Beginner here. What exactly is the difference between them? In both systems, you place information to be remembered at each locus, and a way to connect the loci to each other. Is the memory journey just a bigger memory palace? Do the two serve different needs and I’m unaware of this? They sound very, very similar to me.
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so did I wonder this question, I thought they are just paraohrases. Journey is the way we link Palaces chronologically.
I think the idea of memory “palaces” comes from Saint Augustine in Confessions (unless someone out there knows of an earlier mention of “palaces” somewhere).
Here’s the passage:
And I come to the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There is stored up, whatsoever besides we think, either by enlarging or diminishing, or any other way varying those things which the sense hath come to; and whatever else hath been committed and laid up, which forgetfulness hath not yet swallowed up and buried.
Some people use “memory palace” to only refer to memory journeys in buildings. Others use terms like method of loci, memory journey, memory palace, and mind palace interchangeably.
The term that I like best so far is “memory spaces”. (See The Memory Code.)
Here are some related discussions:
10.8.12, transibo ergo et istam naturae meae, gradibus ascendens ad eum qui fecit me, et venio in campos et lata praetoria memoriae.
In the Latin original he uses praetoria which is the plural form of pretorium:
Considering the author (Augustine, bishop of Hippo) and the audience he wrote for (Christians) as well as the theme of the first half of Book X (The Search for God in Memory), this meaning seems likely:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praetorium#Biblical_reference
Due to the number of uses for the word praetorium, describing can be difficult. A praetorium could be a large building, a permanent tent structure, or in some cases even be mobile. He later goes on saying:
10.8.14 in aula ingenti: Renewing (and continuing through the paragraph) the spatial metaphor from 10.8.12, ‘in campos et lata praetoria’
see here for translations: Latin Definition for: aula, aulae (ID: 5589) - Latin Dictionary and Grammar Resources - Latdict
Considering the entire passage, I wouldn’t necessarily say that he meant a “palace” per se, as that is too limiting in meaning for what he was describing. What he is describing is simply an architectural landscape, which is something that Cicero already discussed as something that the Greek did before him.
However, we end up with the term Roman Room rather than “Greek” Room because Cicero wrote in Latin (i.e., the language of the Romans). Just like you will find that in German the Hindu-Arabic numerals are only known as Arabic numerals (arabische Ziffern) because some things get “lost” (quite literally) in translation.
Chances are that “palace” and “apple” might have a few things in common:
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