Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought

An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement not language is the foundation of thoughtWhen 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.

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (May 21 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 046509306X

ISBN-13: 978-0465093069

Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds