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Informationen zum Autor Erik Jonsson Klappentext A FASCINATING INVESTIGATION OF HOW WE NAVIGATE THE PHYSICAL WORLD, INNER NAVIGATION IS A LIVELY, ENGAGING ACCOUNT OF SUBCONSCIOUS MAPMAKING.Why are we so often disoriented when we come up from the subway? Do we really walk in circles when we lose our bearings in the wilderness? How -- and why -- do we get lost at all?In this surprising, stimulating book, Erik Jonsson, a Swedish-born engineer who has spent a lifetime exploring navigation over every terrain, from the crowded cities of Europe to the emptiness of the desert, gives readers extraordinary new insights into the human way-finding system.Written for the nonscientist, Inner Navigation explains the astonishing array of physical and psychological cues the brain uses to situate us in space and build its "cognitive maps" -- the subconscious maps it employs to organize landmarks. Humans, Jonsson explains, also possess an intuitive direction frame -- an internal compass -- that keeps these maps oriented (when it functions properly) and a dead-reckoning system that constantly updates our location on the map as we move through the world. Even the most cynical city-dweller will be amazed to learn how much of this innate sense we use every day as we travel across town or around the world.Both a scientific and a human story, Inner Navigation contains a rich assortment of real-life insights and examples of the navigational challenges we all face, no matter where or how we live. It's a book that is as provocative to ponder as it is delightful to lose yourself in. Don't worry: Erik Jonsson will help you find your bearings. Chapter 1: Strange Happenings I will start by explaining what happened to me in 1948 when I got "turned around" in Cologne. It was quite a long time ago, but the memory is still very vivid. I arrived in Cologne early in the morning while it was still dark after a sleepless night in an overcrowded train from Ostend, Belgium, and slept for a couple of hours on a bench in the Central Station. After daybreak I set out towards the Rhine to find a steamer for a cruise on the river. I knew I was near the river and was puzzled when it never came in sight. Finally I asked for directions and was told to turn around. There was the river, and the steamers were in plain sight. I had been walking in the wrong direction, east instead of west, as I thought. Then I saw the sun coming out of the mist above the steamers. Sunrise in the west! Well, that explained it. I must have become disoriented when I arrived by train during the night, so instead of going east I had actually been walking west, away from the river. Now that I knew what had happened, everything would be all right, I thought. Not so! However much I told myself that the sun had to be in the east in the morning, I still felt that it was in the west and when I came to the Rhine I "saw" it flowing south. There was no way my reasoning could change my inner conviction. Apparently some mysterious direction system operating below the level of awareness had decided for me once and for all that in Cologne north was in the south. No appeal was possible. This unresolvable conflict between the erroneous gut feeling and my rational knowledge was most unpleasant, and the harder I tried to resolve it, the more I suffered. I worried how long it would last: would all of Germany be turned around? But once the boat got under way and out of Cologne, things straightened out. It was a relief to see the sun in the east again and the river flowing north. Apparently I had not gone crazy after all. I returned in the evening when the sun was setting in the west and saw the tall spires of the Cologne cathedral in the north as we were going downstream towards it. As we approached the moorings, the area I knew from my morning walk came into view and then the most extraordinary thing happened. In an ...
