Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory
Daniel L. Schacter
Language: English
Pages: 324
ISBN: 184169052X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon's work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon's contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary life set against the background of a turbulent period in European history and major developments in science and evolutionary theory. The resulting book is an engaging blend of biographical, historical and psychological material.
Simon and Henrietta's cultural interests permeated the household, at least in the years preceding Simons financial ruin. These interests were supplemented by the rich intellectual atmosphere at the Gymnasium. The school of statesmen's sons included the offspring of prominent artists, publishers, and professors. Consequently, Semon was exposed to a broad spectrum of intellectual pursuits; and as Lubarsch emphasized, it was his precocious schoolmates, rather than his teachers, who provided most of
European laryngological society. 53 54 FORGOTTEN IDEAS, NEGLECTED PIONEERS FIGURE 4. Sir Felix Semon on his horse in London. German women posed little fascination for Semon. Charming hostesses, dull conversationalists, and models of propriety, they each perfectly fulfilled the one desire that society had inculcated in them: "that I might one day be able to provide my husband with a proper domestic atmosphere (Lily Braun, cited in Craig, 1978, p. 208)." However, they lacked the spark of
out like a blazing comet of hope against the dull background of Semon's post-1909 psychological erosion, but it was a comet that faded as quickly as it appeared. His remission was unmercifully brief. Within three weeks he was back in the Alps searching again for an elusive inner tranquility: "I am not doing any work here and yet I still suffer from insomnia, three or four hours of good, deep sleep and then I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot get to sleep at all. Very burdensome (Semon
retrieval is illustrated in the succeeding pages; it is useful to introduce them now in order to provide a working vocabulary for our explorations of the early years of memory research. MEMORY RESEARCH IN THE ERA OF EBBINGHAUS AND MüLLER: CRITICAL CONCERNS OF AN EMERGING SCIENCE Experimental psychology traces many of its roots to the pioneering efforts of German scientists working in the middle and late 19th-century. Gustav Fechner, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Wilhelm Wundt are just a few of the
statements concerning the localization of engrams must be distinguished from statements concerning the neural localization of the process of ecphory. Semon developed this point more explicitly after considering neuropathological evidence bearing on the problems of localization: "Either an actual localization of the engrams themselves takes place, or the 'localization of symptoms' is only a result of an interdependence between certain definite parts of the cerebral cortex and the possibility of