Cognition in the Wild

Edwin Hutchins

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1 Welcome Aboard

Narrative: A Crisis
After several days at sea, the U.S.S. Palau was returning to port,
making approximately 10 knots in the narrow channel between
Ballast Point and North Island at the entrance to San Diego Harbor.
In the pilothouse or navigation bridge, two decks above the flight
deck, a junior officer had the conn (i.e., was directing the steering of
the ship), under the supervision of the navigator. The captain sat
quietly in his chair on the port side of the pilothouse watching the
work of the bridge team. Morale in the pilothouse had sagged dur-
ing two frustrating hours of engineering drills conducted just out-
side the mouth of the harbor but was on the rise now that the ship
was headed toward the pier. Some of the crew talked about where
they should go for dinner ashore and joked about going all the way
to the pier at 15 knots so they could get off the ship before nightfall.
The bearing recorder had just given the command "Stand by to
mark time 3 8" and the fathometer operator was reporting the depth
of the water under the ship when the intercom erupted with the
voice of the engineer of the watch: "Bridge, Main Control. I am
losing steam drum pressure. No apparent cause. I'm shutting my
throttles." Moving quickly to the intercom, the conning officer ac-
knowledged: "Shutting throttles, aye." The navigator moved to the
captain's chair, repeating: "Captain, the engineer is losing steam on
the boiler for no apparent cause." Possibly because he realized that
the loss of steam might affect the steering of the ship, the conning
officer ordered the rudder amidships. As the helmsman spun the
wheel to bring the rudder angle indicator to the centerline, he an-
swered the conning officer: "Rudder amidships, aye sir." The cap-
tain began to speak, saying "Notify," but the engineer was back on
the intercom, alarm in his voice this time, speaking rapidly, almost
shouting: "Bridge, Main Control, I'm going to secure number two
boiler at this time. Recommend you drop the anchor!" The captain
had been stopped in mid-sentence by the blaring intercom, but be-
fore the engineer could finish speaking the captain said, in a loud
but cool voice, "Notify the bosun." It is standard procedure on
 Chapter 1 2 Welcome Aboard 3

large ships to have an anchor prepared to drop in case the ship forward motion; it also had no way to quickly change the angle of
loses its ability to maneuver while in restricted waters. With the its rudder. The helm does have a manual backup system, located in
propulsion plant out, the bosun, who was standing by with a crew a compartment called aftersteering in the stern of the ship: a worm-
forward ready to drop the anchor, was notified that he might be gear mechanism powered by two men on bicycle cranks. However,
called into action. The falling intonation of the captain's command
~../'- even strong men working hard with this mechanism can change the
gave it a cast of resignation or perhaps boredom and made it sound angle of the massive rudder only very slowly.
entirely routine. Shortly after the loss of power, the captain said to the navigator,
In fact, the situation was anything but routine. The occasional who was the most experienced conning officer on board, "OK,
cracking voice, a muttered curse, or a perspiration-soaked shirt Gator, I'd like you to take the conn." The navigator answered "Aye,
on this cool spring afternoon told the real story: the Palau was sir" and, turning away from the captain, announced: "Attention in
not fully under control, and careers and possibly lives were in the pilothouse. This is the navigator. I have the conn." As required,
jeopardy. the quartermaster of the watch acknowledged ("Quartermaster,
The immediate consequences of this event were potentially aye") and the helmsman reported "Sir, my rudder is amidships."
grave. Despite the crew's correct responses, the loss of main steam The navigator had been looking out over the bow of the ship, trying
put the ship in danger. Without steam, it could not reverse its pro- to detect any turning motion. He answered the helmsman: "Very
peller-the only way to slow a large ship efficiently. The friction of well. Right 5 degrees rudder." Before the helmsman could reply,
the water on the ship's hull will eventually reduce its speed, but the navigator increased the ordered angle: "Increase your rudder
the Palau would coast for several miles before corning to a stop. right 10 degrees." (The rudder angle indicator on the helm station
The engineering officer's recommendation that the anchor be has two parts; one shows the rudder angle that is ordered and the
dropped was not appropriate. Since the ship was still traveling at a other the actual angle of the rudder.) The helmsman spun the
high rate of speed, the only viable option was to attempt to keep the wheel, causing the indicator of the desired rudder angle to move to
ship in the deep water of the channel and coast until it had lost the right 10 degrees, but the indicator of the actual rudder angle
enough speed to safely drop anchor. seemed not to move at all. "Sir, I have no helm sir!" he reported.
Within 40 seconds of the report of loss of steam pressure, the Meanwhile, the men on the cranks in aftersteering were straining
steam drum was exhausted. All steam-turbine-operated machinery to move the rudder to the desired angle. Without direct helm con-
carne to a halt, including the turbine generators that produce the trol, the conning officer acknowledged the helmsman's report and
ship's electrical power. All electrical power was lost throughout sought to make contact with aftersteering by way of one of the
the ship, and all electrical devices without emergency power phone talkers on the bridge: "Very well. Aftersteering, Bridge." The
backup ceased to operate. In the pilothouse a high-pitched alarm navigator then turned to the helmsman and said "Let me know if
sounded for a few seconds, signaling an under-voltage condition you get it back." Before he could finish his sentence, the helmsman
for one piece of equipment. Then the pilothouse fell eerily silent as responded, "I have it back, sir." When the navigator acknowledged
the electric motors in the radars and other devices spun down and the report, the ship was on the right side of the channel but heading
stopped. Just outside the navigation bridge, the port wing pelorus far to the left of the desired course. "Very well, increase your rud-
operator watched the gyrocompass card in his pelorus swing wildly der to right 15." "Aye sir. My rudder is right 15 degrees. No new
and then return to its original heading. He called in to the bearing course given." The navigator acknowledged-"Very well"-and
recorder standing at the chart table: "John, this gyro just went then, looking out over the bow, whispered "Corne on, damn it,
nuts." The bearing recorder acknowledged the comment and told swing!" Just then, the starboard wing pelorus operator spoke on the
the pelorus operator that a breakdown was in progress: "Yeah, I phone circuit: "John, it looks like we're gonna hit this buoy over
know, I know, we're havin' a casualty." here." The bearing recorder had been concentrating on the chart
Because the main steering gear is operated with electric motors, and hadn't quite heard. "Say again" he requested. The starboard
the ship now not only had no way to arrest its still-considerable wing pelorus operator leaned over the railing of his platform to
 Chapter 1 4 Welcome Aboard 5

