Source edition
Aristotle. Aristotelis Opera, Volume 3. Bekker, Immanuel, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1837.
Source data
A Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies · CC BY-SA 4.0
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
This scientific and philosophical treatise investigates the nature and mechanisms of memory and recollection. In the first part, the work defines memory and its relationship with the sense of time, explaining how we can remember past things through internal mental images (phantasmata) compared to portraits. The second part shifts the focus to recollection, describing it as an active search process driven by a chain of mental associations based on similarity, contrast, and contiguity. Aristotle distinguishes recollection from mere remembering, defining it as a form of inference that involves physical processes. Ultimately, the treatise concludes by explaining how these bodily mechanisms account for individual and age-related differences in memory capabilities.