Consciousness’ Drive

Charles Cole has been an information science researcher-writer-editor on information retrieval topics for over 25 years. This is his 3rd book for Springer (plus a fourth published by ASIST). Since receiving his Ph. D. in 1994 (University of Sheffield), Cole has published 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including in the Journal of the Association of Information Science & Technology (19), Information Processing & Management (12), as well as Library Quarterly, and Research Quarterly (RQ). He is currently a Researcher, Affiliate Member, at McGill University’s School of Information Science.

• 1 Human Exceptionality: How We See Ourselves in Relation to the World.- 2 Framing - Lessons from Vermeer.- 3 Episodic Memory: Lessons from the Scrub Jays.- 4 Episodic Memory: Subjective Time-travel.- 5 Episodic-to-Mimetic Transition.- 6 Framing: The Mimetic-to-Mythic Transition.- 7 Framing: The Mythic-to-Theoretic Transition.- 8 Problem Set-Up: Minsky’s Frame Theory.- 9 Individual Frame Level: Meno’s Paradox.- 10 Group Frame Level: Information Avoidance.- 11 Nation Frame Level: The Dark Side.- 12 Solution: Opening the Information Loop: Constructing Information Channels.- 13 Solution: Belief-Begets-Knowledge: Definitions.- 14 Belief-based Information Search.- 15 The Model of the Consciousness’ Drive: Information Need and the Search for Meaning.

“This is an important book, well worth the effect necessary to absorb the, at times, complex arguments. It certainly ought to be a candidate for the ASIST Best Information Science Book Award … I am sure it will become a highly cited text and of great value to researchers in the field … . It is well written, dealing with complex topics in a readily understandable fashion, with the aid many diagrams and illustrations.” (T. D. Wilson, Information Research, Vol. 23 (04), December, 2018)