The mnemic theory then, if it is to be worth anything, seems to me clearly to require not merely physical records or 'engrams,' but living experience or tradition.
The mnemic would, but it has its initial and insuperable difficulty, pointed out in another article in this volume, that, as you must have an experience before you can remember it, it in no way accounts for the first operation of arrangement.
For it is in the seed that these factors must be, whether they be mnemic or physical.
We might, in fact, define one chain of experience, or one biography, as a series of occurrences linked by mnemic causation.
Those who desire to make psychology as far as possible independent of physiology would do well, it seems to me, if they adopted mnemic causation.
The effects of a word that we understand are always mnemic phenomena in the sense explained in Lecture IV, in so far as they are identical with, or similar to, the effects which the object itself might have.
It is these two characteristics, both connected withmnemic phenomena, that distinguish perceptions from the appearances of objects in places where there is no living being.
The effect of words upon the hearer is a mnemic phenomena, since it depends upon the past experience which gave him understanding of the words.
But the evidence seems not quite conclusive, so that I do not think we ought to forget the other hypothesis, or to reject entirely the possibility that mnemic causation may be the ultimate explanation of mnemic phenomena.
In this case there are the mnemic phenomena which constitute the unity of one "experience," and transform mere occurrences into "experiences.
If there is to be parallelism, it is easy to prove by mathematical logic that the causation in physical and psychical matters must be of the same sort, and it is impossible that mnemic causation should exist in psychology but not in physics.
What we know is that memory, and mnemic phenomena generally, can be disturbed or destroyed by changes in the brain.
No doubt the nature of the mnemic engraphia of external agents in the living substance is still unknown.
There is, therefore, no contradiction between the fundamental facts, and all is simply and naturally explained by the combination of hereditary mnemic engraphia with selection.
When a partial discord is produced between the new irritation and the mnemic irritation, the organism always tends to reëstablish homophony (harmony).
Mnemic engraphy explains, by its infinitesimal and repeated action through numerous generations, how the external world may little by little transmit to the germinal cells the characters which it impresses on organisms.
We have seen that the mechanism of the appetites consists in instincts inherited from our animal ancestors by mnemic engraphia and selection, and that it is situated in the primordial or lower cerebral centers (basal ganglia, spinal cord, etc.
It is evident that mnemic engraphia transforms organisms the more rapidly as it changes in nature itself, which is the case in the migrations we have just mentioned, and which also changes the factors of selection.
Vices depend on a hereditary mnemic disposition, of varying strength and more or less pathological, or at any rate unilateral (i.
We can hardly admit that the mnemic phenomena explained in Chapter I could have acted appreciably in two or three hundred years, a period much too short for the human species.
At the time of such phenomena every mnemic irritation of the engrams vibrates simultaneously with the state of synchronous irritation produced by a new irritation.
Instead of several nebulous hypotheses, we have only one--the nature of mnemic engraphia.
All these facts, almost inexplicable hitherto, become comprehensible by the aid of the engraphia of the mnemic energies.
This is how the mnemic principle allows us to conceive the possibility of an infinitely slow heredity of characters acquired by individuals, a heredity resulting from prolonged repetition.
The mnemic laws established by Semon give a much better explanation of the facts.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "mnemic" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
