Before I was born, my parents subscribed to a book club with InterVarsity Press. I'm not sure how many of the books my parents read, but as a young teen, three of them helped me awaken to the world of ideas: James Sire's Scripture Twisting (1980); Stephen Lawhead's Rock Reconsidered (1981); and Peter Kreeft's The Unaborted Socrates (1983).
Today I was thinking about memory, and how writing things down can either aid the memory or make us too lazy to remember. I found a digital copy of Kreeft's book on the Internet Archive, and retrieved the following pieces of dialogue:
Socrates: Tell me, Professor Tarian, did Dr. Herrod tell you of our conversation yesterday?
Tarian: Yes. In fact, he made a tape of it and played it for me. He hoped you wouldn't mind.
Socrates: Why would I mind? I made my own "tape," called memory. You know, it's quite remarkable how you moderns have invented the external mind with all your libraries and tape recorders and microfilm and computers. I wonder that your internal mind does not become weak and flabby, like a newly rich master who lets his slaves do all his work.
.......
Tarian: Speaking of psychologists, why don't you meet my friend, Pop Syke?
Socrates: Why don't I? But I do. Hello, Dr. Syke.
Syke: Hello, Socrates. Please call me "Pop." I'm very glad to meet you.
Socrates: Why?
Syke: What?
Socrates: Why? Why are you very glad to meet me?
Syke: Oh, because Rex and Attila here have told me so much about you, and they played for me your last two days' conversations on tape.
Socrates: Ah, yes. Your external mind.
.......
Socrates: I have told you already, if you had ears to hear. Has your external mind failed you already?
Syke: What do you mean?
Socrates: Do you not remember what I said on the tapes? That's the problem with an external thing: it still needs to be internalized. The memory of a tape memory cannot itself be a tape.
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Note that Kreeft's Socrates is riffing off of Plato's Socrates, who made similar comments on memory in the Phaedrus:
I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters.
Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon.
To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved.
The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, “This invention, O king,” said Theuth, “will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered.”
But Thamus replied, “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.
"You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.["]
.....
He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written.
