I. The first phase of learning (the trigger)
I recently listened to a lecture on the science behind learning.1 The speaker discussed two key parts to learning. The first part, he stated, is the trigger. He explained that the trigger takes place during our study or practice - while we actively participate in our learning. This initial exposure triggers learning, but doesn’t actually stabilize it in the brain.
II. A tale of childhood superstition
It was the night before a big math test. I hadn’t studied, and now long after bedtime I tried to cram the chapter into my head. I sat over the textbook at the kitchen table, my eyes heavy and defeat looming in the air.
Then, in my half-slumbering state, I recalled a piece of superstition stored deep in the caverns of my adolescent mind - if you placed a book under your pillow before bed, it was said, you would wake up the next morning to find that you had gained all of the knowledge from within its pages.2
I knew this was well beyond the realm of possibility, but in my desperate state I seriously considered it now. Where had I heard this outlandish idea? It seemed to be with me for as long as I could remember. It seemed to be as old as time itself.
My head jerked backward. I was falling asleep at the table. So I took the textbook to my bedroom, placed it under my pillow, and I fell fast asleep. I woke up the next morning and took the test, and I failed miserably.
III. The second phase of learning (the rewiring)
The first part of learning is triggered in waking life, the speaker repeated, but the second part, “the actual rewiring, the reconfiguration of the organ so that it can function better and differently, occurs during periods of deep sleep!” So sleep is deeply important to the process of learning.
IV. Sleep on it
The image of sleeping with a book under one’s pillow is a symbolic expression of the importance of sleep in the learning process. If we sleep on our books - the way we “sleep on a problem” - we are better able to capture the information. Viewed this way, it seems that a superstition comes to the same conclusion as neuroscience: that rest is vital to learning.
But why wasn’t this lesson passed down to me as straightforward as this very articulate and scientific lecture? Why did I mistake this wisdom for literal when it was symbolic? And why tell a story at all when you could just say what you have to say straight up?
This is explained by the way that narrative functioned - had to function - for much of human history.
V. A cyclops is more memorable
Before the widespread application of written language, important information could not be as easily recorded and disseminated.3 So information had to be encased in a way that it could be memorized and passed down. To do this our predecessors told stories, and these stories had to be deeply impressionable. They utilized rhythm and rhyme, but they also created captivating narrative structures and memorable characters and actions. Narrative that was impressionable enough to recite from memory became the primary vehicle for transferring and retaining important information. And these stories, this information lived in the minds and the hearts of the people.
The Jesuit scholar, Walter Ong writes, “First, in a primary oral culture, knowledge cannot be managed in elaborate, more or less scientifically abstract categories. Oral cultures cannot generate such categories, and so they use stories of human action to store, organize, and communicate much of what they know.”4
Recalling from memory was essential to storytelling traditions. This is why the titan goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is also the inventor of language and words in the Greek tradition. She represents the memorization required to preserve history and myth before the introduction of writing. Poets and orators called upon her so that they could properly recite their words.
VI. An apple a day keeps the doctor away
Although this idea of books and pillows made its way to me, it lost its symbolic resonance and fell into superstition. It was poorly packaged.
But many pieces of folk wisdom have survived, symbolism intact - and this is due to their superior packaging. These are many of our idioms and proverbs.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” First recorded in the 1800s, the English were far from an oral society, yet the mnemonic power of language allowed this phrase to travel by word of mouth, and it is still remembered and understood today. No one would take this phrase literally, but its value is in its symbolic wisdom and mnemonic accessibility. It utilizes rhyme and rhythm, strong imagery, and contains practical and simple advice. These attributes make it exceptionally good at spreading.
VII. The dilemma of remembering
We may think ourselves out of this dilemma of remembering. The internet and its vast belly of data seems to have ended any preoccupation we could have with such topics. But it shouldn’t. A sea of information is at our fingertips any given moment, yet it often stops there.
In an age of information overload, it would do us some good to think about how we not only access information, but recall it. You might say: but accessing and recalling are one in the same with our devices. And you would be right. But recalling information is not about access alone, it is the process of weaving information into our minds and hearts. This is the alchemical process that turns information to wisdom. When we live with something in our mind, it is no longer a static thing. It interacts with our thoughts and it becomes our thought itself, it becomes a part of our own internal landscape. It stops being a function of memory and becomes a part of our lived experience. One poem stored in the heart is worth a million on a screen.
Keep diving,
A.J.
The origin of this superstition is obscure. The earliest reference to it I could find was by the Greco-Syrian rhetorician, Lucian of Samosata, who satirized learning by osmosis in his work “The Ignorant Book Collector” in the second century AD. But is this superstition just some collective daydream passed down by procrastinators of old? Or is there something else to it?
The written word is a technology. Other technologies have only continued to change our relationship to language and information - the obvious one being the internet. See my interview with Roger Thompson for more on this.
Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong (pg 138)
This is so profound, well written, and such an important message. Especially for those in school where heavy coursework can have such a negative impact on mental health..have to remember to actually sleep(!). This scientific attribution to memory and sociological lessons is very interesting. In the field of anthropology, there is this framework called 'collective memory' (most notably the work of Paul Connerton "How Societies Remember") that explores this idea on a broader scale. How heritage is remembered by communities and reenacted in ritual and ceremony as ways of remembering a communities history. Before this post, I hadn't really considered these cultural anecdotes and their connection to memory or how superstition and memory are entangled on a very personal level. Thanks for the perspective and insight! Awesome read!