Topical Guide 583
Mark Dorset
Experience, Immediate Data of
Memory
Allusion
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 7:
When I bring to mind the moment when I reached into the bowl to get my question, I experience it all again, not as memory, but as a repetition of the immediate data of experience. I am there. I feel the cool smooth rim of the bowl against the inside of my wrist, my knuckles brush the inside surface, the slips of paper rustle, Miss Rheingold shifts her position on the edge of the desk, and her stockings whisper to me. I feel the thin edge of a slip of paper. The scent of Miss Rheingold’s perfume, diffusing from the tiny open bottle, so much denser here at the front of the room than it was back at my seat, makes my head reel.
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory:
In fact, there is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience. In most cases these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as “signs” that recall to us former images. The convenience and rapidity of perception are bought at this price; but hence also springs every kind of illusion.
Science: Big Questions
School: Extraordinary Teachers
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 7:
These were the questions:
Where does the light go when the light goes out?
When is now?
What is the biggest question of all?
Why are you you?
What really happens?
Where do you stop?
[I know this: When Kraft was in the seventh grade his young General Science teacher, Miss Ulrich, challenged him (alone, not in a group) to answer the question “Where does the light go when the light goes out?” The process of attempting to find an answer to that question led him into the thicket of quantum physics, where (at ten-going-on-eleven) he wandered blissfully bewildered, a bit like Alice. The experience (wait for it) changed his life, and he has been grateful to Miss Ulrich ever since. MD]
See also:
Experience: Real, Fictional, Vicarious, Shared TG 81
Experiences: Unforgettable, Unusual, Unlikely TG 449
Allusion; Quotation TG 140, TG 455, TG 462, TG 502, TG 506, TG 532, TG 559
Memory TG 57, TG 125, TG 574; Memory, Faulty: Causes of, Results of TG 34, TG 133; Memory, Remembering, Forgetting, and the Search for Lost Time TG 22; Memory, Faulty, Causes of Distortion in TG 97; Memories: Relationships Among; Relationships to Present Perceptions TG 463
School TG 103; TG 107; TG 127; School; Education: Rote Learning, Memorization TG 131; School: Tests: Strategies for Preparing for: “Study Buddies” TG 165
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