MIT CogNet, The Brain Sciences ConnectionFrom the MIT Press, Link to Online Catalog
SPARC Communities
Subscriber : Stanford University Libraries » LOG IN

space

Powered By Google 
Advanced Search

Selected Title Details  
May 2008
ISBN 0262012448
208 pp.
8 illus.
BUY THE BOOK
Scenario Visualization
Robert Arp

In order to solve problems, humans are able to synthesize apparently unrelated concepts, take advantage of serendipitous opportunities, hypothesize, invent, and engage in other similarly abstract and creative activities, primarily through the use of their visual systems. In Scenario Visualization, Robert Arp offers an evolutionary account of the unique human ability to solve nonroutine vision-related problems. He argues that by the close of the Pleistocene epoch, humans evolved a conscious creative problem-solving capacity, which he terms scenario visualization, that enabled them to outlive other hominid species and populate the planet. Arp shows that the evidence for scenario visualization - by which images are selected, integrated, and then transformed and projected into visual scenarios - can be found in the kinds of complex tools our hominid ancestors invented in order to survive in the ever-changing environments of the Pleistocene world.

Table of Contents
 Contents
 Acknowledgements
 Introduction: Routine Problem Solving versus Nonroutine Creative Problem Solving
1 Organisms and Hierarchical Organization
2 Emergence and Function
3 The Visual System
4 The Evolution of the Visual System and Scenario Visualization
5 Scenario Visualization, Creative Problem Solving, and Evolutionary Psychology
 References
 Index
 
Options
Related Topics
Neuroscience


© 2010 The MIT Press
MIT Logo