Tips for the Weekend

"Cognitive maps are part of how we understand ourselves and feel at home in our bodies."

Get Outside

James Joyce, with his usual penchant for modesty, once said that a genius is incapable of making mistakes, that “errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

However true this may be for art, Joyce’s words have a lot to teach us when it comes to navigating the physical world. The ubiquity of Google Maps and other navigation systems has significantly reduced our experience with being lost. There are obvious advantages to this change, but scientists and laypeople alike are now taking notice of the downsides. One seems certain: that we learn less about our physical world when we are guided through it passively, and we have fewer opportunities for the lucky discoveries that come from finding our own way. We are less likely than ever to happen upon the wooded by...