Memory and Anamnesis

 We all hear of gardeners with the "green thumb". I could water a plant and prune it in the same way that you would. But I could end up killing it all the same, even though I did nothing differently. Or at least, materially speaking, my actions were the same. So what happens?

There are doctors who have gone down in history who do the same thing: assess a patient's situation (the medical term, I believe is anamnesis) by asking him the right questions and looking into his family history; but then there are those who have the instinctive capacity to recognize that something is not quite right by simple observation and correlation. 

The hidden link, of course, is empathy. But empathy is so difficult to explain scientifically. It can turn wishy washy in a heartbeat, and is notoriously unreliable. I might think I understand what you are going through, I might even stand convinced that I understand you much better because I can imagine your predicament as well as being knowledgeable of the facts. But who's to say I'm right?

The philosopher Charles Pierce had a concept called "abduction": the ability to contextualize something you suspect is the case, even before you deduce or infer. It is the process of hazarding an informed guess before you propose. Pierce had used the example of Sherlock Holmes once: how the way Holmes rapidly arrives at a conclusion from the study of mere empirical data is possibly a function of the careful assessment of data as creating a framework of meaning that allows Holmes to apply logic and arrive at a coherent conclusion.

So that magic touch, that so called instinct is a function of a certain predisposition to assist, to help, to reconstruct with the intent of achieving some goal - in a gardener's case, the well being of a plant; in the doctor's, a patient's; and for Holmes, either solving a case or achieving some form of justice - which, combined with observable data, creates the very possibility of inference.

I find this fascinating, especially since only when you break it down like this, as a process, does it make logical sense. Otherwise, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's magical. Incidentally, the Greeks thought that memory transcended a single lifetime - that we are forever on the verge of remembering past lives and experiences which are already inscribed in our very being, but which needs dialogue, conversation and method to reconstruct and recollect. They used the very word that medicine uses to refer to this - anamnesis. I know almost nothing of the neuroscience informing memory but it's such a beautiful process - so complex yet seemingly instantaneous.