# James Gibson > [!overview]- > - period:: > - location:: [[United States]] > - keywords:: [[Psychology]], [[Wayfinding]] > --- > - date of birth:: 1904 > - location-birth:: > --- > - date of death:: > - location-death:: - #seed - American psychologist - believed perception and behaviour were connected through a biological phenomenon - theory: “ecological psychology” - rejected the concept of a cognitive map in the brain Gibson used the word [[Wayfinding]] to describe [[spatial navigation]]. Unlike the [[Separation of mind and body|Cartesian philosophy]], Gibson didn’t believe there was a separation between the mind and our surrounding environment, instead believing that use a combination of [[perception]] and movement to help us navigate through the environment. ## To Distill > Born in 1904, the American psychologist [[James Gibson]] was fascinated by visual perception but frustrated by the assumption that there is a dualistic distinction between physical and mental environments. ==Through his studies of automobile drivers and airplane pilots, Gibson came to the conclusion that perception and behavior are a single biological phenomenon, and both humans and animals directly perceive their environment in an act of knowing or being in contact with it. We are not minds stuck in bodies but organisms that are part of our environment.== Gibson called his theory ==ecological psychology== and it led to a new understanding of navigation. ==Gibson described the process of navigation as detecting the layout of the environment from a moving point of observation. When a person moves from one place to another, there is an optic flow of what he called transitions, a continuum of connected sequences in what we see that could be a turn in the road or the crest of a hill. These transitions connect vistas that open our view. Transitions and vistas are what provide us with the information we need for controlling locomotion and navigation.== > from [[oconnor2019WayfindingScienceMystery|Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World by M.R. O'Connor]] --- # ##### For follow up - The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems --- # ##### References - [[oconnor2019WayfindingScienceMystery|O’Connor, M. R. (2019). Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World]]