Kyle Harrison
to-read
The Embodied Mind
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
- Author
- Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch
- Published
- 1991
- Pages
- 308
- Recommended
- Once
Why it’s on the list: The founding statement of enactive cognitive science — mind as something a body does in an environment rather than a computation on representations, argued alongside Buddhist analyses of experience.
Where I saw it: In the reply thread to @SpencrGreenberg’s question, “What non-fiction book taught you the most about how the world (or how humanity or society) really works?” (June 5, 2025) — a crowd-sourced list Kyle recovered by hand and saved to his Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full set of replies lives on A question for you — What non-fiction… (tweet). It was listed there as “The Embodied Mind — Varela, Thompson, Rosch”.
Connections
- Psychology — The field being reframed.
- Neuroscience — The layer the argument is fought on.
- Complexity — The systems view underneath enaction.
- A question for you — What non-fiction… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.