They Also Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do

The credibility of claims that mathematical calculation comes from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be mentally calculated. 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 and accurate math calculation is therefore evidence against claims that unaided human math calculation 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 calculation occurred by humans unaided by any devices,  the stronger is the evidence against the claim that human math calculation occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human mathematics performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that unaided human math calculation is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that math calculation is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human math  performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to calculate too quickly and too accurately for a noisy address-free brain to ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  My previous post "They Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do" described many such cases, as did my post "They Too Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do." Now let us look at some more cases of this type. 

Some cases of exceptional math performance can be found in the book The Great Mental Calculators by Steven B. Smith. Below from page 179 are the results of very hard math calculations by Arthur Griffith (born 1880):

We see above a record of blazing-fast speed in very hard math calculations.  The "extraction of cube root" referred to is solving the problem: what number multiplied by itself three times gives the supplied number?  The "extraction of a square root" referred to is solving the problem: what number multiplied by itself twice times gives the supplied number? 

A long newspaper article on Arthur Griffith can be read here. We read this:

"While engaged in working a series of tests Griffith multiplied 142,857,143 by 465,891,443 and obtained the product 66,555,920,495,127,349, in ten seconds. He multiplied 999,999,999 by 327,841,277, and had completed the writing of the product, 327,841,276,672,188,723, in nine and a half seconds. Other numbers required a longer time, but in no case was the time needed to complete the multiplication more than thirty seconds. Factors of numbers were called out as quickly as the number was submitted. The fifth power of 996, which equals 980,159,361,278,976, was obtained in thirty-seven seconds. Cubes of large numbers were given without hesitation, and in case the number was not a perfect cube the number which is the nearest perfect cube was given at once."

Using the web site here, I verified that the first  multiplication result is correct. The second multiplication result, 327,841,276,672,188,723, is incorrect only in the fifth-to-last digit, all other digits being correct. We can't tell whether it was a calculation error by Griffith, or an error by whoever wrote down his answer or who typeset the newspaper article. 

On page 297 the author says he was asked by Wim Klein to give two five-digit numbers. The author gave 57,825 and 13,489. In 44 seconds Klein multiplied the two numbers together mentally. On the same page we are told Klein extracted the 19th root of a 133-digit number in under two minutes. 

On page 301 we read this about lightning-fast calculations by Maurice Dagbert:

The same page refers to astounding multitasking and number memorization capabilities of Dagbert:

We read on the next page that Dagbert does not write any intermediate results, but simply announces the number calculated. On page 58 of the book Mental Prodigies by Fred Barton, we have the comment below, which may explain some of Dagbert's abilities. It is a description of something like a photographic memory for numbers:

On page 60 of the same book we read about these "instantaneous" mental calculation feats of Dagbert:

On page 63 of the same book we are told that Dagbert would do performances in which he faced away from a blackboard, and audience members would call out 2-digit numbers that were placed in a grid like the one below. Without  ever viewing the blackboard, Dagbert would correctly name all numbers and their positions in the grid, as well as telling the sum of each of the columns. 

On page 306 of The Great Mental Calculators we read of the astonishing calculation ability of Shakuntala Devi:

In the 1952 newspaper story here, we read of rave reviews of Devi's calculation abilities. A reporter attempts to stump her:

"Your reporter, at this point, slyly glanced at a piece of paper he had laboriously prepared, and asked: 'What is the cube root of 3,375 multiplied by the cube root of 117,649 divided by 5?'

'147,' said Shakuntala, stifling a yawn, and adding, almost apologetically: 'I am usually given problems that present difficulties of one sort or another.' ”

 The answer of 147 is correct. You can get the intermediate numbers in this calculation by using the cube root calculator here, but no such tools existed in 1952. 

On page 311 of The Great Mental Calculators, we learn of the astonishing short-term memory of Hans Eberstark, who could memorize 40 digits after hearing them spoken only once:

Newspaper Accounts of Memory Marvels (Part 5)

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:

Source: Wikipedia Commons (link)

An English translation of the Babylonian Talmud may be found on www.archive.org. Borrowing some of that translation, I see an alternating between passages that are marked Mishnah and passages marked Gemara (which must be the Gemarrah mentioned above). For example, here is a random page:

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. 

Their Memory Performance Far Exceeded What a Brain Could Ever Do

We do not know that brains remember anything; we simply know that people remember things. 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 learned and recalled, and the length of time things can be remembered. There has never been found in the brain any component known to be capable of a fast storage or retrieval of learned information, or the storage or retrieval of learned information at any speed. The protein molecules that brains are built from have a high rate of molecular turnover,  and have an average lifetime of less than two weeks.  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 learning and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that learning, memorization and 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). Attached to unstable dendritic spines that do not last for years, 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.")  So 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), and the more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very voluminous learning and memorization, the  stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall and memory formation occur from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and very carefully study and ponder 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 and throughput of the best cases of human memory 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, and the more cases of humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do, and the more cases of humans that seem to learn at a speed, reliability and capacity too fast and accurate for a noisy, relatively slow and transmission-unreliable brain to do,  the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  

A case of exceptional memory performance is well documented in the book "The mind of a mnemonist : a little book about a vast memory" by Alexander Romanovitch Luria. You can read the book on www.archive.org using the link here. The book describes a subject it calls S, a subject now known to be Solomon Shereshevsky. A scientific paper says this about the book:

"According to Luria, Shereshevsky could 'easily remember any number of words and digits' and 'equally easily he memorizes whole pages from books on any subject and in any language.'  He could accurately quote information from a decade earlier, including tables of numbers and strings of nonsense words....What Luria learned was that Shereshevsky’s memory differed from that of the vast majority of individuals; time did not erode his memories. Neither did a new stimulus affect his memory of an earlier one."

On page 17 of Luria' s book we are told that when asked to memorize the table of random numbers below, Shereshevsky reproduced the table perfectly, in 40 seconds, after only three minutes of studying it. 

On page 20 we are told that after Shereshevsky viewed a stimulus a certain length of time, he could continue to see the thing vividly in his mind's eye. We read, "He told us that he continued to see the table which had been written on a blackboard or a sheet of paper, that he merely had to 'read it off,' successfully enumerating the numbers or letters it contained." Around page 23 we are told that  Shereshevsky had to some degree synesthesia.  When tested with electronic sounds, he reported that they would produce some type of visual stimulus. On page 24 we are told, "Every sound he heard immediately produced an experience of light and color and, as we shall see later in this account, a sense of taste and touch as well."

On page 51 we are told that in 1936 Shereshevsky was asked to memorize a hard-to-remember table that started out like this, and had at least two additional rows like the rows below. 

We are told that he reproduced the table correctly, and that four years later he was asked to describe how he did it. Shereshevsky was able to describe in exact detail his memorization technique, and while doing so reproduced all the rows shown above, and two additional rows. On page 57 we are told this:

"On April 6, 1944, eight years after obtaining this record

from him, I had occasion to ask S. to repeat this performance (once again without giving him prior warning). He had no difficulty

whatsoever and came through with a faultless reproduction."

Here is an excerpt from page 61, in which the author talks about the astonishing lack of fading over time in Shereshevsky's memory:

On page 69 we read that  Shereshevsky scorned the idea of writing down things on paper in order to remember them, saying that if you did that, you would tend to forget what was written down. 

On page 139 we are told that Shereshevsky demonstrated that he could will his pulse rate to increase from 70 to 100. When asked how he could do this, he replied that he simply visualized himself running to catch a departing train. 

Recently the Cornell physics paper server included a paper by neuroscientist Bastian Wiederhold, one entitled "An introduction to memory competitions, records and techniques," one you can read here. Below are some quotations from the paper, quotations that may shock very greatly those who have failed to study cases of human best memory performances. 

• "The best competitors manage to memorize a one-hundred-digit number in under 15 seconds."
• "The record for memorizing the sequence of cards in shuffled deck of 52 playing cards was two minutes in 1993 and is now 12.74 seconds by Shijir-Erdene Bat-Enkh set in 2018."
• "Nowadays, tens of thousands of digits are being recalled in π competitions. Modern records include memorizing 35 packs of cards or an over 3000-digit decimal number in one hour, a sequence of 145 words in 5 min, the names of a class of 30 students in under 30 s, a shuffled deck of 52 playing cards in around 12 s or a 50-digit binary number in one second."
• "But didn’t Daniel Tammet memorize 22514 digits of π? Recently, Susanne Hippauf, a policewoman, broke the German record with 18026 digits."
• "For example, in auditive digits, the objective is to memorize a sequence of decimal digits, read aloud at one digit/s [1 digit per second]. The score is the number of digits counted until the first error. The current world record of Lance Tschirhart is 456, over seven minutes of perfect memorization."
• "We tried to estimate the memorization time of the π-record using the function R(t). The π world record of Suresh Kamar Sharma stands at an impressive 70030 digits, a multiple of around 20.5 of the hour world record of 3412."
• "The speed of historic dates [is] the fastest among the five-minute disciplines (Figure 1). The objective is to memorize the year between 1000 and 2100 of fictional events (Appendix B). After memorization, the events are scrambled and competitors recall the respective years of the events. The current world record is 148 by Prateek Yadav." This presumably involved the correct memorization of the years of 148 fictional events, all within a five minute period. 

Listing these feats, our neuroscientist has no neuroscience hypothesis to offer to explain how people could memorize so quickly.  When neuroscientists attempt to explain learning and memory formation, they discuss processes that occur at a very sluggish rate, processes such as synapse strengthening and protein synthesis. Such explanation attempts are very lame and inadequate. When human memory performance is fastest, humans do not learn and recall at the speed of brains, but instead learn and recall at the speed of souls. 

Newspaper Accounts of Memory Marvels (Part 4)

 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."

The newspaper account below appeared in 1925.

"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. 

They Too Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do

 The credibility of claims that mathematical calculation comes from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be mentally calculated. 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 and accurate math calculation is therefore evidence against claims that unaided human math calculation 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 calculation occurred by humans unaided by any devices,  the stronger is the evidence against the claim that human math calculation occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human mathematics performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that unaided human math calculation is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that math calculation is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human math  performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to calculate too quickly and too accurately for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon. I presented quite a few such cases in my earlier post "They Mentally Calculated Faster Than a Brain Could Ever Do." Now let's look at some more such cases. 

On page 54 of the book Mental Prodigies by Fred Barton, which you can read here, we read of a series of very hard questions posed by an examination committee to a calculating marvel named Arumogam. 

The book tells us on page 56 that each of the questions was answered correctly by Arumogam "within a few seconds." Evidently he could do very hard math problems at lightning speeds. 

On page 66 the book tells us of a mental calculator named Oscar Verhaeghe. We read that he could perform the very hard calculations below very quickly:

We are told on the next page that this person was "incapable of devising the slightest calculation artifice," and that the answers seemed to rise up spontaneously in his mind. 

The 1924 article below refers to a "human calculating machine" who can "name immediately the day of the week for any date in the past or future" and who can multiply two forty-digit numbers mentally without using paper or pencil. 

The 1934 newspaper article here refers to people with amazingly rapid calculation ability, saying that many of them had normal or below normal intelligence:

"A boy of sixteen who can tell the day of the week on which any date

occurs, either hack to 1600 or forward to 2000, has been discovered

in a British mental welfare hospital. Youthful prodigies of this kind occur from time to time, but in most cases such powers don't last a very long time. For instance, one youngster who could work out in his head multiplication sums whose answers extended to 30 figures when he was ten years old find no more power of calculation than the ordinary Intelligent person when he grew up. It is also possible, as has been demonstrated In numbers of cases, for a human 'calculating machine' to be below the normal level of intelligence in other respects. Out of thirteen cases described by one investigator, in which those powers wore present during the early years of life, three were of average brain power, four were described as 'low' intelligence, and one as 'very low.' ”

On the page here we have a story entitled "Blind Indian Billed as Adding Machine." We read this:

"As a sort of human calculating machine, a blind employee of the Meenakshi Mills, at Madurai,Madras State, India, can solve intricate mathematical problems in a few seconds.

P. S. Guruswami is the mathematical wizard. His job is to

check and verify calculations made by clerks and accountants."

In the 1921 newspaper story here, we read below of another Indian capable of lightning-fast math calculations such as multiplying together a six-digit numbers and a seven-digit number:

We read in this newspaper article of a boy of only six, Roy Fork, who could perform calculations with astonishing speed:

"He is Master Roy Fork, aged six, son of F. L. Fork, well-driller, residing on Franklin avenue. While bright in all his school work, the youngster is a prodigy in mathematics. He knows the calendar by heart and although given the most severe questions with regard to days and dates, never makes a mistake. If you tell him your age he can tell in a second the year you were born, and if you give him the date of your birth day, and ask him what day of the week it comes on he replies at once, correctly and without fail." 

