An international scientific marathon dedicated to the topic of human memory is going to be held from 16th to 28th February 2018. In the course of two weeks we will be looking into the history of the development of the scientific thought concerning memory in order to give a comprehensive definition of the term "memory". Experts and scientists from different fields are going to take part in the project, since the concept of memory is at the intersection of sciences such as psychology, neurophysiology, neurobiology, genetics, history, anthropology, etc.
Even if we look at last five centuries, there are already a number of scientific theories and ideas about memory, starting with the Giulio Camillo’s Theater of memory in the XVI century, the theaters of memory of R. Fludd and J. Bruno, following which, in the XVII century there is an introduction of the associative memory theory, XVIII century was marked by new views on memory in the context of brain and nervous system research. The development of deep psychology in the XIX-XX centuries brought it’s own “understanding” of the memory, there is a Gestalt theory of memory and psychoanalytic theory, the experiments of G. Ebbinghaus, concept of Vygotsky-Leontiev, Atkinson-Shiffrin model and many other views on memory are widely known. In the XXI century we observe an active development of neuroscience, which also closely looks into memory and has its own idea of it.
To this date, one may find about a dozen of definitions on memory but all of them will differ from each other and won’t give a full understanding of what memory is.
The idea to conduct this kind of a project belongs to the Ukrainian scientist Maltsev Oleg, Doctor of Philosophy, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Head of the Research Institute “The Memory Institute”.
"We have decided to explore the memory from time beyond record, from the Greeks and the Normans, until today. Thus, we will be able to look at how the historical view in regard to memory has changed over the centuries. There were people who had not only attempted to define memory, but built whole memory models, for instance Camillo’s Theater of Memory, and there were others who have studied only the elements of memory. " Maltsev O.V.
Theater of Memory. J. Camillo
At the Memory Institute it was also noted that invited specialists for research are not only going to be from different areas, since memory has to be looked at the intersection of sciences, but also from different countries, such as Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Germany, the US.
Thus, the study is going to be conducted within two weeks, as a result of which a group of scientists analyzing the history of memory, comparing different theories and approaches, are going to give a comprehensive scientific definition of the concept of "memory" for the first time. In the course of the research a number of interviews and scientific articles will be published in scientific and popular science publications.
Additionally, the result of this project is going to be a new book "Unknown Abyss" written by a group of specialists. The book will include the stages of the scientific research work on the development of views about the memory and a new definition of memory. The Russian version of the book is planned to be released in 2018 for public domain.
