From the influential author of Dynamics in Action, how the concepts of constraints provide a way to rethink relationships, opening the way to intentional, meaningful causation. Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrerochallenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emerge…
A provocative look at the unconscious mind that challenges contemporary perceptions and exposes the indefensible science that fostered them. How much of a role does the unconscious play in our decision making? In Open Minded: Searching for Truth about the Unconscious Mind, authors Ben R. Newell and David R. Shanks would argue: not very much. Behavioral science and public discourse have place…
A deep dive into the social mind-brain, examining the processes we share with other social animals and illuminating those that are uniquely human. What Makes Us Social? is a scholarly but accessible exploration of the underlying processes that make humans the most social species on the planet. Chris and Uta Frith, pioneers in the field of cognitive neuroscience, review the many forms of soci…
A provocative investigation of the future of photography and human perception in the age of AI. We are constantly photographing and being photographed while feeding machine learning databases with our data, which in turn is used to generate new images. Analyzing the transformation of photography by computation—and the transformation of human perception by algorithmically driven images, fro…
An overview of the mechanisms and evolution of spatial cognition, integrating evidence from psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and computational geometry. Understanding how we deal with space requires input from many fields, including ethology, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, geography, and spatial information theory. In From Geometry to Behavior, cognitiv…
An engaging and insightful journey into human consciousness. What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more t…
A fascinating interdisciplinary approach to how everyday Western music works, and why the tones, melodies, and chords combine as they do. Despite the cultural diversity of our globalized world, most Western music is still structured around major and minor scales and chords. Countless thinkers and scientists of the past have struggled to explain the nature and origin of musical structures. In…
A leading innovation scholar explains the growing phenomenon and impact of free innovation, in which innovations developed by consumers and given away “for free.” In this book, Eric von Hippel, author of the influential Democratizing Innovation, integrates new theory and research findings into the framework of a “free innovation paradigm.” Free innovation, as he defines it, involves …
An interdisciplinary analysis of human interactions with mercury through history that sheds light on efforts to promote and achieve sustainability. In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin examine sustainability through analyzing human interactions with mercury over thousands of years. They explore how people have made beneficial use of this volatile element, how they have be…
When ungroovy scientists did groovy science: how non-activist scientists and engineers adapted their work to a rapidly changing social and political landscape. In The Squares, Cyrus Mody shows how, between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, some scientists and engineers who did not consider themselves activists, New Leftists, or members of the counterculture accommodated their work to the r…