Cognition in Geosciences

Book excerpt: Cognition in Geosciences: The Feeding Loop Between Geo-disciplines, Cognitive Sciences and Epistemology presents the basic idea that the geosciences can contribute to elucidate some unsolved problems of epistemology and cognition. This book introduces the fundamental concept of a semantic system, which comprises information plus human resources and technology. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of the fundamental processes of macro-cognition, including spatial perception, creativity, information clustering, information processing, and concept formation. This text then explains how theory and practice in geophysics can elucidate many basic aspects of high level cognition. Other chapters consider the concept of semantic entropy to provide a measure of how much information has been integrated in order to derive coherent significances. This book discusses as well the complexity of linguistic communication in the geosciences. The final chapter deals with the aesthetic experience. This book is a valuable resource for psychologists and neurologists.