The Art of Way Finding (1/2)

by John Huth (Harvard University (US))

Wednesday 9 Dec 2015, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

503/1-001 - Council Chamber (CERN)

In modern era we've become accustomed to instantaneous transfer of information filtered by applications that act as a kind of guardian of information. In the realm of finding one’s way, we use GPS and devices that take us from point A to point B without giving it a second thought. Are we slowly losing the cognitive processes that our ancestors had, and at what price? I use the theme of navigation as an avenue to explore the question of what we’ve lost in the information age. Cultures, such as the Polynesians, the Vikings and the early European explorers developed navigational schema that relied on a person’s relation to the environment to find one’s way. The concept of navigation often takes on a metaphorical meaning of how one lead’s one’s life or achieves goals. Recent work on the organization of cognitive processes in the context of navigation has shown that this may be more than a simple metaphor: that navigation is a kind of template of how we organize our thoughts around future actions. Lecture 1: Mental constructs and the origins of celestial navigation Humans in particular, and mammals in general possess a cognitive map that creates a neural replica of the environment. Recent work in neuroscience has found the basis of this map. The nature of how this functions with respect to individual differences is illuminating. In particular the question of how people behave when they are lost speaks to the connection between cognitive processes and behavior. In addition, I trace the development of celestial navigation with its curious origins in the practices of astrology.

Art_of_Wayfinding_1-1.pdf

Lecturer's bio

Lecturer's book available to borrow from the CERN library

NYTimes' article on the lecturer's trip to the Marshall islands

Recording

The_Art_of_Wayfinding_2_lectures.pdf

Video preview