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.

“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)

• 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.