Coming to our senses : perceiving complexity to avoid catastrophes / Viki McCabe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCabe, Viki, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Perception.

Perception (Philosophy).

Reality.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

xii, 273 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Contents:

Part 1 On the Nature of Information

1 The Structure of Reality 21

Theory Promotes Disaster 21

The Origins and Nature of Structural Information 27

The USS Missouri: Saved by Structural Information 30

A Contrasting View: Signal Detection Theory 33

Our Complex Perceptual Systems and Structural Information: J. J. Gibson's View 35

Complex Systems and Structural Information 40

Seeing What We Believe: How the Mind Hijacks the Senses 43

2 Perceiving Structure 45

Recognition and Structural Information 48

Altering Facial Proportions Disrupts Recognition 49

Caregiving by Configuration 50

Facial Structure 51

Face Blindness and Super-Recognizers 54

What's Wrong With Eyewitness Testimony? 55

Why Features Fail as Evidence 60

Our Atomistic Worldview Leads Us Astray 64

3 Perceiving Dynamics 66

Dynamic Structural Information 68

The Oscillating Figure Eight Reveals Identity 74

Do We Have Memories of Structural Information? 75

Our Brain-World Interface 76

Navigation Grids and Place Cells 78

Walking in Other People s Moccasins 80

Experiencing Empathy 82

4 Restructuring Reality 85

Clouded Vision 85

Controlling Nature: Eliminating Tributaries and Meanders 88

The Whole Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts 91

Restoring a Meander 93

Structural Pattern Generators and Natural Structures 94

Branching 95

Spirals 96

Meanders 99

Six-Sided Symmetry 100

5 Reality s Geometry 102

Bacteria's Quorum Sensing 103

Immune Cells Communicate Using Structural Configurations 104

Volatile Compounds Send Structured Aromatic Messages 106

Animal-Environment Reciprocities 107

Frogs 107

Crows 108

The Hawk-Goose Configuration 108

Mating, Foraging, and Escaping 109

Indigo Bunting Migration 110

Human-Environment Affordances 111

Perceiving and Representing Structural Information 113

Benoit Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry 115

Our Fractal Brain 118

6 Experts' Experts 121

"Repetitions Without Repetition" 122

Minimally Essential Information 124

Experts' Experts Rely on Structural Information 125

Diagnosing Injuries: Reading the Dynamics of Deviation 127

Curing Pain in the Brain: How the Brain Restructures Reality 130

Diagnosing Cancer: Pathology and Structural Information 133

Condensing the Structure of Reality: The Japanese Garden 135

Reading the Seascape: Sea Gypsies Survive a Tsunami 138

Translating Structure Into Words 141

Part 2 Manufactured Information and the Biased Brain

7 Mind Over Matter: Theories as Mental Fall-out 145

Where Do Theories Come From? 148

Theories and the Brain 152

Hijacking the Interpreter 153

Two Widely Accepted Unsubstantiated Theories That Threaten Our Survival 159

How to Judge a Theory 162

8 Are Scientific Theories Different? 164

Alfred Wegener and the Theory of Continental Drift 166

Barbara McClintock and Her Perception of Jumping Genes 169

How Science Can Progress by Extending Our Eyes 174

Theories and Complexity 176

9 Are Economic Theories Different? 181

Replacing Reality: The Evolution of the Derivative 186

Seeing the Structural Information That Reveals the Market 190

The Sad Saga of Brooksley Born and the American Taxpayer 192

An Alternate Theory of the Economy 202

10 Complexity, Components, and Monocultures 204

Death by Financial Concept 204

Viral Components and Complex Systems 206

Turning Sustainable Complexity Into Unsustainable Simplicity 209

Food Economies as Complex Systems 214

A Sustainable Complex System: Polyface Family Farm 215

From Complexity to Simplicity: Whole Grains to Empty Calories 220

From Nutritional Simplicity to Obesity 222.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199988587

0199988587

OCLC:

852488510