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How about some books that aren't pop-sci / business books? I am kind of biased, since I love this area of psychology. - The Sciences of the Artificial by Simon
by mixu 15y ago
How about some books that aren't pop-sci / business books? I am kind of biased, since I love this area of psychology.
- The Sciences of the Artificial by Simon
- The Psychology of Problem Solving by Davidson & Sternberg
- The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) by Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich & Hoffman
- Minds, Brains and Computers - The Foundations of Cognitive Science: An Anthology (Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies)
- Choices, Values, and Frames by Kahneman & Tversky
The Sciences of the Artificial is a small but deep book by Herbert Simon, who is considered a key figure in founding the study of these areas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon ).
Davidson & Sternberg focuses on problem solving (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sternberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sternberg ).
The Cambridge Handbooks (there are many others) in particular are excellent as they contain classic articles in Cognitive Science and Psychology, with introductions and overviews by people who actually research this area. The one on Expertise and Expert performance is edited by K. A. Ericsson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson )
Minds, Brains and Computers is another collection of classics, from a more model-based perspective.
Finally, Kahneman and Tversky offer a more economics-centric viewpoint. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky )
If you read scientific articles in this area, you'll notice that many of these author's names will keep popping up...
- sayemm 15y ago"The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" is an awesome read, I recently bought it and started reading it. Here are some really cool excerpts from the book: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht... http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.mem.exp.htm...
- hga 15y agoAgreed; being a scientist until finances forced me into a sordid life of programming, the mental models I learned in basic science courses have been invaluable. While it wouldn't hurt you to learn (with the calculus) Newtonian mechanics and 19th century E&M, plus organic chemistry (if you have a talent for the latter), biology is filled to the brim with models that by definition work in the real world and little or no math is required to grok most of them at the general level. So I recommend a college level general biology textbook, whatever's a current replacement for the classic one by Helena Curtis. Check the 7.01x courses here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/ , two of them use the same general text. The courses say you will need as background high school level biology (that's for sure) and chemistry (you can probably cheat here, I did the first time without difficulty). Beyond that there's lots more specialized texts that cover areas you find fruitful, from, say, molecular genetics (I don't recommend general genetics (boring and complicated), but the whole DNA->RNA->proteins sorts of things, viri, etc.) to, say, animal and perhaps especially insect behavior.