MCSI Lecture Series Presents: Henry Cowles

Lecture: "The Attention Zoo"

Attention has been a tool of academic psychologists for as long as the field has existed; but as a research object, it has a shorter history. This paper traces attention's shift from independent to dependent variable in cognitive science through the field's preferred model organisms. Some of the animals in attention's "zoo" will be familiar (rats, of course, as well as both human and non-human primates), while others might be less so (stray cats, designer puppies, dolphins). In the end, the paper offers both a serviceable (if partial) history of attention research as well as a heuristic for assessing how the tools we use to study the mind ultimately shape the theories all that studying produces.

Henry M. Cowles is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, where he writes and teaches about topics that include psychology, addiction, self-help, and expertise. He is the author of The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey (Harvard University Press, 2020).

Additional guest: D. Graham Burnett is Associate Professor of History at Princeton University. He works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice, collaborating regularly with the ‘Friends of Attention.’ He is the author and co-editor of several books including Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses (Columbia University Press, 2023).