Richard Wolfgang Semon (22 August 1859, in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

– 27 December 1918, in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

) was a German

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life for ...

, a memory researcher who believed in the

inheritance of acquired characteristics Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

and applied this to

social evolution {{unreferenced, date=February 2015 ''Social Evolution'' is the title of an essay by Benjamin Kidd, which became available as a book published by Macmillan and co London in 1894. In it, Kidd discusses the basis for society as an evolving phenomenon ...

. He is known for coining the terms '' engram'' and '' ecphory''.

Australia

Before taking up his appointment at the University of Jena, he spent three years travelling around Australia; and the Indonesian Archipelago and, as a consequence, he was one of a number of influential German-speaking residents such as

William Blandowski Johann Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski, known as William Blandowski (21 January 1822 – 18 December 1878), was a German explorer, soldier, zoologist and mining engineer of Polish roots, he is most famous for his exploration of the Murray an ...

, Ludwig Becker,

Hermann Beckler Dr. Hermann Beckler (28 September 1828, in Höchstädt an der Donau – 10 December 1914, in Fischen im Allgäu) was a German doctor with an interest in botany. He went to Australia to collect specimen for Ferdinand von Mueller and served as med ...

Amalie Dietrich Koncordie Amalie Dietrich (née Nelle) (26 May 1821 – 9 March 1891) was a German naturalist who was best known for her work in Australia from 1863 to 1872, collecting specimens for the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg. Australia Dietrich was one ...

Diedrich Henne Diedrich Henne (1834 – 21 January 1913) was a German-born botanist and plant collector. He emigrated to Australia and was employed as an assistant to the colonial botanist Ferdinand von Mueller at the Melbourne Herbarium. Henne was one of a n ...

, Gerard Krefft, Johann Luehmann,

Johann Menge Johannes Menge (4 January 1788 – 1852), is regarded as South Australia's first geologist, though he had no formal qualifications. An early explorer of the new colony, he was influential in the settlement of the Barossa Valley. He has been call ...

Ludwig Preiss Johann August Ludwig Preiss (21 November 1811 – 21 May 1883) was a German-born British botanist and zoologist. Early life Preiss was born in Herzberg am Harz. He obtained a doctorate, probably at Hamburg, then emigrated to Western Australia. ...

, Carl Ludwig Christian Rümker (a.k.a. Ruemker),

Moritz Richard Schomburgk Moritz Richard Schomburgk (5 October 1811 – 24 March 1891), generally known as Richard Schomburgk, was a German botanist and curator of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. Family Schomburgk was born in Freyburg, Saxony, the son of Johann Friedrich Lu ...

, George Ulrich, Eugene von Guérard, Robert von Lendenfeld,

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

Georg von Neumayer Georg Balthazar von Neumayer (21 June 1826 – 24 May 1909), was a German polar explorer and scientist who was a proponent of the idea of international cooperation for meteorology and scientific observation. Biography Early years Born i ...

, and

Carl Wilhelmi Johann Freiderich Carl Wilhelmi (1829–1884) was a Dresden born seedsman who made large collections of botanical specimens in southern Australia. Wilhelmi was one of a number of influential German-speaking residents such as Ludwig Becker, Herman ...

who brought their "epistemic traditions" to Australia, and not only became "deeply entangled with the Australian colonial project", but also "intricately involved in imagining, knowing and shaping colonial Australia" (Barrett, et al., 2018, p.2).

Thesis

Semon proposed psycho-physiological parallelism according to which every psychological state corresponds to alterations in the

nerves A nerve is an enclosed, cable-like bundle of nerve fibers (called axons) in the peripheral nervous system. A nerve transmits electrical impulses. It is the basic unit of the peripheral nervous system. A nerve provides a common pathway for the e ...

. His ideas of the ''mneme'' (based on the Greek goddess,

Mneme In Greek mythology, Mneme ( grc-gre, Μνήμη, Mnḗmē) was one of the three original Boeotian muses, along with her sisters Aoede and Melete before Arche and Thelxinoë were identified, increasing the number to five. Later, the Nine Olym ...

