Bahamut.Dasva said:
Depends on what you mean by retain. If you have the understanding of it and retain that the actual info often is irrelvant as you can just make it up as you go.
Did I memorize a bajillion formulas thru my education process? No. But I certainly could solve all the problems and come up with my own better ones
With some research maybe, yes.
The ability to retain information such as formulas is just one piece of the puzzle.
Let's say your brain is a harddrive, over time the information on this hard drive decays and non-essential information is deleted.
Being able to retain and effectively use what you know is pretty essential for intellectual development rather than stagnation.
You can't depend on your ability to "go with it" as you were expressing in the bold all the time.
It's best to use all the tools in your toolbox if you can.
TL;DR
Comprehension and memory retention are completely hand in hand.
You can try depending on one part more than the other, but you are just crippling yourself if you do.
Both help each other lol.