Guest Lecture: Prof. Barbara Tversky

How Action Creates Thought

Barbara Tversky

Professor Emerita of Psychology, Stanford University

Professor of Psychology, Columbia Teachers College

Our minds move from thought to thought the way our feet move from place to place. The same neural substrates underlie both. We talk about actions on ideas the way we talk about actions on objects. The gestures, diagrams, and sketches we create represent the thinking and the thoughts. Creative thinking in the arts and science is often a wordless conversation between the eye and the actions of the hand on the page.