Meno's Paradox and Ramon Lull

On Friday I really enjoyed the Meno's Paradox discussion. It is the dialogue between Plato and Socrates that discusses how, though anamnesis, experience, and proper inquiry we can regain the eternal knowledge we had before the shock of birth. Before being expunged from the warm confines of the amniotic sack we flew around like chereubims in some ethereal place, but the fall to earth made us lose our angel wings. I feel like I have a special connection with this story because my dear and wonderful mother has always called her shoulder blades her "angel wings". So, when we have an itch on our back we scratch our angel wings--Plato says that each time we recollect what we have lost from drinking from the river Lethe our shoulder blades itch and grow new feathers. When we acquire somthing new, or re-member something, our wings grow just a little. Francis Yates divulges this on page 36, "Plato believes that there is a knowledge not derived from sense impressions, that there are latent in our memories the forms or moulds of Ideas, of the realities which the sould knew before its descent here below." Because this theory seems so germane to my life, you might consider me a neo-platonist.

Ramon Lull was also a Neo-Platonist, and his art of memory is described in chapter 8 of The Art of Memory. I've been spending the last couple days trying to understand more about him (merely because I stumbled upon him and I am not approaching this book from front to back). Around 1272, after he had an "illuminative experience...in which he saw the attributes of God" designed a method, which he published as his Ars Magna (the "The Ultimate General Art", published in 1305). His system was intended to win Muslims to the Christian faith through logic and reason. He invented numerous 'machines' for the purpose of conversion in which, through this system, a reader may ask a question (like an alethiometer!!!) about the Christian faith. One methodm the Lullian Circle, consists of two or more discs inscribed with alphabetical letters or symbols that referred to lists of attributes.

Designated as BCDEFGHIK, they are the dignities of God, or the 'nine' forms of art: Goodness, Greatness, Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Truth, and Glory. Llull knew that all believers in the monotheistic religions - whether Jews, Muslims or Christians - would agree with these attributes, giving him a firm platform from which to argue. The discs could be rotated individually to generate a large number of combinations of ideas. Lull's art of memory differs from classical and Socratic methods in that it is not imaged based, but combinatorial, moving disks like a compass or a safe lock to create different meanings. This is also, according to Yates, a principle difference of the Lullian Art--LULL INTRODUCES MOVEMENT INTO MEMORY. Figures are not static, but revolving. These combinations were said to show all possible truth about the subject of the circle. The divine attributes are a reflection of the Trinity in man: intellectus--an art of knowing or finding out truth, voluntas--an art of training the will towards loving truth, and memoria--an art of memory for remembering truth. His art was to be used by these three powers of the soul, which are very similar to the same powers we exercise when our angel wings itch!

For a few Lullian asides: as some of you know, Joan and I had to memorize innumerable amounts of lines for a recent production of Measure for Measure. How did we do it? Lull would say that we used our artificial memory. But not the part of the artificial memory that uses "medicines and plasters for the improvement of memory' (like opiates for Coleridge), but by "frequently going over in memory what one wished to retain, like an ox chewing the cud." This is Lull's only rule for 'artificial memory'. Constantly repeating what I want to remember is part of the Lullian Art and all its procedures. Giordano Bruno, the next chapter, uses the Lullian method on concentric, combinatorial circles as part of his memory system which I will read more about for my next blog.

Also, as we are working with combinations (refer to layman diagram above for easier understanding of how Ramon's art works) I am reminded of a Watling slot machine I have at home in Reno. My dad collects antique slot machines (he must have at least 70 by now, he has no meaning of the word moderation!) and there is one particular one that has three slot reels and each image (a bell, a cherry, a bar, etc...) has part of a sentence in it. So no matter what reel combination comes up (determining if you're a winner or a loser), it creates a unique and funny sentence that also tells a fortune. The picture on the right is not very good, but you can just barely make out that there are some words in between the reel symbols.