watch the buoy pass beneath him. It moved quickly down the side this piece of gear and instructed the keeper of the deck log to leave
of the ship, staying just a few feet from the hull. When it appeared his post, find the manual horn, descend two levels to the flight
that the Palau would not hit the buoy, the starboard wing pelorus deck, take the horn out to the bow, and sound the five warning
operator said "Nothin' "; that ended the conversation. The men in- blasts. The keeper of the deck log ran from the pilothouse, carrying
side never knew how close they had come. Several subsequent a walkie-talkie to maintain communication with the bridge. The
helm commands were answered with "Sir, I have no helm." When captain grabbed the microphone for the flight deck's public address
asked by the captain how he was doing , the navigator, referring to system and asked "Can you hear me on the flight deck?" Men be-
their common background as helicopter pilots, quipped "First time low on the deck turned and waved up at the pilothouse. " Sailboat
I ever dead-sticked a ship, captain." (To "dead-stick" an aircraft is crossing Palau's bow be advised that I am not . .. I have no power.
to fly it after the engine has died.) Steering a ship requires fine You cross at your own risk. I have no power." By this time, the hull
judgements of the ship's angular velocity. Even if helm response of the sailboat had disappeared under the bow of the ship and only
was instantaneous, there would still be a considerable lag between its sails were visible from the pilothouse. In the foreground, the
the time a helm command was given and the time when the ship's men on the flight deck were now running to the bow to watch the
response to the changed rudder angle was first detectable as the impending collision. Meanwhile, the keeper of the deck log had
movement of the bow with respect to objects in the distance. run down two flights of stairs, emerged from the base of the island,
Operating with this manual system, the navigator did not always and begun sprinting across the nearly 100 yards that lay between
know what the actual rudder angle was, and could not know how the island and the bow. Before he was halfway to his goal, it was
long to expect to wait to see if the ordered command was having clear that by the time he would reach the bow the signal from the
the desired effect. Because of the slowed response time of the rud- horn would be meaningless. The navigator turned to a junior officer
der, the navigator ordered more extreme rudder angles than usual, who was holding a walkie-talkie and exclaimed "Just tell him to
causing the Palau to weave erratically from one side of the channel put the sucker down and hit it five times!" The message was
to the other. passed, and the five feeble blasts were sounded from the middle of
Within 3 minutes, the diesel-powered emergency generators the flight deck. There is no way to know whether the signal was
were brought on line and electrical power was restored to vital heard by the sailboat, which by then was directly ahead of the
systems throughout the ship. Control of the rudder was partially Palau and so close that only the tip of its mast was visible from the
restored, but remained intermittent for an additional 4 minutes. pilothouse. A few seconds later, the sailboat emerged, still sailing,
Although the ship still could not control its speed, it could at least from under the starboard bow. The keeper of the deck log con-
now keep itself in the dredged portion of the narrow channel. On tinued to the bow to take up a position there in case other warnings
the basis of the slowing over the first 15 minutes after the casualty, were required.
it became possible to estimate when and where the Palau would be Twenty-five minutes after the engineering casualty and more
moving slowly enough to drop anchor. The navigator conned the than 2 miles from where the wild ride had begun, the Palau was
ship toward the chosen spot. brought to anchor at the intended location in ample water just out-
About 500 yards short of the intended anchorage, a sailboat took side the bounds of the navigation channel.
a course that would lead it to cross close in front of the Palau.
Normally the Palau would have sounded five blasts with its enor-
mous horn to indicate disagreement with the actions taken by the
other vessel. However, the Palau's horn is a steam whistle, and
without steam pressure it will not sound. The Navigation Depart-
ment has among its equipment a small manual foghorn, basically a
bicycle pump with a reed and a bell. The navigator remembered
The seed from which this book grew was planted in November
1980, when I spent most of a day on the navigation bridge of a U.S.
Navy ship as it worked its way in from the open North Pacific,
through the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and down Puget Sound to
Seattle. I was aboard the ship to study what the operators of its
steam propulsion plant knew and how they went about knowing it.
I had spent most of the preceding week down in the bowels of the
ship, observing engineering operations and talking to the boiler
technicians and machinist's mates who inhabited that hot, wet,
noisy tangle of boilers, pumps, and pipes called the engineering
spaces. I'll admit to having felt a little claustrophobic after all that
time spent below the water line, where there is no night or day and
the only evidence of being at sea is the rhythmic tipping of the deck
plates and sloshing of water in the bilge below one's feet as the ship
rolls in the swell. A chief boiler technician confided to me that in
21 years on Navy ships he had never yet been on deck to experi-
ence either of those two most romantic seafaring events, a ship's
arrival at or departure from a port.
I resolved, therefore, to take my last few hours aboard this ship
on the navigation bridge, where I could see out the windows or
even go out on the bridge wing to get a breath of cold fresh air. My
professional rationalization for being on the bridge was that there I
would be able to observe the process that generates the flurry of
engine commands that always taxes the engineering crew when the
ship nears the dock. And I did make a detailed record of all engine
and helm commands given in the 75 minutes from the time the
engines were first slowed until they were secured-there were 61
in all. But what really captured my attention was the work of the
navigation team.
Three and a half years later, the project that became this book
began in earnest. In the summer of 1984, I was still working for the
Navy Personnel Research and Development Center in San Diego as
a civilian scientist with the title Personnel Research Psychologist.
By then I had participated in two successful and well-known
 Introduction xii Introduction xiii

