Cognition in the Wild (Bradford Books) (Paperback)

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Product Description

Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation - its computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities outside the laboratory - "in the wild." Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals. Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and computational system. Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive science - cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm) - to the navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales. Hutchins's conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition, pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by new meanings and interpretations. A Bradford Book

About the Author

Edwin Hutchins, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow, is Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; New edition edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262581469
• ISBN-13: 978-0262581462
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #304,201 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mindblowing!, June 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cognition in the Wild (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)

In early 1997, this book helped change the course of my career.

I study software engineering processes, especially software quality assurance techniques. I'd been troubled by the linear, cartesian reasoning we use in our field to justify some practices and deprecate others. What Hutchins did for me is open the door to a whole different way of thinking about cognitive processes in relation to technology. Up to the moment I was drawn to the interesting title on the shelf of a Barnes and Noble bookstore, I had only a vague idea that there are people who study how other people think and make decisions. Since then, I've discovered interesting ideas about how to organize and train software testers from lots of different fields. But it all started with Cognition in the Wild.

What's so special about Cognition in the Wild? I think there are a few factors at work:

- Hutchins style of writing is personable and readable.

- His conclusions are supported by vivid and detailed accounts from the bridge of a warship. I felt like I was there, with him.

- His ideas about naturally situated cognition are so immediately applicable to any system where a group of people are producing an intellectual product.

- His description of the paradigmatic differences between Western and Micronesian navigation practice helped me make sense of similar fundamental differences among factions in my own field.

Since I discovered this stuff, I've oriented my SQA process work squarely toward helping people think better in groups-- a social cognition focus.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fresh and valuable approach, April 15, 2002

By	Christoph Pingel - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I decided to read that book because of its frequent appearance in other highly interesting scriptures on 'situated cognition', most notably in Andy Clark's "Being There".

It's a book about the cognitive task of ship navigation, but at the same time it's a book about distributed cognition in general, including organisational learning, the question of representation, and other highly relevant topics.

The field of cognitive science is still a place of almost religious debate about turing machines, problem solvers, representation, intelligence and other theoretical concepts that have in common that they can be discussed, but usually not observed directly. One could easily gain the impression that there was some kind of uncertainty principle special to cognitive science that prevented us from watching "the mind".

It's the biggest strength and achievement of Hutchins' book that he came up with the elegant solution to watch "the mind" by observing humans deal with problems using the cognitive tools (systems of representation and 'real' tools as well) that have developed over the centuries. It's almost ironic to see how well this works. By providing further evidence that cognition is generally a distributed task that is done by interacting with cognitive tools, Hutchins proves to be a philosopher in the Wittgensteinian sense who "shows the fly the way from the fly bottle (of mentalism)."