The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul

THE EXTENDED MIND by Annie Murphy Paul is another book about thinking, more specifically about how we should leverage “the feelings and movements of our bodies; the physical spaces in which we learn and work; and the other minds with which we interact – our classmates, colleagues, teachers, supervisors, friends.” Paul’s exploration of “The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain” is one which I wish we had had available prior to the pandemic and the necessity of remote learning.  Clearly, that time could have had different outcomes if we had made proactive efforts to encourage students to move more, to be conscious of their study spaces, and to be more socially engaged in Zoom classes. Paul herself refers to the “gentle push in a more productive direction that this book seeks to offer its readers” and shares her own insights as well as quotes from a range of philosophers and researchers (Daniel Kahneman among them). Plus, she references numerous studies; in fact, almost a third of the book is devoted to notes and index. One key point raised by Paul is how mindful meditation helps enhance awareness of body sensations and she describes conducting a body scan, an exercise we have done with advisory and health students. In subsequent chapters, she describes the value of contact with nature, but of greatest interest to me were several other possible applications for students (e.g., using gestures to help remember second language vocabulary) and group work (e.g., the “active learning” advocated by Carl Wieman at Stanford). Paul notes that “we think best when we think socially” and she extols the value of social interaction to generate hypotheses, design experiments, and analyze data. In addition to promoting a Scout Mindset next year, THE EXTENDED MIND reinforced my desire to provide greater opportunities for our researchers to teach their peers about the topic they are exploring. As Paul says, “our ability to think outside the brain has been left almost entirely uneducated and undeveloped.”