記憶術與培根

Mnemonics and Bacon

本文主旨在於探討記憶術對培根（Francis Bacon）科學方法的影響。正文大致上可分為兩個部分。第一部分藉由檢視柏拉圖、亞里斯多德、西塞羅（Cicero） 、昆體良（Quintilian）及奧古斯丁等人的作品簡述西方記憶術的起源及其與古典修辭學的關聯。這一部分特別著重古典記憶術中將想要被記住的事物用特別意象編碼並將其依序安置在特定空間（如想像的建築物）的特殊面向。以第一部分所獲致的結論為基礎，第二部分則試圖說明在培根的時代雖然印刷術的逐漸興起使得記憶術日益過時，記憶術對培根所提倡的新的科學方法產生間接的影響。簡言之，培根並不特別看重記憶術是否可以幫助一般人擁有令人目眩神迷的記憶力，而引起其注意力的則是記憶術可以增進人類分類的能力，而分類能力正是人類在試圖觀察、紀錄並進而解釋自然時其中一項重要工具。另外本文也援引與培根大約同時代的另外一位西方科學的先驅布魯諾（Giordano Bruno）的例子說明從記憶術尋求分類的法則，在十七世紀的歐洲培根並不是唯一的例子。此外本文在說明記憶術在培根時代的流傳程度時，也討論了在第一部分所提及的古典記憶術曾經藉由利瑪竇及艾儒略傳入十七世紀的中國。

This essay is mainly to investigate the influence of mnemonics on the formation of the scientific method on the part of Bacon. The article proper is largely laid out in two main parts. The first part, by briefly surveying the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine, traces the genesis of mnemonics in the West, particularly the characteristic tendency in classical mnemonics to associate things to be memorized with specialized images and to position these images in a particular space. Based upon the conclusion reached in the first part, the ensuing part attempts to show that mnemonics, as being cognate with rhetoric, exercises an indirect but unmistakable influence on the scientific method in its budding stage. Bacon is not particularly interested in whether mnemonics can help people acquire dazzling memorization skills, and what really arrests his attention is the service mnemonics can possibly render: enhancing our ability in classification. This essay also adduces the example of Giordano Bruno, an older contemporary of Bacon and, more significantly, one of the precursors of modern science, to demonstrate that Bacon might not be an isolated case in his time in terms of the effort to generalize principles of classification from artificial memory. In trying to expound the extent of the prevalence of mnemonics around Bacon’s time, the second part also touches upon how Matteo Ricci and Giulio Aleni introduced classical mnemonics to seventeenth-century China.