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THE ELECTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
MITECS online is available as an Abstracts-only
version to the general public. Readers who have bought the book will
be given access to a fulltext version of MITECS, which has a number of
features complementary to the printed book. First, it is fully
searchable; simply type in the word or phrase desired in the box at
left. Second, the site contains dynamic links between related
articles. Third, and perhaps most useful of all, the site will house a
growing colleciton of links to other cognitive science resources on
the web, thus creating a core reference resource for the extended
community. Individual articles will provide links relevant to their
specific topic, while the introductions to the six sections will list
links to sites containing resources and further information on that
domain.
Library/Institutional Site License Available 
Introduction
MITECS: The MIT
Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences
Over the last twenty years the cognitive sciences
have contributed to a multi-disciplinary understanding of the mind and
cognition. There are currently both undergraduate and graduate fields
and programs in cognitive science and cognitive studies at many major
research universities and teaching colleges. Although local pockets of
integration and paradigm development exist, one of the hallmarks of
this research (and one of its exciting features) has been its
methodological and theoretical diversity. There are currently several
excellent textbooks in the field (e.g., Michael Posner's Foundations of Cognitive
Science , MIT Press, 1989, and Neil Stillings et al.'s
Cognitive
Science: An Introduction , 2nd ed., MIT Press, 1995), as well
as a small number of wide-ranging anthologies (e.g., Alvin Goldman's
Readings in
Philosophy and Cognitive Science , MIT Press, 1993, and
Dan Osherson's 4-volume An Invitation to
Cognitive Science , 2nd ed., MIT Press, 1995). And the
last few years have seen the publication of two substantial reference
volumes covering major areas of cognitive science, Michael Gazzaniga's
The Cognitive
Neurosciences (MIT Press, 1995) and Michael Arbib's
The Handbook of
Brain Theory and Neural Networks (MIT Press, 1995).
Missing until now, however, was a comprehensive reference work
that could serve researchers working in different traditions across
a variety of fields in cognitive science. The MIT Encyclopedia of
the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) fills this niche; it is a landmark,
comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and
theoretical diversity of the cognitive sciences.
At the core of MITECS are 471 concise articles, from
ACQUISITION, FORMAL THEORIES OF and ADAPTATION AND ADAPTATIONISM to
WUNDT and X-BAR THEORY. Each article was written by a leading
researcher on the topic, and provides an accessible introduction to
an important concept in the sciences of cognition. Each also
provides a list of references and suggestions for further readings
for the interested reader to learn more about the latest reasearch
on the topic. The extensive bibliography that these references
collectively constitute makes up one of the outstanding
contributions of MITECS.
One novel feature of MITECS among reference works with this type
of structure is longer, introductory essays corresponding to each
of the six sections that MITECS is divided into. Written by the
corresponding advisory editors, each introduction provides the
reader with some overall idea of the contribution of a particular
discipline to the cognitive sciences. These essays also serve to
direct the reader to some of the key entries associated with the
contributing field.
The six sections are the five areas that have traditionally
formed the core of the cognitive sciences, plus an additional one:
This last area is another novel feature of
MITECS; the corresponding introductory essay treats the relationships
between culture, cognition, and evolution, representing a step toward
the synthesis of the diverse areas of cognitive science that MITECS
seeks to unite.
EDITORIAL ORGANIZATION
Robert A. Wilson
(Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Cognitive
Science Group at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign) and
Frank Keil
(Professor of Psychology, Yale University) are the general editors for
the project. A board of 8 advisory editors assisted them in selecting
articles and contributors for the volume, and in addition authored the
introductory essays. The advisory editors are:
Thomas D. Albright
(Salk Institute, UCSD),
Gennaro Chierchia
(University of Milan),
Lawrence Hirschfeld
(University of Michigan),
Keith J. Holyoak
(UCLA),
Michael I. Jordan
(UC Berkeley),
Helen J. Neville
(University of Oregon),
Stuart Russell
(UC Berkeley),
and
Dan Sperber
(CNRS, Paris).
The articles in MITECS can be viewed by
section, with each section's corresponding introduction.
The principal MIT Press contact for this
project is:
Tom Stone (tstone@mit.edu )
The MIT Press
Five Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
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