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Memory

“Cogito ergo sum”- “I think therefore I am.” This phrase, written by the great French philosopher René Descartes in 1637, still stands (02) as perhaps the most widely quoted pronouncement (01) in all of Western philosophy. One of the great biological lessons of the twentieth century, and a lesson that serves as the starting point of this book, is that the statement is wrong and that it is wrong for two reasons. First, Descartes used (03) this phrase to emphasize the separation he believed to exist between the mind and the body. He considered mental activity to be completely independent of the activity of the body. However, biologists now have every reason to believe that all the activities of the mind arise from a specialized part of our body: our brain. Accordingly (04), it would be more correct to rephrase Descartes’ statement by reversing it to read “I am, therefore I think”- much as the neurologist Antonio Damasio suggests in his charming book, Descartes’ Error. In modern terms, we would say “I have a brain, therefore I think.”

There is, however, a second and larger sense in which Descartes’ original statement is wrong. We are not who we are simply because we think. We are who we are because we can remember what we have thought about. Every thought we have, every word we speak, every action we engage in, we owe to our memory, to the ability of our brains to record and store our experiences. Memory is the glue that binds our mental life, the scaffolding that holds our personal history and that makes it possible to grow and change throughout (05) life.

(Memory from Mind to Molecules, Larry R. Squire & Eric R. Kandel (1999).)

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