarrah, printed as a more central portion on the page, and of a commentary printed below and around this text. Upon special inquiry whether the mnemonic feat applied only to the Gemarrah, or included also the commentary, Dr. Philipson states that the test which he witnessed was upon the Gemarrah only; and Judge Sulzberger was of the opinion that this was also true in the case that came under his observation. Even so, the task must have been a stupendous one; the reading matter upon each page is still great, and the number of pages is enormous.
Geo. M. Stratton, University of California, in the 'Psychological Review.' Professor Popper has also referred me to the articles 'Talmud' and 'Mnemonics' in the Jewish Encyclopedia for evidence that at one period the Talmud was handed down solely by memory. The feat of the Poles here recounted may’ therefore be regarded perhaps as the survival of a custom among early Jewish students in many and widely-separated communities."
The Babylonian Talmud is shown in the image below. We see a set of about 20 volumes:
We can assume that an average page of the Babylonian Talmud had at least about 100 words in its Gemarrah or Gemara part. Judging from the photo above of the set comprising about 20 volumes each looking like they were at least 200 pages long, the Bablyonian Talmud had a total of roughly 4000 pages, with its Gemarrah or Gemara part consisting of roughly 400,000 words.
The claim that is made in the newspaper article above is not an unprecedented claim of memory performance. In the newspaper story here, we read of a 90-day scripture memorization contest. We read this about the winner:
"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 New Testament has about 180,000 words, and the average verse in the Bible has about 25 words. So it seems that when Leste May Williams memorized 12,236 verses of the Bible, she had memorized a total of about 300,000 words. That is a feat of memorization almost as remarkable as memorizing the entire Gemarrah or Gemara part of the Babylonian Talmud, which I estimate as requiring the memorization of roughly 400,000 words.
No comments:
Post a Comment