Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World By M. R. O'Connor

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Kindle Store,Kindle eBooks,Politics & Social Sciences Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World M. R. O'Connor

4,4

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At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human."A marvel of storytelling." —Kirkus (Starred Review) In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place."O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews

At this time of writing, The Ebook Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World has garnered 8 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Ebook is Good TO READ!

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I was excited to pick this one up; it promised to tie navigation to what makes us human and explain it anthropologically and neurologically. Unfortunately, it lacks a clear narrative voice, bouncing around from one idea to another (often with long asides) without ever really tying things together. It reads more like an undergraduate paper – O’Connor obviously read a lot of scholarly papers and interviewed some experts in the field, but she goes from quote to quote rapidly (“he said this… she said that… and then so-and-so added…”) without pausing for synthesis (or even adequately introducing many of the cited sources). A few of the chapters just feel like they are there to boost the word count. In short, while she does present a lot of information, she adds nothing new to the conversation. Toward the end of the book, she tries to pull a couple of themes out, but they misfire. The first is that traditional wayfinding practices are the key to combatting global climate change. Besides the very general point that we should pay more attention to our surroundings and environment, I found myself utterly confused by this assertion. She failed completely to tie the task-oriented navigation practices she described to actionable ideas to practically combat climate change. Unless she is suggesting we replace container ships with hand-made canoes (which she called the “key.” Why? How?). The general point is one well taken, but not one that justifies slogging through an entire book. The other theme is that technology (specifically things like self-driving cars and GPS) threatens our humanity by short-circuiting our hippocampus. I found it a little humorous that she cited a quote from 1910 to back up her alarmist views on the subject – proving that there has always been someone convinced technology would rob us of our humanity. She did not discuss the use of modern navigation aids very well, stating that people just took the shortest route, A to B, without consideration of what lies in between. I am sure there are people that do that. They are probably the same folks that would go directly from A to B without a route study with a compass too. Instead of an anti-technology rant, I would really have loved to see O’Connor discuss healthy ways we can use these technologies in ways that boosts our spatial reasoning (or perhaps adapt or develop technologies to do so). I saw an article the other day about how Alzheimer’s patients are using virtual reality to access memories by simulating space or place associated with them. It seems like a positive use of technology to stimulate the hippocampus. Maybe it’s not all bad? Finally, I think O’Connor’s discussion of traditional wayfinding practices suffers from a bias that idealizes indigenous methods and cultures. She presents a lot of anecdotal information, but she has very little systematic study of these practices to look at success versus failure rates, attrition rates (travelers that did not make it), efficiencies, safety factors, etc. Most of the anthropological studies she cites were entirely anecdotal or had a dozen or so participants and seemed to project the navigation skills of a few individuals across an entire people. Some of the information she provides is very interesting, but I was ultimately frustrated by the lack of systemic analysis or synthesis leading to a point. Instead, it felt like we were walking in circles…

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