by Kevin Vost
And one last point about the value of a broad, firm knowledge base. Often, and as recently as last week, I’ve seen it argued that we don’t need to memorize things or build a vast knowledge base because the answer to virtually any factual question can be found on our computers or in those amazing little smart phones that fit in the palms of our hands.
To those who think that way, I offer this question: If you required an important invasive surgery, who would you prefer to operate on you: the world’s most knowledgeable computer expert in an operating room surrounded by the world’s most powerful computers, or an average, run-of-the mill surgeon? Surely, the IT man would have virtually all the recorded medical knowledge gathered throughout the history of man, accessible with merely a click of his fingers or even an audible question. The surgeon would have rapid access to far less medical knowledge. The crucial difference, of course, is that the surgeon’s knowledge base lies in his head — and hands! It has become internalized. I don’t know about you, but I’d choose him. Now, if it came to a computer issue, of course we would choose our world’s greatest IT man, because in that realm, through his own years of training and practice, he, too, has acquired a vast knowledge base that is in his head and hands. It is certainly good to know how to access information from outside sources, but it is prudent to know that there is much knowledge worth learning and storing between our two ears, information relevant not only to our professional lives but to our spiritual lives as well.
On Grounding Our Knowledge Base on the Ground of All Being
An understanding of the things of God should serve as the foundation and the peak of our knowledge base, with knowledge of Christ as the “cornerstone” of its edifice (1 Pet. 2:6) and “the rock” (1 Cor. 10:4) that holds it together and strengthens it. Such knowledge of Scripture and Church teaching was clearly the foundation and the summit of St. Thomas’s learning. If you read virtually any page of the Summa Theologica, for example (and I pray that you will), you will find a plethora of scriptural quotations and the teachings of Church Doctors. If you read its very first question (article 5), you will find that Thomas called theology “sacred doctrine,” the “noblest” of all sciences, citing both Scripture (“Wisdom sent her maids to invite to the tower” [Prov. 9:3]) and Aristotle, who wrote in his de Animalibus (On Animals) that even “the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.” The wisdom God reveals to us is the ultimate and highest wisdom, which makes sense of and gives meaning to all the other knowledge we obtain through the “handmaids” that serve it. (And this is not at all to denigrate, but to elevate, the value of those handmaids themselves, a few of which we’ll highlight shortly.)
God is the source and the summit of all knowledge and truth, and any time we use our thinking powers to obtain the truth, we are seeking some reflection of the beauty and goodness of the One who is the Truth. Still, we seek His truths most directly when we devote time to study the truths He revealed to us in Scripture and the insights and interpretations produced by the Church He bequeathed to us while on earth. So then, we need to apply our powers of memory, of understanding, and of study to the things of God on a regular basis, and if we thus become suffused with God’s word, the thinking we do on our feet will be ever more prudent, and even those feet, so to speak, will be ever more blessed and beautiful (see Isa. 52:7; Rom. 10:15)!
We should, of course, set aside some time on a regular basis for study of the Scriptures, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Summa Theologica, other writings of the saints, and the documents and activities (such as the sacred liturgy of the Mass) that comprise Catholic Tradition. But what else? What are some worthwhile “handmaidens,” other fields of knowledge truly worthy of study for the modern Catholic who would think like Aquinas? What other kinds of reading should we undertake in a lifelong pursuit of a general self-education conducive to real intellectual and spiritual growth? I’d like to suggest three broad areas of study that can help us think like Aquinas.
History
The study of history can provide a great and powerful knowledge blast from the past. Catholics would be wise to acquaint themselves with the richness of Church history, from the fascinating Church History of Eusebius (263–339), “the Father of Church History,” through the historical works of twentieth-century literary giants G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, to the books of so many good Catholic historians still writing today. Secular histories and biographies, too, can serve to build our knowledge base of important truths about human nature, politics, war, and so much more. “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” goes a saying attributed to eighteenth-century political philosopher Edmund Burke. Surely, part of the reason Thomas made so few mistakes in philosophy and theology is that he was so steeped in their histories.
Philosophy
Philosophy is the philos (love) of sophia (wisdom), and Thomas loved philosophy like few others before or since. Thomas’s philosophical knowledge base was built out of the solid bricks of Aristotle’s philosophy more than any others, but he knew well and profited from the philosophy of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and many others. In fact, he used their ideas abundantly and cited them repeatedly in the Summa Theologica and in many other works. For readers not inclined to study the deep mysteries of metaphysics or the rigorous rules of logic, some of the most practical and useful of ancient philosophical ideas can be found in their works on practical ethics and virtues. There are many valuable lessons waiting there for modern Catholics, just as there were for the harvesting by St. Thomas Aquinas and other great theologians and Church Fathers. Among the most accessible and enjoyable works you can read to build your philosophical knowledge base are Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (about which Thomas wrote his own masterful commentary on every single line!), Cicero’s On Duties, Seneca’s Letters and Moral Essays, Epictetus’s Handbook and Discourses, and Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ famous Meditations.
