Customer Reviews

Inner Navigation: Why we Get Lost in the World and How we Find Our Way

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Erik Jonsson's lively discourse on the sense of direction comprising Inner Navigation, begins with several stories from personal and colleague experience to demonstrate the idea of cognitive maps, then moves into the science realm to explain how such 'maps' work. How humans and animals get lost, navigate, and recover from being lost makes for an intriguing discussion which should interest nonscientists as much as scientists.

Inner Navigation is a compilation of unique stories told by a man who knows his way around. With each chapter, Jonsson reveals to us (in his own opinion) how our subconscious is helping us find our way. This book is written with very little neuroscience in it, but a lot of insight. The most frustrating aspect of this book is that however interesting Jonsson's explanations are, there is the annoying fact that these inner mechanisms of the mind have not been proven.

Synopsis
Jonsson begins first half of the book explaining how the human (and possibly animal) navigation system works. There is no complex neuroscience involve, simply what we are thinking in a subconscious level. We have a dead reckoning system that tells us where we are and works in combination with a direction frame that tells us the relative direction of our destination. Both of these senses are centered around a cognitive map and are updated by landmarks or other environmental cues. Johnson provides various examples to give these functions some context.
Next, Jonsson gives many examples of navigation skills that work extraordinarily well in natives who can travel miles in a barren landscape and accurately point to the direction of their camp, without hesitation. He offers an intuitive explanation as to how these miraculous orientation skills work. The majority of the book focuses on what happens when people with good navigational skills get lost. They can walk in circles or have a slip in their directional frame that turns their cognitive map 180 degrees. The many anecdotes offer support for Jonsson's theories. The book ends with how aging effects navigation.

Style and Structure
The writing style of the book is unassuming and down to earth. When reading the book, I feel like I am with Jonsson in his living room and we are having a pleasant conversation about his passion, navigation. Jonsson is a wise man with endless stories and cunning insight, sometimes he takes out a pen and paper to draw something and clarify his point.
Each chapter of the book is a separate anecdote with analysis or explanations towards the end. The separate stories are roughly sequential to the topic Jonsson is investigating; for example, all the stories about natives with extraordinary navigation skills and come after his explanation of ordinary navigational skills. The author is quite agile at linking previous conclusions back to the story he is analyzing.

Are you lost all the time?
Jonsson is quite apt at explaining concepts in layman's term and provides intriguing examples of navigation systems in play. From the beginning, it is clear that not only is the author excellent at finding his way, but also very much in touch with what goes on in his head when he is doing so. My only problem is that people who have poor spatial abilities do not have the same experiences described in the book. One who is always lost will never experience a "sudden reversal" of their direction frame because there never was a correct direction frame to begin with. Those who have a lacking spatial system will not be able to connect with Jonsson as he describes the "slippage" of his dead reckoning system. Poor navigators will just have to take for granted what Jonsson is describing, having never experienced the thrill of finding their way seamlessly.

Are you a scientific person?
Jonsson is well versed in the stories of way-finding. Thought the book, he offers many examples ranging from lab tests, personal anecdotes, scientific writing of topographers, to anecdotes of friends. The problem is that Jonsson's theories are based solely on personal experience or other anecdotes; there are very few controlled experiments. He mentions this shortcoming many times in the book, "I know of course that anecdotal proofs, especially when based on introspection, are regarded with suspicion by scientists, but I am sure that if somebody would take the trouble to design a suitable experiment to prove me wrong, I would be proven right." Jonsson's observations are not limited to analyzing stories, but he also suggests possible experiments to test the human spatial system. It might be frustrating for scientists to accept the postulating of one man, but his analyses are thorough and accessible.

Do you like lots of examples?
I am not a patient listener, and therefore not a patient reader. I feel like the examples given in the book become redundant. Most chapters, the story starts off with someone that has keen spatial ability, while traveling to a new place (either in the woods, in the city, or on a train), they suddenly get this feeling that North is South and the sun is rising in the West. They can't shake this feeling, no matter how much they reason with it or look at a map, and the disorientation always returns if they revisit. This sudden reversal is very annoying for someone who can always point to North no matter where they are and Jonsson offers an explanation for what the mind is doing. The spatial system slipped due to exhaustion or lack of environmental cues (it was cloudy and such). I tend to get bored after the third iteration.