projects. With these successes came the freedom to conduct an in- get the project of cognitive anthropology off the ground. I will argue
dependent research project. I was given carte blanche to study that, now that we are underway as a discipline, we should revoke
whatever I thought was of most interest. I chose to study what I was these assumptions. They have become a burden, and they prevent
then calling naturally situated cognition. Having a research posi- us from seeing the nature of human cognition.
tion in a Navy laboratory made it possible for me to gain access to In particular, the ideational definition of culture prevents us
naval vessels, and my longtime love of navigation and experience seeing that systems of socially distributed cognition may have in-
as a racing yacht navigator made it easy for me to choose navigation teresting cognitive properties of their own. In the history of an-
as an activity to study afloat. I talked my way aboard a ship and set thropology, there is scarcely a more important concept than the
up shop on the navigation bridge. At the time, I really had no no- division of labor. In terms of the energy budget of a human group
tion what an ideal subject navigation would turn out to be. When I and the efficiency with which a group exploits its physical envi-
began, I was thinking in terms of the naturally situated cognition of ronment, social organizational factors often produce group proper-
individuals. It was only after I completed my first study period at ties that differ considerably from the properties of individuals.
sea that I realized the importance of the fact that cognition was so- Clearly, the same sorts of phenomena occur in the cognitive do-
cially distributed. main. Depending on their organization, groups must have cognitive
A little earlier, I had been asked to write a book describing what properties that are not predictable from a knowledge of the prop-
is in cognitive anthropology for the rest of cognitive science. I be- erties of the individuals in the group. The emphasis on finding and
gan that project, but after I became disillusioned with my field I lost describing "knowledge structures" that are somewhere "inside"
interest in it. The choice of naturally situated cognition as a topic the individual encourages us to overlook the fact that human cog-
came from my sense that it is what cognitive anthropology really nition is always situated in a complex sociocultural world and
should have been about but largely had not been. Clifford Geertz cannot be unaffected by it.
(1983) called for an "outdoor psychology," but cognitive anthro- Similar developments in the other behavioral sciences during the
pology was unable or unwilling to be that. The respondents may cognitive revolution of the late 1950s and the 1960s left a troubled
have been exotic, but the methods of investigation were largely legacy in cognitive science. It is notoriously difficult to generalize
borrowed from the indoor techniques of psychology and linguis- laboratory findings to real-world situations. The relationship be-
tics. When cognitive and symbolic anthropology split off from so- tween cognition seen as a solitary mental activity and cognition
cial anthropology, in the mid 1950s, they left society and practice seen as an activity undertaken in social settings using various kinds
behind. of tools is not at all clear.
As part of the cognitive revolution, cognitive anthropology made This book is about ~ oftening some boundaries' that have been
two crucial steps. First, it turned away from society by looking in- made rigid by previous approaches. It is about' locating cognitive
ward to the knowledge an individual had to have to function as a activity in context~ where context is not a fixel set of surrounding
member of the culture. The question became "What does a person conditions but a wider dynamical process of which the cognition of
have to know?" The locus of knowledge was assumed to be inside an individual is only a part. The boundaries to be softened or dis-
the individual. The methods of research then available encouraged solved have been erected, primarily for analytic convenience, in
the analysis of language. But knowledge expressed or expressible social space, in physical space, and in time. Just as the ~onstruction
in language tends to be declarative knowledge. It is what people of these boundaries was driven by a particular theoretical per-
can say about what they know. Skill went out the window of the spective, their dissolution or softening is driven by a different
"white room." The second turn was away from practice. In the perspective-one that arose of necessity when cognition was con-
quest to learn what people know, anthropologists lost track both of fronted in the wild.
how people go about knowing what they know and of the con- The phrase "cognition in the wild" refers to human cognition in
tribution of the environments in which the knowing is accom- its natural habitat-that is, to naturally occurring culturally con-
plished. Perhaps these narrowing assumptions were necessary to stituted human activity. I do not intend "cognition in the wild" to
 Introduction xiv Introduction XV