, the muse of memory) were developed early in the 20th century. The mneme represented the memory of an external-to-internal experience. The resulting "mnemic trace" (or " engram") would be revived when an element resembling a component of the original complex of stimuli was encountered. Semon’s mnemic principle was based upon how stimuli produce a "permanent record,... written or engraved on the irritable substance", i.e. upon cellular material energetically predisposed to such inscription. According to historian Petteri Pietikainen:

Semon argued not only that information is encoded into memory and that there are 'memory traces' (engrams) or after-effects of stimulation that conserve the changes in the nervous system, he also contended that these changes in the brain (that is, engrams) are inherited. Semon's mneme-theory fell into disrepute largely because in a Lamarckian fashion it proposed that memory units are passed from one generation to another.

Semon was a proponent of the theory of organic memory, which was popular amongst

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...

s and psychologists from 1870 to 1918. The theory later lost scientific legitimacy as it yielded no reliable data and advances in

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

made the theory untenable.

Evidence

Semon found evidence in the way that different parts of the body relate to each other involuntarily, such as "reflex spasms, co-movements, sensory radiations," to infer distribution of "engraphic influence." He also took inventive recourse to

phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

y, the "mneme machine," to explain the uneven distribution and revival of engrams. Semon's book, ''Die Mneme'', influenced the ''Mnemosyne'' project of the idiosyncratic art historian

Aby Warburg Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, ...

. N.B.: Semon's ''Mneme'' should not be confused with '' meme, ''a separate concept coined by Richard Dawkins.

Death

In 1918 in Munich, shortly after the end of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Semon committed suicide wrapped in a German flag allegedly because he was depressed by Germany's role and defeat in that war and by the death of his wife.Goeschel, Christian (2009), p. 11.

Legacy

Semon is commemorated in the scientific name of a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of green-blooded skink ('' Prasinohaema semoni)'',Beolens, et al. (2011), p.240. and an Acantocephalan (''

Australiformis semoni Moniliformidae is a family of parasitic spiny-headed (or thorny-headed) worms. It is the only family in the Moniliformida order and contains three genera: ''Australiformis'' containing a single species, ''Moniliformis'' containing eighteen specie ...

)''.von Linstow (1898).

Notes

References

Anon (1895), "''The Ceratodus'': a German Scientist's Work", ''The Queenslander'', (Saturday, 30 March 1895), p.597
in part, refers to Semon (1894). * Barrett, L., Eckstein, L., Hurley, A.W. & Schwarz A. (2018), "Remembering German-Australian Colonial Entanglement: An Introduction", ''Postcolonial Studies'', Vol.21, No.1, (January 2018), pp.1-5. * Beolens, B., Watkins, M. & Grayson, M. (2011), "Semon", p.240, in B. Beolens, M. Watkins, & M. Grayson (eds.), ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. . * * * * Landsberg, A. (2004), ''Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture'', New York, NY: Columbia University Press. * (includes a summary, an actualization and extension of the Semonian theory of memory) * Pietikainen, P. (2007), ''Alchemists of Human Nature: Psychological Utopianism in Gross, Jung, Reich and Fromm'', London: Routledge. * Rampley, Matthew (2000), ''The Remembrance of Things Past: On Aby M. Warburg and Walter Benjamin'', Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. * Richards, G. (2002), ''Putting Psychology in Its Place: A Critical Historical Overview'', London: Routledge.
Semon, R. (1894), ''Zoologische Forschungsreisen in Australien und dem Malayischen Archipel, ausgeführt in den Jahren 1891-1893 von Prof. Dr. R. Semon, Erster Band: Ceratodus'', Jena: Gustav Fischer.

Semon, R. (1899), ''In the Australian Bush and on the Coast of the Coral Sea: Being the Experiences and Observations of a Naturalist in Australia, New Guinea and the Moluccas'', London: Macmillan & Co.

Semon, R. (1921), ''The Mneme'', London: George Allen & Unwin.

Semon, R. (1922), ''Die mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen'', Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann
(in German)
Semon, R. (Duffy, B. trans.) (1923), ''Mnemic Psychology'', London: George Allen & Unwin.

von Linstow, O.F.B. (1898), "Nemathelminthen von Herrn Richard Semon in Australien gesammelt", ''Denkschriften der Medizinisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft zu Jena'', 8: 467–472
(in German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Semon, Richard Wolfgang 1859 births 1918 suicides 19th-century German zoologists 20th-century German zoologists Suicides in Germany