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The art of memory (Latin: ''ars memoriae'') is any of a number of a loosely associated mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and 'invention' of ideas. An alternative and frequently used term is "Ars Memorativa" which is also often translated as "art of memory" although its more literal meaning is "Memorative Art". It is sometimes referred to as ''mnemotechnics''.〔In her general introduction to the subject (''The Art of Memory'', 1966, p4) Frances Yates suggests that "it may be misleading to dismiss it with the label 'mnemotechnics'" and "The word 'mnemotechnics' hardly conveys what the artificial memory of Cicero may have been like". Furthermore, "mnemotechnics", etymologically speaking, emphasizes practical application, whereas the art of memory certainly includes general principles and a certain degree of 'theory'.〕 It is an 'art' in the Aristotelian sense, which is to say a method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of human beings.〔Carruthers 1990, p. 123〕 It has existed as a recognized group of principles and techniques since at least as early as the middle of the first millennium BCE,〔Simonedes of Ceos, the poet credited by the ancients with the discovery of fundamental principles of this art, was active around 500 BCE, and in any case a fragment known as the ''Dialexis'', which is dated to about 400 BCE contains a short section on memory which outlines features known to be central to the fully developed classical art. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, University of Chicago Press, 1966, pp 27-30. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Third Edition, Ed. Hornblower and Spawforth, 1999, p1409.〕 and was usually associated with training in rhetoric or logic, but variants of the art were employed in other contexts, particularly the religious and the magical. Techniques commonly employed in the art include the association of emotionally striking memory images within visualized locations, the chaining or association of groups of images, the association of images with schematic graphics or ''notae'' ("signs, markings, figures" in Latin), and the association of text with images. Any or all of these techniques were often used in combination with the contemplation or study of architecture, books, sculpture and painting, which were seen by practitioners of the art of memory as externalizations of internal memory images and/or organization. Because of the variety of principles and techniques, and their various applications, some researchers refer to "the arts of memory", rather than to a single art.〔 ==Origins and history== It has been suggested that the art of memory originated among the Pythagoreans or perhaps even earlier among the ancient Egyptians, but no conclusive evidence has been presented to support these claims.〔Yates, 1966, pp. 29〕 The primary classical sources for the art of memory which deal with the subject at length include the ''Rhetorica ad Herennium'' (Bk III), Cicero's ''De oratore'' (Bk II 350-360), and Quintilian's ''Institutio Oratoria'' (Bk XI). Additionally, the art is mentioned in fragments from earlier Greek works including the ''Dialexis'', dated to approximately 400 BCE.〔Yates, 1966, pp. 27-30〕 Aristotle wrote extensively on the subject of memory, and mentions the technique of the placement of images to lend order to memory. Passages in his works ''On The Soul'' and ''On Memory and Reminiscence'' proved to be influential in the later revival of the art among medieval Scholastics.〔Aristotle's assertion that we cannot contemplate or understand without an image in the mind's eye representing the thing considered was also highly influential. Aristotle, De Anima 3.8 in ''The Complete Works of Aristotle'', ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)〕 The most common account of the creation of the art of memory centers around the story of Simonides of Ceos, a famous Greek poet, who was invited to chant a lyric poem in honor of his host, a nobleman of Thessaly. While praising his host, Simonides also mentioned the twin gods Castor and Pollux. When the recital was complete, the nobleman selfishly told Simonides that he would only pay him half of the agreed upon payment for the panegyric, and that he would have to get the balance of the payment from the two gods he had mentioned. A short time later, Simonides was told that two men were waiting for him outside. He left to meet the visitors but could find no one. Then, while he was outside the banquet hall, it collapsed, crushing everyone within. The bodies were so disfigured that they could not be identified for proper burial. But, Simonides was able to remember where each of the guests had been sitting at the table, and so was able to identify them for burial. This experience suggested to Simonides the principles which were to become central to the later development of the art he reputedly invented.〔Yates, 1966, pp. 1-2〕
The early Christian monks adapted techniques common in the art of memory as an art of composition and meditation, which was in keeping with the rhetorical and dialectical context in which it was originally taught. It became the basic method for reading and meditating upon the Bible after making the text secure within one's memory. Within this tradition, the art of memory was passed along to the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance (or Early Modern period). When Cicero and Quintilian were revived after the 13th century, humanist scholars understood the language of these ancient writers within the context of the medieval traditions they knew best, which were profoundly altered by monastic practices of meditative reading and composition.〔Carruthers 1990, 1998〕 Saint Thomas Aquinas was an important influence in promoting the art when he defined it as a part of Prudence and recommended its use to meditate on the virtues and to improve one's piety. In scholasticism artificial memory came to be used as a method for recollecting the whole universe and the roads to Heaven and Hell.〔Carruthers & Ziolkowski 2002〕 The Dominicans were particularly important in promoting its uses,〔Bolzoni 2004〕 see for example Cosmos Rossellius. The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci - who from 1582 until his death in 1610, worked to introduce Christianity to China - described the system of places and images in his work, ''A Treatise On Mnemonics''. However, he advanced it only as an aid to passing examinations (a kind of rote memorization) rather than as a means of new composition, though it had traditionally been taught, both in dialectics and in rhetoric, as a tool for such composition or 'invention'. Ricci was apparently trying to gain favour with the Chinese imperial service, which required a notoriously difficult entry examination.〔Spence 1984〕 Perhaps following the example of Metrodorus of Scepsis, vaguely described in Quintilian's ''Institutio oratoria'', Giordano Bruno, a defrocked Dominican, used a variation of the art in which the trained memory was based in some fashion upon the zodiac. Apparently, his elaborate method was also based in part on the combinatoric concentric circles of Ramon Llull, in part upon schematic diagrams in keeping with medieval ''Ars Notoria'' traditions, in part upon groups of words and images associated with late antique Hermeticism,〔Bruno's use of groups of words may also be associated with the use of shorthand, or with techniques associated with shorthand in antiquity. Yates (1966) mentions the possibility of a relationship between shorthand ''notae'' and the art(s) of memory (p15 ''footnote 16'') and the possible role of shorthand ''notae'' in 'magical' memory training (p43). ''The Oxford Classical Dictionary'' (Third Edition, 1999, in the article "tachygraphy") discusses the formal characteristics of late Hellenistic shorthand manuals, noting "These show a fully organized system, composed of a syllabary and a (so-called) Commentary, consisting of groups of words, arranged in fours or occasionally eights, with a sign attached to each, which had to memorized." This can be compared with Bruno's atria in ''De Imaginum, Signorum, et Idearum Compositione'' (1591) in which groups of 24 words are each associated within an atrium with ''Atrii Imago'' (e.g. ''Altare'', ''Basili'', ''Carcer'', ''Domus'', etc.)〕 and in part upon the classical architectural mnemonic. According to one influential interpretation, his memory system was intended to fill the mind of the practitioner with images representing all knowledge of the world, and was to be used, in a magical sense, as an avenue to reach the intelligible world beyond appearances, and thus enable one to powerfully influence events in the real world.〔Frances Yates, ''The Art of Memory'', 1966; ''Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition'', 1964〕 Such enthusiastic claims for the encyclopedic reach of the art of memory are a feature of the early Renaissance,〔e.g. the "Memory Theater" of Giulio Camillo discussed by Yates (1966, pp 129-159)〕 but the art also gave rise to better-known developments in logic and scientific method during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.〔Yates 1966〕 However, this transition was not without its difficulties, and during this period the belief in the effectiveness of the older methods of memory training (to say nothing of the esteem in which its practitioners were held) steadily became occluded. In 1584, a huge controversy over the method broke out in England when the Puritans attacked the art as impious because it was thought to excite absurd and obscene thoughts; this was a sensational, but ultimately not a fatal skirmish.〔Frances Yates, ''The Art of Memory'', 1966, Ch. 12〕 Erasmus of Rotterdam and other humanists, Protestant and Catholic, had also chastised practitioners of the art of memory for making extravagant claims for its efficacy, although they themselves believed firmly in a well-disposed, orderly memory as an essential tool of productive thought.〔Carruthers & Ziolkowski 2002; Rossi 2000〕 One explanation for the steady decline in the importance of the art of memory from the 16th to the 20th century is offered by the late Ioan P. Culianu, who argued that it was suppressed during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation when Protestants and reactionary Catholics alike worked to eradicate pagan influence and the lush visual imagery of the Renaissance.〔Culianu 1987〕 Whatever the causes, in keeping with general developments, the art of memory eventually came to be defined primarily as a part of Dialectics, and was assimilated in the 17th century by Francis Bacon and René Descartes into the curriculum of Logic, where it survives to this day as a necessary foundation for the teaching of Argument.〔Rossi 2000 p102; Bolzoni 2001〕 Simplified variants of the art of memory were also taught through the 19th century as useful to public orators, including preachers and after-dinner speakers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Art of memory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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