Literature
Whereas history tells us what people have done, literature can inspire us about what we might do. Great works of literature represent the powers of the imagination and hypothetical reasoning at their most magnificent. Great books spanning diverse historical eras and locales can expand our knowledge base in profoundly moving ways. The best of these books will stir our emotions to feel compassion toward others and to achieve worthwhile goals and relationships. We saw earlier that both Sts. Thomas and John the Evangelist recommend refreshing periods of play interspersed with periods of diligent study. Modern psychologists also speak of the value of the Premack Principle (referred to by some as “Grandma’s law”): “First you work, and then you play.” In other words, we can increase our tendency to do hard things (such as study) if we reward study periods with pleasures, such as relaxation or play.
The pleasures produced by some great works of literature allow us, in a sense, to play while we work! And indeed, there are times when St. Thomas, like St. Paul before him, cites classical literary works in his writings.
Doctor’s Orders ✍
Prescription for Filling Your Mental Cupboard with Scads of Savory Truths
Reflect
Did anything in this chapter hit home with you? Are there any significant gaps in your education or cracks in the foundation of your knowledge base that you need to fill? Are there any personal peaks that you might raise yet higher? Have you formulated a study plan to grow your knowledge base? Is your “cell” ready now, and have you charted out a time or times of day when you can regularly get down to business?109
Read
I’ll forgo the formal “read” prescription, since many possible recommendations were made within the chapter. I will note that Thomas addresses the virtue of solertia, or shrewdness, in his Summa Theologica.110 While docility, as we saw in chapter 1, is the virtue through which we dispose ourselves toward learning from others, shrewdness is the cap
acity to think quickly on our own two feet. The more knowledge we have made our own and internalized through study, the more mental resources we will have available to make swift, accurate decisions when there’s no time to seek advice from others. I’ll also note here the power of rereading again and again worthwhile books, foremost among them Scripture. Not only is repetition the mother of memory, but sometimes lessons that fly over our heads will get through to our gray matter years down the road, when our experiences have opened our minds and hearts to grasp the truths of those lessons better and to apply them swiftly and prudently in our circumstances. In the words of Shakespeare’s King Lear, “ripeness is all.”
Remember
Have you internalized the gist of the first nine precepts? If not, just take another mental walk around the first nine places in our mnemonic foyer.
104St. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, cited in Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 44.
105“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matt. 25:29).
106M.T.H. Chi, “Knowledge Structures and Memory Development,” in Children’s Thinking: What Develops?, ed. Robert S. Siegler (New York: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1978).
107In a very interesting twist, later research showed that when the chess pieces were arranged in patterns that would not be possible in an actual game, the children did not recall them as well. Their knowledge base was not as relevant to that memory task.
108In a recent talk I gave on memory techniques, a member of the audience asked if I thought that in modern educational methods there was too much focus on “critical thinking” (analyzing and breaking down issues and finding flaws in arguments) at the expense of memorization and acquiring a broad knowledge base. I said I thought it was good for students to be adept at critical thinking — if they have also learned things worth critically thinking about. After all, it is hard to think critically about things that one does not know and understand!
109Thomas’s study habits included prayer, celebration of Mass and attendance at another Mass, teaching, and theological and philosophical reading and writing virtually all day, every day, and well into the night. What does — or will — your daily routine look like?
110Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 49, art. 4.
Chapter 10
Knowing Your Mental Powers — and Their Limits
Seek not the things that are too high for thee.
How High Is Too High for You — at This Time?
Thomas quotes Sirach in this piece of counsel.111 We would be amiss to interpret it as advice not to seek understanding of the highest and most important things of God, because to do so would be to neglect the “for thee.” We are to seek the highest truths we are capable of grasping. This will vary from person to person and, more importantly, even in ourselves over time. Here, Thomas prepares to conclude his brief letter by reinforcing his early advice to seek out the vast sea first through the means of navigable rivers. A parallel verse in Sirach is “Do not lift a weight beyond your strength” (13:2), and every weightlifter knows well that with proper, diligent training over time, the weight that is beyond your strength today may become like child’s play at some point in the future. We are to seek the highest truths, but not in so great a hurry that we fail to build within ourselves the strength of mind to grasp and hold on to them. In the spirit of docility, we will also heed our trainers’ guidance, so that when those who have already attained the heights reach down to offer us a hand, we will not fail to clasp it with gratitude. We will also bear in mind that some of the most glorious truths of the Catholic Faith, including the Trinity and the Incarnation, are mysteries that surpass the limitations of any human’s understanding.
