The “mapness of maps”—how maps live in interaction with their users, and what this tells us about what they are and how they work.In a sense, maps are temporarily alive for those who design, draw, and use them. They have, for the moment, a cognitive life. To grapple with what this means—to ask how maps can be alive, and what kind of life they have—is to explore the core question of what maps are. And this is what Roberto Casati does in The Cognitive Life of Map...

"Perhaps not all the stories that follow are true. They could, however, be true, and the Reader is invited to ponder this."So begins Insurmountable Simplicities, Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi's colorful incarnation of the many philosophical conundrums that hide in the wrinkles of everyday life. Why do mirrors seem to invert left and right but not up and down? How do we know whether strawberries taste the same for everyone? Where is it written that we must observe the la...

This book scrutinizes the practice of sailing and its relation to philosophy of mind. Sailing brings about a peculiar human-artifact interaction which can lead to unexplored research paths. The idea behind this collection is that this interaction is better scrutinized by sailor scientists/philosophers to open up new possible pathways in research. Fascinating theoretical breakthroughs have been provided by observing sailing practices with the most well-known being Hutchins’ introduction in ...

In this original, wide-ranging, and endlessly thought-provoking work of popular nonfiction, a leading science writer uncovers the pervasive presence of shadows in our world.For Plato, shadows were the symbol of our limitations. For Galileo, they knocked the Earth from the center of the cosmos. They are a source of fear and a symbol of ignorance, and they loom large in art and design, mythology and folklore, physics and metaphysics, and architecture and urban planning. From shadows ...

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times).A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 YearsStories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the ...

Renowned astronomer Carl Sagan’s classic bestseller that “dives into the past, present, and future of science, dealing with the mind-staggering enormity of the cosmos in which we exist” (Associated Press)—with an Introduction by Ann Druyan and a Foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson“Sagan dazzles the mind with the miracle of our survival, framed by the stately galaxies of space.”—CosmopolitanTHE INSPIRATION FOR THE FOX MINISERIES...

One of the world’s leading philosophers offers aspiring thinkers his personal trove of mind-stretching thought experiments.Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun.Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful "imagination-extenders and focus-holders" meant to...

Nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards • In this brilliant novel that spans centuries and planets, the bestselling author of the Mars trilogy melds Galileo’s life with the colonization of the moons he discovered.At the heart of this provocative narrative that stretches from Renaissance Italy to the moons of Jupiter is the father of modern science: Galileo Galilei.To the inhabitants of the Jovian moons, Galileo is a revered figure whose actions ...

**One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others.“I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it’s also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of Magical Thinking for mathematicians.” ―Time**Deep down, your brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles. On a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a ye...

Mathematics pervades our daily lives. It is intimately involved whenever one starts a car, switches on the television, flies on a plane, forecasts the weather, books a holiday on the internet, programmes a computer, navigates heavy traffic, analyses statistical data, or seeks a cure for a disease. Our credit cards and the nation's defence secrets are kept secure by encryption methods based on prime numbers.This book presents mathematics with a human face, celebrating the achievemen...

Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered the mysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887...This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio," was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical p...

A revelatory foray into cognition and the dynamics of the mind.**“*****Surfaces and Essences *****warrants a place alongside Gödel, Escher, Bach and major recent treatments of human cognition. Analogy is not the endpoint of understanding, but its indispensable beginning.” –**ScienceAnalogy is the core of all thinking.This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer ...