On Looking

A Walker's Guide to the Art of Observation

Alexandra Horowitz

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781439191279
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia cognitiva e cognizione

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog, this "elegant and entertaining" ( The Boston Globe ) explanation of how humans perceive their environments "does more than open our eyes...opens our hearts and minds, too, gently awakening us to a world—in fact, many worlds—we've been missing" ( USA TODAY ). Alexandra Horowitz shows us how to see the spectacle of the ordinary—to practice, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, "the observation of trifles." Structured around a series of eleven walks the author takes, mostly in her Manhattan neighborhood, On Looking features experts on a diverse range of subjects, including an urban sociologist, the well-known artist Maira Kalman, a geologist, a physician, and a sound designer. Horowitz also walks with a child and a dog to see the world as they perceive it. What they see, how they see it, and why most of us do not see the same things reveal the startling power of human attention and the cognitive aspects of what it means to be an expert observer.Page by page, Horowitz shows how much more there is to see—if only we would really look. Trained as a cognitive scientist, she discovers a feast of fascinating detail, all explained with her generous humor and self-deprecating tone. So turn off the phone and other electronic devices and be in the real world—where strangers communicate by geometry as they walk toward one another, where sounds reveal shadows, where posture can display humility, and the underside of a leaf unveils a Lilliputian universe—where, indeed, there are worlds within worlds within worlds.

Index

aboriginal sensible muchness, 26

acclimation, 30–31, 110

Adobe Garamond, 57

adrenaline, 84, 249

Africa, 135

algae, 106, 134

alignment in walking, 146, 150, 173

American Museum of Natural History, 41–42

ampersands, 63, 68–69

amygdala, 179–80, 234n

anaerobic infections, 162, 176, 178

animals:

attraction and, 99, 104, 111, 126, 134, 146

avoidance and, 110, 117 127, 129, 131–32, 145–46, 150, 225

search image in, 107–9, 124

sensory world of, 77

swarms of, 146, 150–51

animate city, 15

animism, 37–39

animistic error, 38

antidepressants, 151

ants, 94, 97, 103, 105, 145–46

aphids, 97, 99–100, 104

arms, 198, 200

swinging of, 163, 173, 256, 264

Art Deco, 63

Arthropoda, 94

articulation of sound, 222

artificial intelligence, 146

Art Moderne, 63

Art Nouveau, 70–71

asphalt, 6, 27, 42, 46, 156, 220–21, 238, 251n–52n, 261

attention, 1–4, 9–15, 65, 126, 146, 150, 160, 188n

absence of, 2–3, 9, 14, 24, 45,

123–24, 181, 189, 265

cell phones and, 206–7

children and, 26, 31, 35–36, 38, 258

dogs and, 241, 246–47, 251–52, 263

evolution and development of, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Amateur Eyes
• Inanimate City: The Material of The Landscape
• Animate City: Everything that won’t Stand Still
• Sensory City: Things that Hum, Smell, or Vibrate
• Photographs
• Q&A with Alexandra Horowitz
• Sources
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Index
• Copyright