Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

Clark's book is an excellent introduction to this new movement in cognitive science. It is clear, wide ranging, well informed, and full of fascinating examples. And, unusually, it manages to be both eminently sensible and highly provocative.

When people think about thinking, they often think of Rodin's Thinker: an individual in quiet contemplation. Even cognitive scientists fall into this trap; too often, they view thinking as an isolated mental function. This book provides a much richer and more accurate image. Clark's Thinker thinks through action and interaction with the environment, combining brain with body and world.

The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.