Viki McCabe

Coming to Our Senses

Perceiving Complexity to Avoid Catastrophes

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book challenges the theory that our perceptions are unreliable, shows that information reflects the structural organization of the complex systems that constitute our world, and documents that the theories we construct detach us from reality and lead us astray.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Prairie Wind Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 286
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. März 2014
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 241mm x 159mm x 30mm
• Gewicht: 514g
• ISBN-13: 9780199988587
• ISBN-10: 0199988587
• Artikelnr.: 39373948

Autorenporträt

Visiting Scholar, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

Inhaltsangabe

* INTRODUCTION
* PART 1: THE NATURE OF INFORMATION
* CHAPTER 1 THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY
* Theory overrides structure and promotes disaster: The Vincennes
incident
* The Origins and Nature of Structural Information
* Saved by Structural Information
* Our Complex Perceptual Systems: J.J. Gibson's Views
* An Alternate View: Signal Detection Theory
* Complexity and Structural Information
* Seeing What We Believe: How the Mind Hijacks the Senses
* The Source of Common Sense: Our Senses
* CHAPTER 2 PERCEIVING STRUCTURE
* Recognition and Structural Information
* Altering Facial Proportions Alters Structure and Disrupts Recognition
* Care-giving by Configuration
* Facial Structure
* Face Blindness and Super-Recognizers
* What's Wrong with Eyewitness Testimony: Features vs. Structure
* Why Features Fail as Evidence
* Our Atomistic Worldview Leads Us Astray
* CHAPTER 3 STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS
* Catching a Child Molester
* Dynamic Spatial Information
* Oscillating Figure Eight Reveals Identity
* Do We Have Memories of Structural Information?
* Our Brain-World Interface
* Navigation Grids and Space Cells
* Walking in Other People's Moccasins
* Reciprocating Structures: Experiencing Empathy
* CHAPTER 4 RESTRUCTURING REALITY
* Clouded Vision: No-Outlet Levees Destroy Delta Ecosystem
* Controlling Nature: Eliminating Natural Structure--Tributaries and
Meanders
* The Whole is More Than the Sum of its Parts
* Restoring a Meander
* Structural Pattern Generators and Natural Structures
* Branching
* Spirals
* Meanders
* Hexagons
* CHAPTER 5 REALITY'S GEOMETRY
* The Good Friday Alaska Earthquake: The Real World Reinstates Itself
* Bacteria's Quorum Sensing
* Immune Cells Communicate Using Structural Configurations
* Volatile Compounds Send Aromatic Messages
* Animal Environment Reciprocities
* Frogs
* Crows
* Geese
* Mating, Foraging, Escaping
* Migrating Through Space
* Human-Environmental Affordances
* Acquiring and Representing Structural Information
* Benoit Mandelbrot's Fractals
* Our Fractal Brain
* CHAPTER 6 EXPERTS' EXPERTS
* Repetitions without Repetition
* Minimally Essential Spatial Information
* Experts' Experts Rely on Structural Information
* Diagnosing Injuries: Reading the Dynamics of Movement Deviations
* Curing Pain in the Brain: How the Brain Can Restructure Reality
* Diagnosing cancer: Pathology and Structural Information
* Condensing the Structure of Reality: The Japanese Garden
* Reading the Seascape: Sea Gypsies Survive a Tsunami
* Translating the Structure of Reality into Words
* PART TWO: MANUFACTURED INFORMATION AND THE BIASED BRAIN
* CHAPTER 7 MIND OVER MATTER: Theories and Other Mental Fallout
* Flawed Theory Disfigures Cancer Patients
* Where do Theories Come from?
* Theories and the Brain
* Hijacking the Interpreter
* Unacknowledged Theories that Threaten our Survival
* How to Judge a Theory
* CHAPTER 8 ARE SCIENTIFIC THEORIES DIFFERENT?
* Trial by Theory: Galileo and the Holy Office of the Inquisition
* Alfred Wegener and the Theory of Continental Drift
* Barbara McClintock and the Theory of Jumping Genes
* How Science can Progress by Extending Our Eyes
* Theories and Complexity
* CHAPTER 9 ARE ECONOMIC THEORIES DIFFERENT?
* Proctor and Gamble and Gibson Greeting Cards v. Bankers Trust
* Replacing Reality: The Evolution of the Derivative
* Seeing the Structural Information that Specifies the Market
* The Sad Saga of Brooksley Born
* An Alternative Theory of the Economy
* CHAPTER 10 COMPLEXITY, COMPONENTS, AND MENTAL CONCEPTS
* Death by Financial Concept
* Viral Components and Complex Systems
* Agribusiness: Turning Sustainable Complexity into Unsustainable
Simplicity
* A Sustainable Complex System: The Family Farm
* From Complexity to Simplicity: From Whole Grains to Empty Calories
* From Nutritional Simplicity To Obesity
* EPILOGUE: A Cautionary Tale