How is it that we can walk unfamiliar streets while maintaining a sense of direction? Come up with shortcuts on the fly, in places we’ve never traveled? The answer is the complex mental map in our brains. This feature of our cognition is easily taken for granted, but it’s also critical to our species’s evolutionary success. In From Here to There, Michael Bond tells stories of the lost and found—Polynesian sailors, orienteering champions, early aviators—and surveys the science of human navigation. Navigation skills are deeply embedded in our biology. The ability to find our way over large distances in prehistoric times gave Homo sapiens an advantage, allowing us to explore the farthest regions of the planet. Wayfinding also shaped vital cognitive functions outside the realm of navigation, including abstract thinking, imagination, and memory. Bond brings a reporter’s curiosity and nose for narrative to the latest research from psychologists, neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, and anthropologists. He also turns to the people who design and expertly maneuver the world we navigate: search-and-rescue volunteers, cartographers, ordnance mappers, urban planners, and more. The result is a global expedition that furthers our understanding of human orienting in the natural and built environments. A beguiling mix of storytelling and science, From Here to There covers the full spectrum of human navigation and spatial understanding. In an age of GPS and Google Maps, Bond urges us to exercise our evolved navigation skills and reap the surprising cognitive rewards. Reviews: “The abilities that are cultivated in wayfinding—imagining things from different viewpoints, moving the mind backward and forward in time, seeing situations from other perspectives, weighing alternatives subtly against one another before making the best decisions, seeking information from others and giving it freely in return—might be the same abilities that contribute to a resilient, equitable community or polity. If this is wayfinding, then we need it now more than ever.”—Robert Macfarlane, The New York Review of Books “At the heart of this book is a detailed account of the neuroscience of navigation. It is fascinating… Ultimately, ‘we are spatial beings’ and [From Here to There] skillfully and at times movingly makes the case for how deeply that is true.”—The Sunday Times “Bond guides readers through the neurological research and anecdotal tales that show how the brain supplies the equipment upon which our species has built its wayfinding skills… He concludes that, by setting aside our GPS devices, by redesigning parts of our cities and play areas, and sometimes just by letting ourselves get lost, we can indeed revivify our ability to find our way, to the benefit of our inner world no less than the outer one.”—Lawrence Rosen, Science “[An] absorbing exploration of the intersection of neuroscience and geography.”—Brian Bethune, Maclean’s “Fascinating… Makes a compelling case that our ancient abilities to get from A to B aren’t just a matter of geography… Bond is not only interested in how we find our way, but also in how we get lost and how it affects us.”—New Statesman “We are biologically hardwired to orient ourselves in space, but a lot can go wrong with the system—which is, in some ways, even more interesting… But Bond also warns of the potential to squander our evolutionarily endowed spatial awareness through pure neglect. An era of GPS and self-driving vehicles may be convenient but also profoundly forgettable.”—Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed “One of the most fascinating books I have read for a long while… If you want to understand what rats can teach us about better-planned cities, why walking into a different room can help you find your car keys, or how your brain’s grid, border, and speed cells combine to give us a sense of direction, this book has all the answers.”—The Scotsman “An excellently researched popular science book which explains how people—including experienced travelers—get lost, and why some individuals have superior navigational skills than others.”—The Spectator “A thoroughly engaging book, essential reading for anyone who regularly spends time outdoors or wishes to better understand how our brains make sense of the spatial cues in the diverse environments which we pass through.”—Ridgeline Images “A fascinating exploration of how we learn to find our way as children and how we may risk unlearning it from lack of use thanks to GPS or from the damage of Alzheimer’s Disease. Through that arc of life, Bond explores the different ways we think about finding our way and what parts of the brain are likely to be involved… Illuminating.”—Tonstant Weader Reviews “Highly engaging… Bond makes a compelling case for why the reader should become more interested not only in avoiding becoming lost, but also in enjoying the experience of getting lost!”—Choice “A scientifically rich look at how humans manage to get around in the world.”—Kirkus Reviews “Fascinating… He explains why people don’t get lost more often, how brains makes ‘cognitive maps,’ and how an ‘understanding of the world around us affects our psychology and behavior.’ …Adventure-loving readers will be richly rewarded.”—Publishers Weekly “An important book that reminds us that navigation remains one of our most underappreciated arts.”—Tristan Gooley, author of The Natural Navigator “A fascinating excursion into the very nature of exploration. Absorbing stuff, for armchair travelers and rough ’n’ tough adventurers alike.”—Benedict Allen, explorer and presenter in Expedition Africa, Unbreakable, and Travellers’ Century “In the modern world of road signs and GPS, it is easy to ignore our natural navigational instincts. I hope this book will inspire people to explore and experiment with those abilities, for if they do, they will be in for a wonderful surprise.”—Robin Knox-Johnston, winner of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race as the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world “A fascinating and engaging look at how we navigate, from the first humans to modern-day hikers zombified by overuse of GPS. Bond has collected in one place many of the important studies on wayfinding, with riveting anecdotes of real situations where life or death hangs in the balance.”—John Huth, author of The Lost Art of Finding Our Way Table of Contents: List of Illustrations* Introduction 1. The First Wayfinders 2. Right to Roam 3. Maps in the Mind 4. Thinking Space 5. From A to B and Back Again 6. You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine 7. Natural Navigators 8. The Psychology of Lost 9. City Sense 10. Am I Here? 11. Epilogue: The End of the Road Acknowledgements Notes Selected Bibliography Index * Illustrations In the text Routes taken by early sapiens out of Africa and around the world (years before the present) Creag nan Eun, the ‘rock of the birds’, an ancient wayfinding landmark in the Grampian Mountains, Perthshire The decreasing home range of children across three generations of the same Sheffield family Map drawn by a ten-year-old boy who goes to school on his own (top) compared with one drawn by a ten-year-old boy who is driven by an adult; the bottom image shows the actual itinerary Play Street, New York City Dudchenko’s experimental set-up The four main types of spatial cell discussed in this chapter and their various roles Adrian Horner’s ‘Walking Through Doorways’ experiment Gustave Doré’s engraving of Dante’s lonely plight Tolkien’s map of Middle-earth The Santa Barbara Sense of Direction questionnaire, the standard test of navigational proficiency Mental rotation and folding, two common tests of small-scale spatial ability Harold Gatty (left) with pilot Wiley Post Shackleton’s navigator, Frank Worsley The Polynesian star compass Archie Archambault’s ‘gestural’ map of London In the plate section Claudio Aporta’s Atlas of Inuit trails The firing pattern of a typical place cell and how it relates to the position of an animal in a box The firing behaviour of typical boundary cells (BVCs) and how they influence place cells The regions in the hippocampal area of the rat’s brain that are relevant to navigation A grid cell firing pattern Hugo Spiers’ global map of national navigation performance Gerry Largay, who went missing near Redington in July 2013 while attempting to walk the length of the Appalachian Trail Section of the Appalachian Trail where Gerry Largay lost her way GPS log of rescuers’ search for Gerry Largay How Londoners imagine their city The London Underground: the unofficial, topographically accurate map, and the official (approximate) map The Four Mountains Test of spatial memory The Blackrock care home and its imagined paths for wandering: the ground-floor plan About the Author: Michael Bond is a science writer and former Senior Editor at New Scientist. His work has appeared in Nature, Aeon, Discover, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, and elsewhere. His book The Power of Others: Peer Pressure, Groupthink, and How the People Around Us Shape Everything We Do was named Popular Science Book of the Year by the British Psychology Society. |