Nature and the Mind

I just finished Marc Berman's wonderful new book, Nature and the Mind.

Although he appears to be a scientist first, and an author second, it's a beautifully written, highly accessible, easy read.

It confirmed a bunch of stuff that I accidentally knew--backed up with scientific force.

Take "curves," for instance. At the Plant, I am constantly battling straight lines. That's why the sidewalk to the Tree Museum is curved. That's why our sign is spherical.

All these years that I have been beating my shoe on the desk demanding curvaciousness--putting tanks in the landscape on circular pads for instance. All this time going by instinct. After reading Nature and the Mind I now understand that humans are drawn to curves in nature.

It takes me back to a few blog entries ago, when there was a discussion about how our current Board of Education preserved what remains of Pittsboro's North Wood around the high school. According to Berman's work, kids schooled in a wooded environment will have higher cognitive performance than those schooled in exclusively built environments.

I live and work in an extravangance of nature. It fills me up, keeps me sane, and allows me to keep things between the rails. This book offers scientific evidence to suggest that nature is doing this and it is not my imagination. Loved it...