If you think you use mental 'pictures' to reason, this book puts you straight. Images impede reasoning. The book uses experiments, brain imaging, and the intuitions of a Nobel prize-winning novelist to show that what you rely on are spatial representations. Every psychologist's bookshelves should make space for Space to Reason.
Philip Johnson-Laird, Stuart Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, Princeton University
Markus Knauff presents and analyzes core questions of human thinking in a clear and enjoyable way. He discusses highly controversial issues of cognitive science and points out implications from research of several disciplines that establish a solid basis for future research. This book is a must for everyone interested in cognitive science, the imagery debate, spatial cognition, and human reasoning.
Christian Freksa, Cognitive Systems, University of Bremen
Markus Knauff marshals an artful combination of behavioral, neural, and computational evidence to analyze the interactions of visual and spatial representations in reasoning. This novel contribution will be interesting to anyone concerned with mental imagery or spatial cognition.
Kenneth Forbus, Northwestern University
Markus Knauff provides clear evidence and an engaging, scholarly argument that spatial reasoning is at the center of human thought in this excellent, comprehensive, and original contribution to our understanding of spatial imagination and the rational mind.
Ruth Byrne, Professor of Cognitive Science, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin
Space to Reason offers a creative and compelling analysis of the role of spatial representations in human reasoning, one that is based on scientific evidence and grounded in research-based theory. Within the context of human reason tasks, Markus Knauff builds the case for a distinction between visual images (which can impede reasoning) and spatial representations (which can aid reasoning). If you are interested in understanding how people use their imagination in reasoning, this book belongs on your bookshelf.
Richard E. Mayer, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Multimedia Learning: Second Edition
The strength of this book is that it provides substantial converging evidence...in Knauff's particular domain of research....I was particularly impressed with the computational model discusses in chapter seven....I hope that Markus Knauff eventually writes a sequel to Space to Reason.
Review of Metaphysics
The main strength of Knauff's research program lies in its plurality of methodologies. This results in a coherent picture of the cognitive mechanisms underlying relational reasoning... the book provides a wealth of empirical and theoretical contributions... Space to Reason is certainly going to become the key reference on relational reasoning for the years to come.
Künstliche Intelligenz
