Many writers I admire wrote regularly for magazines and newspapers. The dynamic evolution of events is a different challenge than the quietness of one's own mind engaged in creation. It also makes for a good way to keep in touch with the present. The attention deficit and the overwhelming informational deluge of our times makes it even more tempting to read a newspaper or magazine than a novel.

Here are three articles I enjoyed recently.

The Boxes and Drawers of Your Memory

It's much more likely to remember what you had for lunch last Tuesday if your favorite artist was sitting at a table nearby and the waiter complimented your hairstyle. You're guaranteed to remember locking the door if you hum a silly tune on your way out.

Such associations are an excellent method of fixing memories, even when the logic that connects them is something only you know.

But there's a more general method for memory improvement, known since Antiquity and popularized by Cicero and Quintilian: the method of loci, more commonly known as the memory palace.

Picture a building or a room which you know in great detail. See yourself enter its front door, pass the hallway in all its thirteen steps length, walking on that smooth burgundy carpet, looking at the doors that lead to all the rooms, paintings hanging on the walls, a light buzzing consistently above.

Make yourself comfortable, get even more familiar with all its corners. Nothing surprises you anymore because you know how to reach from that round corner window in the kitchen to the third shelf of the mahogany cabinet in the dormitory.

Now stick something to your mind by placing it precisely in your memory room or building. Visualize yourself entering, going through the hallway, entering the room and placing the memory exactly in that drawer or box you know so well. Whenever you need it, retrace your steps and retrieve it with full confidence.

This sounds almost like a hypnosis technique, but many memory champions use it. Hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of points in memory palaces of the contestants were adorned with decimals of π or random numbers in memorization competitions.

Multiple studies have shown that the method is equally useful for polyglots, for (re)constructing their vocabulary. The technique was also shown to improve the mental state of people suffering from depression, by reactivating their positive memories.

Madeleine Aggeler, a lifestyle and wellness reporter, wrote for The Guardian about her own attempts to populate her memory palace with decimals of π or random words. She discussed mnemonic techniques with experts in psychology and neuroscience, but the precise mechanisms they activate are not well understood, despite multiple consistent results.

Does the Present Mix with History?

Memories build our personal history, as we recount our past with precision or affection, overcoming challenges that seemed too much. Looking back, we may not know how we made it, yet here we are.

"Hindsight is 20/20" the saying goes. In retrospect, the solution to a problem makes it look like the difficulty we were facing was a non-issue. But history is an excellent teacher: we now see an easy route from the problem to its resolution simply because we solved it.

However, such thinking may not be a good fit for the history of ideas. At most, it argues for a reverse engineering approach of the present state, but from a wrong point of view. The existence of a solution makes the problem nonexistent. Same goes for a decision: you may now be thinking that you were aware of the consequences when you took it, but that's not usually the case and it couldn't have been.

Historical thinking that uses the correct context of events means respect for the truth, by separating it from speculation.

It is the understanding that we're living with our eyes fixed towards a foggy road, navigating through a seemingly clear present towards a practically invisible future. The rear view mirror does give some information, but not on the direction we're heading.

The engineers and the researchers working on Project Manhattan were well aware of the consequences of their work, as they were plans, not accidents. But finding complex mathematical computations such as roots and logarithms among Egyptian papyri or Babylonian clay tablets does not imply an understanding of them as mathematical functions.

Historical interpretation errors are due to profound mechanisms of our minds: the fear of the unknown and the inexplicable. It's also true about personal history.

Think about the most recent time you met with a couple of friends. Ask them all detailed questions about how your day together went and compare that with your own memories. You're almost guaranteed to find many differences, and if you ask any “But why?” question, our brain's impulse to create meaning goes in full throttle.

“We crave certainty, especially in the face of tragedy, and are quick to weave disparate facts into a coherent, and often sinister, narrative.”

So writes the historian Francis Gavin, in his essay published by Noēma, on “the forgotten art of thinking historically”.

Our Phenomenal Experience

We're all observers, both of our personal history and of the grand scheme of things. This is why awareness itself makes us less of recording devices and more of storytellers: we give our version of "it" more often than we realize. We see, we measure, we internalize.

This is equally valid for many of mankind's scientific attempts.

The measurement postulate is one of the most controversial examples in quantum theory ever since the beginning of the twentieth century for this very reason. Amazingly, the mathematical formalism of physics explained that the observers themselves can no longer be objective, completely detached from the phenomenon. Instead they influence its unfolding.

When an observer measures or simply looks at an experiment, they send rays of light (photons) that tamper with the quantum behavior of the system. This makes observing the system impossible, as we are actually interacting with it.

And it is not the only occurrence of (apparent) subjectivity. The topic of “interpretations of quantum mechanics” opens a multitude of possibilities, formulated by physicists like Niels Bohr or Hugh Everett among others.

The contrarian voices reject any mixture of subjectivity in science, let alone in fundamental theories like those concerning the subatomic world. But there's a field of philosophy that tries to find balance.

Phenomenology is the study of the foundations of experience. It starts by accepting that one cannot understand the world in other ways than through their senses or at least through some mediated approach.

The only way of doing it rigorously is to understand the basics of this indirection. Perhaps the observer is not objective, but if they understand how their own subjectivity works, they could abstract it away or diminish it, as if it were a filter applied to a picture.

The Austro-German Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was one of the founders of phenomenology, with important books on logic and mathematics (Philosophy of Arithmetic and Logical Investigations being the best known). Franz Brentano, his teacher, tried to combine phenomenology with psychology, but Husserl's phenomenology insisted on the focus of rigorous conditions of experience, not on man's feelings, emotions, or thoughts.

However, phenomenology does not want to take away the observer. Quite the opposite is true. The measurement postulate is fundamental for the phenomenological approach of the world, not just in science.

Since the only way to understand reality is through experience, that makes it even more important to get to a rigorous, scientific understanding of the latter.

Metaphorically speaking, phenomenology is a coordinate system for experience. It doesn't ignore it, it contextualizes it in a frame that allows for a rigorous analysis, with formal methods or at least attempts at that.

The philosopher Steven French wrote an essay in Aeon which explains this fascinating approach of physics. It accepts and integrates the role of the observer, instead of eliminating it or deeming it a shortcoming.

What did you read recently and want to share?

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