Colchester, United Kingdom

Cognitive Science

Bachelor's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: humanities
Qualification: BSc
Kind of studies: full-time studies
Bachelor of Science (BSc)
University website: www.essex.ac.uk
Cognitive Science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."
Science
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science
We say that the string is 'random' if there is no other representation of the string which is shorter than itself. But we will say that it is 'non-random' if there does exist such an abbreviated representation. ... In general, the shorter the possible representation... the less random... On this view we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions. ... It is simplest to think of mathematics as the catalogue of all possible patterns. ... When viewed in this way, it is inevitable that the world is described by mathematics. ...In many ways the search for a Theory of Everything is a manifestation of a faith that this compression goes all the way down to the bedrock of reality...
John D. Barrow, New Theories of Everything (2007).
Science
Too often, this concern for the big picture is simply obscurantist and is put forward by people who prefer vagueness and mystery to (partial) answers. Vagueness is at times necessary and mystery is never in short supply, but I don’t think they’re anything to worship. Genuine science and mathematical precision are more intriguing than are the “facts” published in supermarket tabloids or a romantic innumeracy which fosters credulity, stunts skepticism, and dulls one to real imponderables.
John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), pp. 126-127
Science
Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone.
Charles Darwin, in a letter to T.H. Huxley, 9 July 1857, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin and A.C. Seward, editors (1903) volume I, chapter II: "Evolution, 1844-1858", page 98.
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