Kindle book review: Assimilative Memory or, How to Attend and Never Forget

Must have been ground breaking in 1899, still relevant today

This book is available as a free download from Amazon for Kindle or Kindle for PC.

Written in 1899, this book talks different ways human memory works and how to improve your ability to memorize.

Assimilative memory is absorbing of ideas and making them available for recall whenever wanted. It is learning through through grasping the ideas meaning and comprehension of the subject matter.

It is contrasted with Sensuous memory which is association through eye or ear of succession of sights or sounds without any reflection. It is learning by repetition, this is not a mode of learning that is lasting.

These two methods of learning are illustrated by example memorizing a series of words. One by repeating the words over and over, another by thinking of relationships between the words.

The author's premise is that thinking of the relationships between the words makes it easier to memorize the words
and retrieve them later.

The authors method of memorization is based on the three laws are : Inclusion, Exclusion, and Concurrences. The book goes through various example of three laws of forming relationship between words, numbers in improving memorization. Then it progress to more complex examples such as sentences, poems, foreign words.

The book contains a larger number of exercises, starting with simple and ending with quite complex.

Some of the ideas in this book must have been ground breaking at the time they were written. They are still interesting and relevant today.

You can find this book on Amazon by following this link.


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