My personal award for the book of the year I happily confer to "The Extended Mind: "the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain" by Annie Murphy Paul 🎊! While probably paving the bridge for the rational and skeptical ones, for me it was a proof of the thoughts and feelings I already seemed to have. The perception of the world with your whole body, multi-sensual synesthetic thinking, our innate intuition, "gut feeling", are parameters which are hard to measure from the first sight. Still, the research and analysis of Annie Murphy Paul shows studies and cases, how disruptive approaches on our traditional western system, specifically working processes, education, living, moving etc can improve the quality of thinking on the way to mindful and more human way of being.
"For one thing: thought happens not only inside the skull but out in the world, too; it's an act of continuous assembly and reassembly that draws on resources external to the brain. For another: the kinds of materials available to "think with" affect the nature and the quality of the thought that can be produced. And last: the capacity to think well – that is to be intelligent – is not a fixed property of the individual but rather a shifting state that is depending on access to extra-neural resources and knowledge o how to use them.
This is admittedly, a radically new way of thinking about thinking. It may not feel easy or natural to adopt. But a growing mass of evidence generated within several scientific disciplines suggests it's a much more accurate rendering of how human cognition actually works. Moreover, it's a gratifyingly generative conceptualization, because it offers so many practical opportunities for improving how well we think. It has arrived just in time. Recasting our model of how the mind functions has lately become an urgent necessity, as we find ourselves increasingly squeezed by two opposite forces: we need ever more to think outside the brain, even as we have become ever more stubbornly committed to the brainbound approach".
For me this book is a source of inspiration, how our naturally concepted body and mind are predestined to feel and perceive the world beyond the rules of western capitalistic society of the past. It strongly concerns my professional doing, explaining for example, why personal taste in designing is actually the sign of our need for a specific feeling: like safety, predictability, sense of belonging.
Spatial design is the way how we can provide people with the environments that make them feel secure, free, inspired and open the way of thinking outside the brain. Spaces are a medium that affects people on each level of sense. Spaces have potential to communicate the transformation to the sustainable future, new approaches, values and ideas directly to the center of human cognition, more than any other way of communication can do it. This is why spatial design is so important now, when the world need human empathy so much.
Thank you, Raphael Gielgen, for this priceless recommendation. I am in the middle of the book, and I am always open to more exchange and inspiration with visionary thoughts and concepts. Everything is connected – so let's stay in contact and inspire each other. I strongly believe that thinking and acting connected to our bodies and our environments is the way to feel what is right, what is beneficial for the humanity and how we can live in a better world, aware to our planet and each other.