Experts from diverse fields, including artificial life, cognitive science, economics, developmental and evolutionary biology, and the arts, discuss modularity.Modularity--the attempt to understand systems as integrations of partially independent and interacting units--is today a dominant theme in the life sciences, cognitive science, and computer science. The concept goes back at least implicit…
"A Bradford book."This study synthesizes current information from the various fields of cognitive science in support of a new and exciting theory of mind. Most psychologists study horizontal processes like memory and information flow; Fodor postulates a vertical and modular psychological organization underlying biologically coherent behaviors. This view of mental architecture is consistent with…
"A Bradford book."Taking a stand midway between Piaget's constructivism and Fodor's nativism, Annette Karmiloff-Smith offers an exciting new theory of developmental change that embraces both approaches. She shows how each can enrich the other and how both are necessary to a fundamental theory of human cognition.Karmiloff-Smith shifts the focus from what cognitive science can offer the study of …