Yates 1966

Metrodorus of Scepsis: 39ff.; played political and cultural role at court of Mithrodates; hist works on rhetoric are lose; linked places to zodiac signs; see Yates 40-2

Ad Herennium, 86-2BC

• compiles in Rome around 86-82BC
• goes thru five parts of rhetoric (INVENTIO, DISPOSITIO, ELOCUTIO, MEMORIA, PRONUNTIO)
  • MEMORIA: 2 kinds; natural, "that which is engrafted in our minds, "born simultaneously with thought"; and artificial, which is the art of memory that Yates is concered with (Yates 5)
• artificial memory:
  • "established from places and images (Constat igitur artificiosa memoria ex locis et imaginibus)" (Yates 6)
  • LOCUS: place easily grasped by the memory, such as a house"
  • IMAGES: "forms, marks, or simulacra" (Yates 6
  • quoted on Yates 6: "For the places are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading."

Cicero's distinction between "words" and "things": "'things are thus the subejct omatter of the speech; 'words' are the language in which that subject matter is clother" (Yates 9)

• MEMORIA RERUM; memorizing the order of notions;
• MEMORIA VERBORUM; memorizing word-for-word in correct order

Ad Herennium author encourages students to rouse their memory by imagining very sharp, emotional images -- disturbing, violent (Yates 9-11)

De oratore, Cicero, 1C BC

"Beginning with the statement, introduced by the Simonides story that the art consist in places and images and is like an inner writing on wax, he goes on to discuss natural and artifical memory, with the usual conclusion that nature can be improved by art. Then follow rules for places and rules for images; then the discussion of memroy for things and memory or words. Though he agrees that memory for things is alone essential for the orator he has evidently put himself through a memory for words drill in which images for words move (?), change their cases (?), draw a whole sentence into one word image, in some extraordinary manner which he visualises within, as though it were the art of some consummate painter." (Yates 19)

Simonides, origins of ars mem.: at a party/banquet, roof caves in, everyone dies; Simonides is able to remember based on where everyone sat (Yates 1-3); story related in Cicero's De oratore

Institutio oratorio, Quintilian, 1C AD; also starts with the account of Simonides

"There is thus a very marked difference bw Quintilian's attitude to the artifical memory and that of the author of ad Herennium and of Cicero. Evidently the imagines agentes, fantastically [26] gesticulating from their places and arousing memory by their emotional appeal, seemed to him as cumbrous and useless for practical mnemonic purposes as they do to us. Has Roman society moved on into greater sophistication in which some intense, archaic, almost magical, immediate association of memory with images has been lost? Or is the difference a temperamental one?" (Yates 25-6)

Plato -- artificial memory as desecration

Plato also uses seal imprint metaphor in the Theaetetus "in which Socrates assumes that there is a block of wax in our souls -- of varying quality in different individuals -- and that this is 'the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses'" (Yates 36)

for Plato, ideas in the mind must correspond to experiences of the real world; thus artificial memory is a perversion of the Ideas--> "It is clear that, from Plato's point of view, the artifical memory as used by a sophist would be anathema, a descreation of memory. It is indeed possible that some of PLato's satire on the sophists, for instance their senseless use of etymologies, might be explicable from the sophist memory treatise, with its use of such etymologies for memory for words. A Platonic memory would have to be organised, not in the trivial manner of such mnemotechnics, but in relation to the realities." (Yates 37)

memory as "written" to the mind -- wax tablet:

quoted on Yates 6: "For the places are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading." (from Ad Herennium [?])

"The metaphor, used in all three of our Latin sources for the mnemonic, which compraes the inner writing or stamping of the memory images on the places with writing on a waxed tablet is obviously suggested by the contemporary use of the waxed tablet for writing. Nevertheless it also connects the mnemonic with ancient theor of memory, as Quintilian saw when, in his introduction to his treatment of the mnemonic, he remarked that he did not propose to dwell on the precise functions of memory, 'although [36] many hold the view that certain impressions are made on the mind, analogous to those which a signet ring makes on wax'."(Yates 35-6)

• for Aristotle, these imprints are the basis for all knowledge

Plato also uses seal imprint metaphor in the Theaetetus "in which Socrates assumes that there is a block of wax in our souls -- of varying quality in different individuals -- and that this is 'the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses'" (Yates 36)

Yates 38 --> cites Plato's story of Theuth and the invention of letters/writing -- will cause forgetfulness

Medieval era

Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Venerable Bede -- none of them mention the art of memory in their treatises on education, etc. (Yates 53)

"It is of great importance to emphasise that the mediaeval artificial memory rested, so far as I know, entirely on the memory section of Ad Herennium studied without the assistance of the other two sources for the classical art." (Yates 55)

Thomas Aquinas

Albertus Magnus, De bono, "on the good," on ethics

"The core of the book is formed by the sections on the four cardinal virtues of Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, and Prudcence." (Yates 61)

Lullism (1235-1316)

based on Platonism

didn't come out of rhetoric, like classical examples of ars mem.; rather, comes from a philosophical tradition of Augustinian Platonism -- "claims o know first causes, called by Lull the Dignities of God" (Yates 175) -- "All Lull's artsare based on these Dignitates Dei, which are Divine Names or attributes, thought of as primordial causes as in the Neoplatonic system of Scotus Erigena by which Lull was influence." (Yates 175)

1) didn't come out of rhetoric, like classical examples of ars mem.; rather, comes from a philosophical tradition of Augustinian Platonism 2) no emotional/visceral "images" 3) "introduces movement into memory" (Yates 176)

