"In this thoroughly engaging and unusually wide-ranging book, Pfeifer and Bongard make the case for the central role of embodiment in understanding natural intelligence and building artificial intelligence. The body and nervous system are inseparable interacting constituents of an organism, and it is a mistake to think of the former passively obeying the commands of the latter: they operate in complex and subtle harmony. With great clarity and authority, the authors - both leading researchers in the area - map out the intellectual landscape, from biological intelligence to robotics to intelligent companies. This is an outstanding and very accessible book: without being overburdened with technical detail, the reader is taken deep into this fascinating and important subject."
-- Phil Husbands, Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Sussex

How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment-in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies.