Synthesizing: Insights from an Unexpected Source

Howard Gardner © 2023

As readers of this blog can confirm, I have become intrigued—even obsessed—with the topic and the cognitive processes involved in synthesizing. In our time, the capacity (or at least the potential) to synthesize vast amounts of information is crucial. As Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann contended, it’s arguably the most important mind in the 21st century. And yet, as far as I can ascertain, ‘my’ disciplines of cognitive psychology and developmental psychology shed remarkably little light on the nature and nurture of synthesizing capacities. 

I have just read—though I cannot pretend to have understood completely—William Egginton’s impressive book, The Rigor of Angels, with its formidable subtitle, “Borges, Heisenberg, Kant and the Ultimate Nature of Reality.” Philosopher and literary critic Egginton, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, explicates the cutting edge ideas of these three formidable thinkers. He contends that all three of these individuals sought to capture and explain reality—but that each came to realize that a direct apprehension and explication was simply impossible. Their contribution lay in the respective ways in which they accepted this frustrating conclusion and yet provided crucial perspectives on the possibilities and the limitations of human cognitive capacities.

I should note that while Immanuel Kant preceded Heisenberg and Borges by almost two centuries, his insights were crucial for their intellectual agendas. And in the background, if not the foreground, Albert Einstein converts the trio into a reality-pondering quartet.

An odd quartet…

To my surprise, Egginton’s first chapter, entitled Unforgettable, introduces a case long familiar to me—that of Solomon Shereshevsky. This Russian journalist achieved a measure of immortality because he was studied in detail by the respected neuroscientist Alexander Luria. Writing in a tradition that we now associate with Oliver Sacks, Luria described The Mind of a Mnemonist. Almost unimaginably, Shereshevsky was able to remember everything virtually verbatim—as Luria put it, Shereshevsky’s memory, “had no distinct limits.” Yet, far from being a boon, this tape-recorder memory proved to be a limitation, almost a curse. In Egginton’s vivid characterization, “Shereshevsky waged an almost constant war against the images and associations from the past that threatened to flood his every wakening moment.”

Those of us with imperfect memories—and notably those of us whose memory is declining with age—might be filled with envy of the man with the essentially flawless memory. And yet, both Luria and Egginton regard this apparent gift as at best a mixed blessing. For part-and-parcel with his excellent memory comes the inability to highlight, to rearrange, to hierarchize and subordinate, to establish anew more powerful, more helpful, more illuminating ways of cognizing the world.

Having introduced the mnemonist as a ‘book opener,’ Egginton leaves him in the background until the concluding part of the book.

Here’s his startling conclusion:

“Perfect memory could also become a disability…Shereshevsky’s brain was lacking the capacity to convert encounters with the particular into instances of the general. Indeed, at their extremes, perfect memory and total forgetting would converge: the result, a being adrift in the here and how, with no ability to synthesize disparate impressions into a flow of time, a fabric of space…Such a being…would also lack the capacity for reflection that Kant identified as the very heart of practical reason.” (p.233)

The compelling—if unexpected—conclusion is consonant with my own thinking about the process of synthesis. As I’ve described the process, the aspiring synthesizer takes in vast amounts of information from many sources. In a manner akin to placing items in a supermarket, the synthesizer places each bit of information in a suitable location—easy to fetch, but also susceptible (as warranted) to being moved (once or repeatedly) to a more appropriate location.

Armed with lots of material, the synthesizer embarks on a project:  for example, writing a high-stake paper, running a tension-filled meeting, arranging sizeable organizational charge. The synthesizer can then draw on this stored material, rearrange it as warranted or needed, search for missing information, dropping those items that no longer fit the bill, highlighting those that are revealing, illuminating, and essential for the task at hand. For Kant, the synthesis yielded the basic categories of experience; for Heisenberg, the synthesis revealed the essential indeterminacy of knowledge about the physical world; for Borges, the synthesis yielded characters whose strengths and limitations caricature those of the rest of our species.

A good memory is a help, but a memory that is too accurate, too well-stocked, too immune to relocation is a hindrance.

In a phrase:

If you can't forget, you can't synthesize.

I recommend Egginton’s book to anyone interested in probing the thought processes and intellectual achievements of giants of Western thought. And even if you cannot follow all of the arguments, I believe that your understanding of the heights and mysteries of 20th century thought will be enhanced.