Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way - Softcover

Bond, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509841091 ISBN 13: 9781509841097

Verlag: Picador, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

'Beautifully written and researched.' - Isabella Tree, author of Wilding

The physical world is infinitely complex, yet most of us are able to find our way around it. We can walk through unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction, take shortcuts along paths we have never used and remember for many years places we have visited only once. These are remarkable achievements.

In Wayfinding, Michael Bond explores how we do it: how our brains make the ‘cognitive maps’ that keep us orientated, even in places that we don’t know. He considers how we relate to places, and asks how our understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and behaviour.

The way we think about physical space has been crucial to our evolution: the ability to navigate over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage over the rest of the human family. Children are instinctive explorers, developing a spatial understanding as they roam. And yet today few of us make use of the wayfaring skills that we inherited from our nomadic ancestors. Most of us have little idea what we may be losing.

Bond seeks an answer to the question of why some of us are so much better at finding our way than others. He also tackles the controversial subject of sex differences in navigation, and finally tries to understand why being lost can be such a devastating psychological experience.

For readers of writers as different as Robert Macfarlane and Oliver Sacks, Wayfinding is a book that can change our sense of ourselves.

'A fascinating excursion into the very nature of exploration. Absorbing stuff.' – explorer Benedict Allen

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Bond, author of Animate, is a writer specializing in human behaviour and a former editor and reporter at New Scientist. He won a British Psychological Society Book Award for The Power of Others, while his acclaimed Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way has been translated into five languages.

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‘Navigation, Bond argues, is part of the essence of our mental being . . . At the heart of this book is a detailed account of the neuroscience of navigation . . . It is fascinating . . . Ultimately, “we are spatial beings” and Wayfinding skilfully and at times movingly makes the case for how deeply that is true. If we do not know where we are, it seems we cannot know who we are either.’ Sunday Times
‘In this fascinating book about our gift for what Michael Bond calls wayfinding, he makes a compelling case that our ancient abilities to get from A to B aren’t just a matter of geography . . . Most affecting.’ Mark Cocker, New Statesman
‘A fascinating, incisive account of how the human brain evolved to keep us orientated . . . Beautifully written and researched.’ Isabella Tree
‘This rewarding meditation . . . astonishes as it ranges from the neuroscience of meandering rats to the deleterious effects of satellite navigation.’ Nature

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Picador
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1509841091
• ISBN 13: 9781509841097
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales; sales@vanditmar.nl; ; Hondiuslaan 44; Utrecht; 3528 AB; Niederlande