"If the Lullian Art as memory consists in memorising the Art as intellect and will, then the Lullian ARt as memory consists in memorising the Art as a whole, in all its aspects and operations. And it is fairly clear from other passages that this was, in fact, what the LUllian Art as memory did mean." (Yates 184)

"memory in memorising such procedures is becoming a method of investigation, and a method of logical investigation. Here we have a point, and a very important one, in which Lullism as memory differs fundamentally from the classical art, which seeks only to memorise what is given." (Yates 185)

"We are led to the conviction that Lullian artificial memory consists in memorising the Lullian Art as voluntas and as intellectus. And we are further again led to the conviction that the images or 'corporeal similitudes' of classical memory of the rhetorical tradition are incompatible with what Lull calls 'artifical memory'." (Yates 194)

movement

"Lull introduces movement into memory. The figures of his Art, on which its concepts are set out in the letter notation, are not static but revolving. One of the figures consists of concentric circles, marked with the letter notations standing for the concepts, and when these wheels revolve, combinations of the concepts are obtained. In another revolving figure, triangles within a circle pick up related concepts. These are simple devices, but revolutionary in their attempt to represent movement in the psyche." (Yates 176)

"Think of the great mediaeval encyclopaedic schemes, with all knowledge arranged in static parts, made yet more static in the classical art by the memory buildings stocked with the images. And then think of Lullism, with its algebraic notations, breaking up the static schemata into new combinations on its revolving wheels. The first art is the more artistic, but the second is the more scientific." (Yates 176)

"The derivation from cosmological 'rotae' of the wheels of the ARt is obvious, and it becomes very apparent when Lull uses the figures of the Art to do a kind of astrological medicine, as he does in his Tractatus de astronomia. Moreover, the four elemnts in their various combinations enter very deeply into the structure of the Art, even into the kind of geometrical logic which it uses. The logical square of opposiition is identiied in Lull's mind with the square of the elements, hence his belief that he has found a 'natural' logic, based on reality and therefore greatly superior to scholastic logic." (Yates 178)

relationship to cabala:

based his art on a common notion of the names of God

"The Names of God are fundamental in Judaism, and particularly to the type of Jewish mysticism known as the Cabala. Spanish Jews contemporary with Lull were meditating with particular intensity on the Names of God under the influence of Cabala, the doctrinces of which were being propagated in Spain. A main text of the Cabala, the Zohar was written in Spain in Lull's time. The Sephiroth of the Cabala are really Divine Names as creative principles. The sacred Hebrew alphabet is, mystically speaking, supposed to contain all the Names of God. A form of Cabalist meditation particularly developed in Spain at this time consisted in meditating on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, combining them and recombining them to form the Names of God." (Yates 177)

"It is my opinion that there was a Cabalist element in Lullism from the start." (Yates 188)

Pico dell Mirandola the first to make an explicit association between Lullism and Cabalism (Yates 188) "When discussing Cabala in his Conclusions and Apology, Pico states that one type of Cabala is an ars combinandi, done with revolving alphabets, and he further states that this art is like 'that which is called amonst us the ars Raymundi,' that is, the ARt of Ramon, or Raymond Lull. Wherether rightly or wrongly, Pico therefore thought that the Cabalist art of letter combinations was like Lullism. The Renaissance followed him in this belief which gave rise to a work entitled the De auditu kabbalistico, the first editions of which were at Venic in 1518 and 1533.This work appears to be, and indeed is, doing the Lullian Art using the normal Lullian figures. But Lullism is now called Cabalism and B to K are more or less identified with Cabalist Sephiroth and associated with Cabalist angel names. ... It is now known who was the real author of this work, but the Renaissance firmly believed in its false attribution to Lull. Renaissance Lullists read the Pseudo-Lullian de auditu kabbalistico as a genuine work by Lull and it confirmed them in their belief that Lullism was a kind of Cabalism. In the eyes of Christian Cabalists it would have the advantage of being a Christian Cabala." (Yates 188-9)

triadic structure: "Here, then, or so I believe, is the major clue to the underlying [179]suppositions of the Lullian Art. The Divine Dignities form into triadic structures, reflected from them down through the whole creation; as causes they inform the whole creation through its elemental structure. An Art based on them constructs a method by which ascent can be made on the ladder of creation to the Trinity at its apex." (Yates 178-9)

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> COMPARE TO I-CHING AND LEIBNIZ

• • represented through the traingulations of the relata wheel (triangles inscribed on circles) -- Yates 181-2

tree diagram, arbor scientiae

"There is a point at which Lull's conception of places verges rather closely on classical visualisation of places, namely in his fondness for diagrams in the form of trees. The tree, as he uses it, is a kind of place system. The most notable example of this is the Arbor scientiae in which the whole encyclopedia of knowledge is schematised as a forest of trees, the roots of which are B to K as principles and relata of his Art." (Yates 187)

pseudo-Lullian works; many works falsely attributed to him in the Renaissance (Yates 189-90)

"So we see the Rainssance Lull building up as a kind of Magus, versed in the Cabalist and Hermetic sciences cultivated in the occult tradition." (Yates 190)

Liber ad memoriam confirmandam, one small treatise Lull wrote on memory; done when he was an old man (Yates 191)

the belief in god-as-watchmaker could be, but not necessarily for me it all depends on how interventionist god is like, if a person believes that god intervenes a lot in a person's life, then that person can' be a deist