Mental Leaps

Analogy in Creative Thought
Erscheinungsjahr 1996
ISBN: 978-0-262-58144-8
Verlag: MIT Press

Buch, Englisch, 334 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 488 g

Reihe: Bradford Books

Analogy—recalling familiar past situations to deal with novel ones—is a mental tool that everyone uses. Analogy can provide invaluable creative insights, but it can also lead to dangerous errors. In Mental Leaps two leading cognitive scientists show how analogy works and how it can be used most effectively. Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard provide a unified, comprehensive account of the diverse operations and applications of analogy, including problem solving, decision making, explanation, and communication.Holyoak and Thagard present their own theory of analogy, considering its implications for cognitive science in general, and survey examples from many other domains. These include animal cognition, developmental and social psychology, political science, philosophy, history of science, anthropology, and literature.Understanding how we draw analogies is important for people interested in the evolution of thinking in animals and in children; for those whose focus is on either creative thinking or errors of everyday reasoning; for those concerned with how decisions are made in law, business, and politics; and for those striving to improve education. Mental Leaps covers all of this ground, emphasizing the principles that govern the use of analogy and keeping technical matters to a minimum.A Bradford Book

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holyoak, Keith J.

Thagard, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophische Logik, Argumentationstheorie

Über Autor(innen)

Holyoak, Keith J.
Keith J. Holyoak, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a psychologist and poet. He is the coauthor or editor of a number of books on cognitive psychology and has published three volumes of poetry.

Thagard, Paul
Paul Thagard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of The Cognitive Science of Science (MIT Press, 2012) and many other books.

Paul Thagard is Professor of Philosophy, Psychology, and Computer Science, and Director of the Cognitive Science Program at the University of Waterloo. He is the author of Coherence in Thought and Action (MIT Press, 2000) and Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (second edition, MIT Press, 2005).