DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Perceiving, Reasoning, and Imagining

Seeing and Visualizing: It's Not What You Thinkn
By Zenon Pylyshyn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 561 pp. Cloth, $50.00.

Zenon Pylyshyn is the Board of Governors professor of cognitive science at Rutgers University. Over the past three decades he has made important contributions to cognitive science. In the current volume, Pylyshyn takes the several strands that have been prominent in his previous writings and weaves them into one continuous narrative. Today, when publishers' lists are dominated by edited collections, it is especially satisfying to read a story told in one voice. Edited collections do have their special virtues, diversity, and range, but they rarely confer the power to be mind-shaping. Anthologies are useful but not formative. Is Pylyshyn's book likely to make your short list of books that really matter? The answer may depend on whether you have been tracking Pylyshyn's earlier writings. If you have, then your current course of thinking is likely to proceed unchanged. The conclusions Pylyshyn advances in this book and the selection of evidence will be familiar to you, and you will nod approvingly or frown dismissively (I am among the approving nodders). On the other hand, if the current volume is your first exposure to Pylyshyn's main arguments, then you will be introduced to a provocative set of connected theses about vision and cognition developed in a rigorous and engaging exposition. Will reading this book be a formative experience for the uninitiated reader? It could be.