According to the "Juvenile Wonders" news article you can read here, there were these prodigies:

" 'Marvelous Griffith,' as he was called, could raise a number to the sixth power in eleven seconds. Truman Safford at the age often could multiply one row of fifteen figures by another of eighteen In a minute or less."

According to the press account below, Alfred A. Gamble could multiply two six-digit figures in only four seconds:

The account below is one of many accounts of mental marvels from India. 

The account below (part of the larger account here) tells of an illiterate math marvel named Reuben Fields who seemed to be able to tell the day of the week of any supplied date. He seemed to be a kind of human watch, always able to name the correct time within two or three minutes. He also seemed to have a kind of photographic memory for numbers. The first and third of these abilities has been reported of quite a few other people, but the time-keeping skill is much more rare. 

Newspaper Accounts of Memory Marvels (Part 2)

 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 memorized and 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 and capacity 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 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 of this post, I gave many newspaper clips giving examples of such exceptional human memory performance. Let us now look at some more of such newspaper clips. 

Below is part of an 1886 newspaper that describes what seems like what is now called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), also called hyperthymesia. 

The account can be read below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85032490/1886-09-02/ed-1/seq-7/

The source of the account below is the W. D. Henkle January, 1871 article here, "Remarkable Cases of Memory," which documents the abilities of Daniel McCartney in very great detail, giving transcripts of interviews with him. I will have a post on this case in the next few months. 

On the same 1886 page shown above we can read the account below, which tells of a man with an extraordinary ability to remember architectural details. The case reminds you of the modern case of Stephen Wiltshire:

Later on the same page, we read of these memory marvels. The reference to "almost the whole of Horace, Virgil, Homer, Cicero and Livy" refers to a set of books with a totality of many thousands of pages. The Aeneid referred to is a book of 9883 lines. 

 

The reference to Porson is a reference to Richard Porson (1759 -1808). A web page says this about him:

"Their author [Porson] gives the impression of knowing every page of the Christian fathers [e.g. Augustine, Aquinas] as if they were indexed and capable of flashing up before him on a computer screen whenever needed. And in a manner of speaking they were. Anecdotes from several different sources attest to what we should nowadays call his photographic memory, and to that memory was committed not only classical and post-classical Greek and Latin literature but a wealth of English and some French literature as well, to which his own writings contain a host of often fleeting allusions."

Another web page says this about Richard Porson:

"It was here that his uncanny powers of memory came into full voice: one person heard him declaim an ode of Pindar in Greek, and then a whole act of Samuel Foote’s farce The Mayor of Garratt (1763), each without error. ...Porson could be presented briefly with a book, read a couple of pages from memory, and then do so backwards – almost without error."

We read in one of the pages cited above a reference to Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti (17 September 1774 – 15 March 1849), who was famed for his ability to speak more than 30 different languages.  Of course, any such ability would require the most prodigious memory very far beyond that of the average person. 

A 1905 news article tells of a man who only developed amazing powers of memory after a severe brain injury (the man was named J. A. Bottle, or W. J. M. Bottle, but used a stage name of Datas):

You can read the full story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1905-11-27/ed-1/seq-1/

The newspaper account here describes the same person. We read that this man widely called a "human encyclopedia" actually suffered a head injury before his stage career began:

This type of acquisition of previously absent mental powers after a traumatic injury (inexplicable under the idea that brains make minds) is sometimes called acquired savant syndrome. At the link here is an article giving another example: " At age ten, Orlando Serrell was struck on the left side of his head with a baseball; he is able to clearly remember the weather and details about his personal activities for every day since that accident (Hughes 2010, 149)." 

A 1913 newspaper article tells us of a case of a man with photographic memory:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87078082/1913-08-19/ed-1/seq-3/

The same article makes the statements below. We have a reference to "the whole of Tacitus," which means The Annals consisting of more than 500 pages each having about 400 words each, and also additional works consisting of hundreds of other pages. The reference to the Metaphysics of Aristotle refers to a book of more than 300 pages, each with about 400 words.  The Aeneid referred to has 9883 lines. The Iliad referred to has 15,693 lines. 

The account below appeared in 1905:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn94056446/1905-06-02/ed-1/seq-4/

Below is an obituary of the prodigy called Blind Tom. The reported ability to replay any composition after having heard it only once is an ability known to exist in today's world, having been demonstrated repeatedly by Derek Paravicini. 

You can read the full account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090233/1908-07-09/ed-1/seq-8/