Title: Mind in Motion Pdf How Action Shapes Thought
An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought
When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words.
In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart.
Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how - and where - thinking takes place.
Trivial Pursuit I gave up about half way through. Almost all of the observations discussed left me wanting to add "no sh--" because they seemed so obvious. True insights are few and far between. The writing is choppy and awkward. In view of her late husband's work, the endorsements by Kahneman and Pinker seem like something akin to nepotism.I read nonfiction science extensively, with psychology being one of my primary areas of interest. The concern is that somebody wanting just a sample of the field will assume this book is representative.I truly try to avoid writing negative reviews. However, they sometimes seem necessary to make others aware of a bad experience with a book.A tour de force There are many kinds of nonfiction books. Some feel like walking through a historical building following a fixed path with the help of an experienced tour guide who points out whatever we should pay attention to. That type of book takes you from point A (not knowing) to point B (knowing a bit more).Other nonfiction books are meandering, playful, disjointed. They aren't intended to be structured like linear narratives with a beginning and an end. They feel more like if the aforementioned tour guide met you in the lobby of the building, opened all doors inside it, and told you: “I'll give you a brief introduction to understand where you are. After that, explore at will; you can find more information about the wondrous objects inside this building in labels next to them. Feel free to read some and ignore others.” The goal of this type of book is not so much to teach; it's to inspire you and give you leads to new ideas, references, readings.Barbara Tversky's recent Mind in Motion belongs to this second type. After a few chapters that sounded a bit too basic, I felt enthralled by the breadth of the book. I underlined many passages, took copious notes on the margins and on the first blank pages, and wrote down the titles of many papers and books mentioned. If you work in design, or if you're interested in the inner workings of the brain, Mind in Motion is for you —maybe not because of its content per se, but because of the many thoughts it'll inspire.
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