Edwin Hutchins combines his background as an anthropologist and an open                  ocean racing sailor and navigator in this account of how anthropological methods can                  be combined with cognitive theory to produce a new reading of cognitive science. His                  theoretical insights are grounded in an extended analysis of ship navigation - its                  computational basis, its historical roots, its social organization, and the details                  of its implementation in actual practice aboard large ships. The result is an                  unusual interdisciplinary approach to cognition in culturally constituted activities                  outside the laboratory - "in the wild."Hutchins examines a set of phenomena that                  have fallen in the cracks between the established disciplines of psychology and                  anthropology, bringing to light a new set of relationships between culture and                  cognition. The standard view is that culture affects the cognition of individuals.                  Hutchins argues instead that cultural activity systems have cognitive properties of                  their own that are different from the cognitive properties of the individuals who                  participate in them. Each action for bringing a large naval vessel into port, for                  example, is informed by culture: the navigation team can be seen as a cognitive and                  computational system.Introducing Navy life and work on the bridge, Hutchins makes a                  clear distinction between the cognitive properties of an individual and the                  cognitive properties of a system. In striking contrast to the usual laboratory tasks                  of research in cognitive science, he applies the principal metaphor of cognitive                  science - cognition as computation (adopting David Marr's paradigm) - to the                  navigation task. After comparing modern Western navigation with the method practiced                  in Micronesia, Hutchins explores the computational and cognitive properties of                  systems that are larger than an individual. He then turns to an analysis of learning                  or change in the organization of cognitive systems at several scales.Hutchins's                  conclusion illustrates the costs of ignoring the cultural nature of cognition,                  pointing to the ways in which contemporary cognitive science can be transformed by                  new meanings and interpretations.A Bradford Book

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