1 - History and core themes

Summary

This chapter provides empirical and theoretical understanding of cognition. Today localizationism dominates neuroscience, ranging from single cell recording to functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), while anti-localizationism has a new home in dynamical systems modeling. Cognitive science encompasses both. It is sometimes said that the cognitive revolution stemmed from seizing on a new technology, the digital computer, as a metaphor for the mind. Artificial neural network represents a counterpoint to discrete computation. Symbolic architectures share a commitment to representations whose elements are symbols and operations on those representations that typically involve moving, copying, deleting, comparing, or replacing symbols. The chapter highlights just two trends: the expansion of inquiry down into the brain (cognitive neuroscience) and out into the body and world (embedded and extended cognition). The expansion outward has been more diverse, but the transitional figure clearly is James J. Gibson.