Being There - by Andy Clark (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Brain, body, and world are united in a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational activity. In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and techniques needed to make sense of the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. Clark brings together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant psychology, and artificial intelligence. He addresses a broad range of adaptive behaviors, from cockroach locomotion to the role of linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought.

From the Back Cover

The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.

Review Quotes

Clark's book is an excellent introduction to this new movement in cognitive science. It is clear, wide ranging, well informed, and full of fascinating examples. And, unusually, it manages to be both eminently sensible and highly provocative.--Margaret A. Boden, Nature--

About the Author

Andy Clark is Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex.