Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were journals but mostly scrapbooks of ideas, things observed, and things to remember. By the 1600s, commonplacing had become a recognized practice that was formally taught to college students in such institutions as Oxford. Beautiful blank books are still available for this purpose but the internet is so much more interesting as the content is shared.
"We might understand these discoveries [about the galaxy/universe] in intellectual terms, but they are baffling abstractions, even disturbing, like the notion that each of us was the size of a dot, without mind or thought. Science has vastly expanded the scale of our cosmos, but our emotional reality is still limited by what we can touch with our bodies in the time spanof our lives."
Alan Lightman Our Place in the Universe: Face to Face with the Infinite Harper's Magazine, December, 2012
What do we ever understand? Are we just blind men feeling the elephant?
Would we be more if we formed a tighter collective with our family and friends or would we lose our individualness with no gain? Are we capable of such close cooperation?
"The doctors said that he would gradualy lose his memory -- not his ability to form new memories, but his ability to retrieve old ones . . . in short, to understand who he was.
Tom's hand shot up. To my amazement, he suggested that [Karl] Pribram was overstating the connection between temporal - lobe memory and overall identity. Temporal lobe or not, you still like the same things, Tom argued -- your sensory systems aren't affected. If you're patient and kind or a jerk, he said, such personality traits aren't governed by the temporal lobes.
Pribram was unruffled. Many of us dono't realize the connection between memory and self, he explained. Who you are is the sum total of all that you've experiences. Where you went to school, who your friends were, all the things you've done or -- just as importantly -- all the things you've always hoped to do. Whether you prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla, action movies or comedies, is part of the story, but the ability to know those preferences through accumulated memory is what defines you as a person. This seemed right to me. I'm not just someone who likes chocolate ice cream, I;m someone who knows, who remembers that I like chocolate ice cream. And I remember my favorite places to eat it, and the people I;ve eaten it with.
Pribram walked up to the lectern and gripped it with both hands. When they had spoken last, his colleague seemed more sad than frightened. He was worried about the loss of self more than the loss of memory. He;d still have his intelligence, the doctors said, but no memories."
When this happens - who are you? Are you still yourself? I worry about Altzeheimers and dementia. I worry of becoming a husk of flesh - a burden to my family.
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