Over the last twenty years the cognitive sciences have contributed to a multi-disciplinary understanding of the mind and cognition. There are currently both undergraduate and graduate fields and programs in cognitive science and cognitive studies at many major research universities and teaching colleges. Although local pockets of integration and paradigm development exist, one of the hallmarks of this research (and one of its exciting features) has been its methodological and theoretical diversity. There are currently several excellent textbooks in the field (e.g., Michael Posner's Foundations of Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 1989, and Neil Stillings et al.'s Cognitive Science: An Introduction, 2nd ed., MIT Press, 1995), as well as a small number of wide-ranging anthologies (e.g., Alvin Goldman's Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science, MIT Press, 1993, and Dan Osherson's 4-volume An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd ed., MIT Press , 1995). And the last few years have seen the publication of two substantial reference volumes covering major areas of cognitive science, Michael Gazzaniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences (MIT Press, 1995) and Michael Arbib's The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks (MIT Press, 1995).

Missing until now, however, was a comprehensive reference work that could serve researchers working in different traditions across a variety of fields in cognitive science. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS) fills this niche; it is a landmark, comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and theoretical diversity of the cognitive sciences.

At the core of MITECS are 471 concise articles, from ACQUISITION, FORMAL THEORIES OF and ADAPTATION AND ADAPTATIONISM to WUNDT and X-BAR THEORY. Each article was written by a leading researcher on the topic, and provides an accessible introduction to an important concept in the sciences of cognition. Each also provides a list of references and suggestions for further readings for the interested reader to learn more about the latest reasearch on the topic. The extensive bibliography that these references collectively constitute makes up one of the outstanding contributions of MITECS.

One novel feature of MITECS among reference works with this type of structure is longer, introductory essays corresponding to each of the six sections that MITECS is divided into. Written by the corresponding advisory editors, each introduction provides the reader with some overall idea of the contribution of a particular discipline to the cognitive sciences. These essays also serve to direct the reader to some of the key entries associated with the contributing field.

The six sections are the five areas that have traditionally formed the core of the cognitive sciences, plus an additional one:

Philosophy
Psychology
Neuroscience
Computational Intelligence
Linguistics and Language
Culture, Cognition, and Evolution

EDITORIAL ORGANIZATION
Rob Wilson (Associate Professor of Philosophy and a member of the Cognitive Science Group at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Frank Keil (Professor of Psychology, Yale University) are the general editors for the project. A board of 8 advisory editors assisted them in selecting articles and contributors for the volume, and in addition authored the introductory essays. The advisory editors are: Tom Albright (Salk Institute, UCSD), Gennaro Chierchia (University of Milan), Lawrence Hirschfeld (University of Michigan), Keith Holyoak (UCLA), Michael Jordan (MIT), Helen Neville (University of Oregon), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), and Dan Sperber (CNRS, Paris). The articles in MITECS can be viewed by section here, with each section's corresponding introduction.

The principal MIT Press contacts for this project are:

Dr. Amy Brand (apierce@mit.edu)
Benjamin Bruening (mitecs@mit.edu)
The MIT Press
Five Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
 
 

THE ELECTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
The electronic version of MITECS on this web site, now almost complete, has several enhancements over a printed book. First, it is fully searchable; simply type in the word or phrase desired in the box at left. Second, it will contain dynamic links between related articles, and will also be a useful reference for links to other cognitive science resources on the web. Individual articles will provide links relevant to their specific topic, while the introductions to the six sections will list links to sites containing resources and further information on that domain. Relevant to cognitive science more generally, the following web sites are of broader interest:

The Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive Science Academic Programs

Cognitive and Psychological Sciences on the Internet

StatLib, an online repository for statistics.

CogPrints Electronic Archive

Cognitive and Psychological Sciences on the Internet