Memory in Historical Perspective: The Literature Before Ebbinghaus

In 1885 Herman Ebbinghaus showed the world how the scientific method could be applied to the elusive phenomena of memory. But what of work on memory before Ebbinghaus? The long ascendance of the Ebbinghaus tradition has eclipsed the contributions of scholars before Ebbinghaus. Memory in Historical Perspective draws together for the first time a collection of writings that figured prominently in scholarly thought about memory from the 8th century B. C. until the scientific inves…