“Lift No Weight Beyond Your Strength” — for Now
Speaking of Sirach’s sage advice not to exceed our intellectual, spiritual, or physical strength, we’d be wise to keep in mind that all of our capacities can be enhanced within limits. Recall, if you will, Thomas’s maxims that art perfects nature, and grace perfects them both. Further, as soul-body unities, we can improve our mental powers by improving our physical health, for as the ancient Greeks and Romans knew well, a healthy mind thrives best within a healthy body.
Thomas wrote that “virtue, inasmuch as it is a suitable disposition of the soul, is like health and beauty, which are suitable dispositions of the body.”112 Further, he noted, commenting on Aristotle, that “to a good bodily disposition corresponds the nobility of the soul.”113
To think most effectively then, we must take care of the health of our bodies. Father Sertillanges, whose great work The Intellectual Life also drew from St. Thomas’s letter on study, was very explicit in his exercise recommendations to any person who would seek to perfect his intellect. He said we should always strive to stay well, and he particularly recommended walking after the fashion of the ancient Greeks. Of course, St. Thomas honored one of those Greeks with the title “the Philosopher,”114 and his school happened to be known as the Peripatetics, those who walk about, because of the colonnaded walkways of his school, the Lyceum, where the students would walk around. According to some legends, Aristotle himself lectured as he walked! Further, Dominicans in Thomas’s day generally traversed Europe on foot, and Thomas himself was known to walk while immersed in deep thought.
In any event, Father Sertillanges recommended daily walking, stretching, and moving in the open air, if possible. Further, for those who could not get out, he recommended some “excellent substitute methods” calling those of J. P. Muller “one of the most intelligent.” Jorgen Peter Muller (1866–1938) was a gymnastics instructor and health educator who advocated brief (fifteen-minute) daily sessions of bodyweight exercises and stretching movements, a forerunner of the brief but intense High Intensity Training methods that I use and advocate.115
So then, these important mind-body connections were well known to the Greeks of the fourth century B.C., to St. Thomas of the thirteenth century, and to Father Sertillanges of the nineteenth century. But it has been primarily only near the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century that scientific data showing just how and why exercise enhances our ability to think has steadily mounted. I first heard of this research when talking to a business professor at, of all places, Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee, when he brought to my attention the work of psychiatrist John J. Ratey, M.D.116
Firing Your Brain’s Spark Plugs
Dr. Ratey, the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain,117 has boldly declared: “Exercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function.”118 He bases his claim upon a vast, growing body of experimental research studies in recent decades from around the world, using both animal and human subjects, that links various forms of aerobic and strength-training regimens to enhanced levels of a variety of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), glutamate, norepinephrine, and serotonin, and proteins and hormones such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2), human growth hormone (HGH),119 insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which help form and grow synaptic connections between brain cells and promote growth and regeneration of brain cells themselves. Some studies have shown measurable growth in particular brain structures in response to exercise — for example, growth in the hippocampus in schizophrenics who rode exercise bikes, and growth in brain volume in the frontal and temporal lobes in sixty- to seventy-nine-year-olds who walked on a treadmill thrice weekly for six months.
Further, many studies have found, in addition to positive changes in body chemicals and structures, significant changes in response to regular exercise in actual cognitive functioning in terms of outcomes such as improved standardized-testing scores among high school students who underwen
t regulated, progressive aerobic conditioning during PE classes and 20 percent improvement in vocabulary learning among adults immediately following an exercise session.
Although it is difficult to think clearly and learn new information while performing demanding exercise because of the increased demand on blood flow to the working muscles, the hormonal and chemical changes stimulated by exercise produce both short-term and long-term benefits in thinking capacities afterward, because of the positive changes in the neurological and cardiovascular systems that feed needed nutrients to the brain. Further, milder forms of exercise, such as walking at a leisurely pace, often enhance our thinking abilities even while we are doing them.
There are yet other ways in which exercise can help improve our thinking that highlight Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’s insights into the parallels between bodily health and virtues of the soul. Thomas emphasized something that perhaps we have all experienced: the clouding of clear thought by uncontrolled passions such as lust or anger. That is why, although prudence directs moral virtues such as temperance or self-control and patience, it also depends on them to control the kinds of passions that impair our practical reasoning abilities. Exercise can operate in a similar way to regulate some emotions that can impair our ability to think effectively. Ratey includes chapters on the beneficial effects of exercise on problems such as anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorders, and addictions — because of the cascade of positive chemical changes that exercise can stimulate in the brain and other parts of the body, thereby impacting the mind.
Along with my previous specialization in Alzheimer’s dementia, another area of particular interest to me was the potential impact of exercise on the onset and severity of it. Even in my doctoral training days in the 1990s, while there was certainly no guaranteed method of avoiding dementia, the widely recommended rule was “use it or lose it,” meaning that the research suggested that those who remained most active, both physically and mentally, were less likely to become demented in old age.