Analysis Of The End Of Remembering And Kathryn Schulz's Evidence

Joshua Foer’s “The End of Remembering” and Kathryn Schulz’s “Evidence” are two essays that have more in common than one might think. Although on two totally different topics, they revolve around the central point of the complexities of the human mind. However, there are some key elements both writers have contemplated on in differing ways.
A vital difference in Foer’s essay and Schulz’s essay is the overall thesis. Foer uses a comical tone throughout his essay to get readers to realize just how dependent society has become on external means rather than ourselves. We’ve taken memory, a private aspect, and made it completely external and superficial. Writing is a prime example of a memory “aid.” Foer uses the anecdote of the Egyptian God, Theuth,
In earlier eras, philosophers have strove to think of efficient, faster ways to approach every day matters. In Schulz’s essay she brings up the point that our mind “despite of its aptitude for error-it works better than anything else” (365). Our brains have evolved over time to a way of ease and correctness even though the risk is still run of being predisposed to error. She brought up the philosopher Descartes and how he wanted to be an “ideal thinker.” This involves approaching every manner with a neutral mind and be active in finding evidence that both supports and counters a claim. It also means accepting and even altering a conclusion that was previously made. Foer on the other hand, makes the claim that our society’s ability to remember has slowly dwindled by means of outsourcing of ourselves. “Today, when we live in a deluge of printed words” we have no need to remember everything when we have tools that do it for us (164). We have phones that remember people’s names, addresses, and phone numbers. We have GPS systems that make remembering routes a thing of the
Foer recounted of how “training one’s memory was not to become a living book but rather a living concordance” (165). He goes on to list various beings throughout history that have tried to obtain this goal. Peter of Ravenna authored a book, Phoenix, which was about memory training. Now in the fifteenth century, Peter’s book was a hit as Peter himself “bragged of having memorized twenty thousand legal points, a thousand texts by Ovid, seven thousand texts from scripture, along with a host of other classical works” (166). Peter placed reading in a different way in which it is today. He reread and dwelled upon each work he read, this emphasizes the work staying and settling in his mind. Whereas, reading is superficial with a “premium on doing it quickly” (166). Or Camillo who was paid by King Francis I to build a memory palace for him and him alone. Camillo promised that one “can hold in the mind and master all human concepts and all things that are in the entire world” (168). He believed that there was a magical system where memorizing images, one could understand the connections of everything. Now in the case of Schulz, she talks about a famous philosopher Descartes. He brings up the argument that “error does not rise from believing something that isn’t true, but believing on insufficient evidence” (362). Descartes wanted to be an ideal thinker and take in every bit of evidence he possibly could