Does the author's personality influence your opinion of the book?
Inner Navigation embodies Erik G. Jonsson. I can tell that he condensed seventy some years of knowledge, experience, passion, and insight into this book. After reading the book, I feel like I have had a long conversation with a very unique person and walked away much the wiser. Now, I very often think about cognitive maps and what my subconscious is doing as I travel. Sometimes on my journey to school, I stop and think of how my dead reckoning system is working now, and Jonsson was right, I do envision the destination in my minds eye. When I see familiar landmarks, I am aware that my brain is updating my current location in my cognitive map. It's funny how Jonsson's writings can be instantly applicable as soon as you walk out the door.

Should you read it?
The three things I did not enjoy about this book stems from very personal preferences. I am a scientist reading a book that was not written for a scientist, I am a very impatient reader and therefore loath redundancy, and my poor navigation skills prevented me from relating to Jonsson's experiences.
I would not recommend the book unless you are 1) good at navigating 2)VERY interested in how our mind navigates and 3) hate scientific or technical books.

I like to go on hikes and when I go alone I take small sized books with me to read at various way points on the trail. I bought this book because its basic idea seemed to reference some of the experiences I have had while on these hikes.

In the forward, written by noted cognitive scientist and Apple Fellow Donald Norman we find out that the author, Erik Jonsson is the kind of person who takes extension courses at the local college in order to better understand himself and the world he lives in. While taking such courses he meets Prof. Norman who encourages Jonsson to turn his essays into this book.

Jonsson begins with his personal experience while hiking or traveling. He relates that he creates cognitive maps based on feature in the environment, but more importantly he discusses confusion errors and how they create a sense of disorientation, only to be suddenly reversed when some new factor comes into account. This is something that I can relate to. I live in Toronto where "Lake" is "South", but when I visit downtown Chicago I intuitively use this rule and often get lost - unless I actively realize that Lake Michigan is to the North and consciously sort out left/right/east/west. Similarly on a loopback trail just this past weekend I experienced a sense of disorientation trying to get back to the trail head until I recognized a pair of trees as I approached them from the opposite direction and understood where I was in terms the the route and the last two minor trail crossings.

The book is rich in other examples. Jonsson looks at the literature and discussed the problems of navigating in the Sahara or of using the prevailing winds to find one's way in the Arctic. He even comes up with an interesting suggestion as to why animals and people tend to run in large circles rather than in a straight line. But perhaps the most fun example (for me) is the apparently common problem of navigating in San Francisco. If you come from some other coastal town one can use the smell of the sea to orient oneself - yet San Francisco is on a peninsual with the sea all around - a literally disorienting experience!

What is truly inspiring is the Eric Jonsson was born in 1922 and so would have been about 80 in 2002 when the book was published. We are (unfortunately) unlikely therefore to hear from him again. I find it uplifting that a man in his twilight years was able to contribute something significant to the advancement of science. All of us should be so fortunate.

I recommend this book for one's personal library. I've lent it out a couple of times and others have agreed that it contains some excellent insights. Should it ever be lost I would buy it again in an instant!

I was intrigued by the promise of this book, "Why we get lost in the world and how we find our way". Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, neither of those topics I feel were answered in the book. The book is broken down into two halves, and both of them are mega-repetitive. Let me summarize the book for you:

Part 1) "Cognitive Maps". When you are in an area for the first time, your mind generates a "cognitive map" of the area. Basically, it's a map, in your mind. Okay, now repeat that concept about 800 times, and that's the first half of the book.

Part 2) Stories about getting lost. Occasionally, people who are generally good with directions get lost, and it freaks them out. Every story told is an example of that same exact point, and there are a lot of them. Some of the stories are interesting just because they are stories; virtually none of them (past the first couple) are insightful.

In all seriousness, there are only a couple of insights brought up in the book. Instead of expanding upon them and approaching the insights from different perspectives or angles, they are repeated over and over and over, just bashing the reader over the head. And as the book is designed for non-scientists, the points are very vaguely described in a very I-just-made-this-idea-up fashion.

This book would have been much more effective as a short essay, because the content just isn't there. Probably it got turned around somewhere in France due to a few sunless days....