‘Mind in Motion’ Review: No Ideas but in Things

How are we to think of how we think? Are our minds a separate internal world in which we manipulate mere proxies—symbols, ideas, representations—for real things? Are they software running in the brain whose connection to the real, “external” world is then a further mystery in need of explanation? Or is it rather that we are embodied all the way down, such that even our most abstract thoughts—about mathematics, say, or relations between ideas—are still creatures of our creaturely nature?

In “Mind in Motion,” the distinguished cognitive scientist Barbara Tversky makes the case that our embodiment as living, acting creatures is no mere add-on to our problem-solving cognitive capacities. Rather, she argues, the fact that we live and move and act in a physical world is fundamental, in very particular ways, to the very nature of our thought. Moving beyond theory, she draws lessons about how to design education, our environment and our problem-solving strategies to help us to live and think better.

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