From Brain Bound to our Extended Minds

The Future of Smart

Today’s episode invites us to explore the conceptions of our brains that dominate so much of our thinking about learning and education. In her research, Annie has found that western culture is extremely brain bound, which means that we overvalue the role of thinking in our own experience. We think of the brain as a computer, a tool. As we’ll learn in later episodes of this podcast, this bias has deep historical roots in western culture. It helps explain how we ended up with our current ideas about what school is, what learning is, and what it means to be smart. But to understand all this, we first need to know how our brains work in the world, which is where Annie comes in.

RELEVANT LINKS

There’s not one single way of being smart - Annie Murphy Paul's notes from "The Extended Mind"

Annie's Book

RSA Animate: The Divided Brain - Explore more of Iain McGilchrist's work on our brain hemispheres and how they attend to the world.

If you are new to this podcast, we suggest listening to episodes 2-4 to build a foundation for the concepts and principles we'll keep returning to on the Future of Smart.

E.2 - From Brain Bound to Our Extended Minds

E.3 - A Return Journey to Wisdom

E.4 - Using Science to Imagine a New Purpose and Design for Education with Dr. Pamela Cantor