Cognition in the Wild Ch. 2: "Navigation as Computation"

Theme of the reading
The second part of chapter two describes navigation in a very different cultural tradition, that of the Micronesians who live along the equator in the western reaches of the Pacific ocean. This description helps to highlight several insights about cognition and culture. It shows how different cultures can approach the same computational problem using very different represenational assumptions. It shows how a culture's represenational assumptions (units and frames of reference) can seem so essential that it is difficult to imagine the task being done with different representational assumptions. This problem led European researchers to false conclusions about the Micronesian system. The two systems are similar at the computational level yet they are very different at the representational level of description.

The last part of the chapter (pp. 93 - 116) describes the historical changes in the Western navigation tradition that led to the system we use today. This section anticipates many of the themes that will be addressed later in the course under the theme " Distribution of cognitive processes through time."

Interesting link
The web page of the Polynesian Voyaging Society contains l ots of information about non-instrumental navigation in the Pacific. Check out the latest replica voyage.

Orienting questions and issues to keep in mind:

How does the Micronesian system of navigation represent course and distance traveled?
How are the basic navigational constraints expressed in this system?