From Here to There
The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A wise and insightful exploration of human navigation, what it means to be lost, and how we find our way.
How is it that we can walk unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction? Come up with shortcuts on the fly, in places we’ve never traveled? The answer is the complex mental map in our brains. This feature of our cognition is easily taken for granted, but it’s also critical to our species’ evolutionary success. In From Here to There Michael Bond tells stories of the lost and found—Polynesian sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators—and surveys the science of human navigation.
Navigation skills are deeply embedded in our biology. The ability to find our way over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage, allowing us to explore the farthest regions of the planet. Wayfinding also shaped vital cognitive functions outside the realm of navigation, including abstract thinking, imagination, and memory. Bond brings a reporter’s curiosity and nose for narrative to the latest research from psychologists, neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, and anthropologists. He also turns to the people who design and expertly maneuver the world we navigate: search-and-rescue volunteers, cartographers, ordnance mappers, urban planners, and more. The result is a global expedition that furthers our understanding of human orienting in the natural and built environments.
A beguiling mix of storytelling and science, From Here to There covers the full spectrum of human navigation and spatial understanding. In an age of GPS and Google Maps, Bond urges us to exercise our evolved navigation skills and reap the surprising cognitive rewards.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science writer Bond (The Power of Others) covers the subject of navigation in this fascinating study. Among other topics, he explains why people don't get lost more often, how brains makes "cognitive maps," and how an "understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and behavior." The ability to navigate was essential to the survival of early humans, Bond notes: it allowed Homo sapiens to "cultivate extensive social networks" by traveling to other small groups. Bond offers lessons in brain physiology, explanations of how memories aid navigation, and an examination of the evidence that there's a difference between men's and women's navigational skills. But it's Bond's real-life examples reindeer herders in northwestern Siberia and the unsettling story of a skilled hiker lost on the Appalachian Trail, among others that most illuminate his points. Readers will also encounter a grim look at what dementia and Alzheimer's patients experience ("how distressing it must be to wake and recognize nothing") and learn that scientists are still undecided if overreliance on GPS is related to cognitive decline. Adventure-loving readers will be richly rewarded.