be read as similar to Levi-Strauss's "pensee sauvage," nor do I in-

tend it to contrast with Jack Goody's (1977) notion of domesticated
mind. Instead, I have in mind the distinction between the labo-
ratory, where cognition is studied in captivity, and the everyday
world, where human cognition adapts to its natural surroundin..gs. I
hope to evoke with this metaphor a sense of an ecology of thinking
in which human cognition interacts with an environment rich in
organizing resources.
The attempt is cultural in nature, giving recognition to the fact
that human cognition differs from the cognition of all other animals
primarily because it is intrinsica ll_y a cultural ,Rhenom&BOfr. My
aim is to provide better answers to questions like these: What do
people use their cognitive abilities for? What kinds of tasks do they
confront in the everyday world? Where shall we look for explana-
tions of human cognitive accomplishment?
There is a common misconception among cognitive scientists,
especially those who do their work in laboratory settings, that re-
search conducted outside the laboratory is necessarily "applied"
work. I will argue in what follows that there arc many excellent
reasons to look at the "real world" that are not concerned with
hoped-for applications ot the research findings (although funding
sponsors often like to think in those terms). Pure research on the
nature of real cognitive practices is needed. In this book, I empha-
size practice not in order to support a utilitarian or functionalist
perspective but because it is in real practice that culture is pro-
duced and reproduced. In practice we see the connection between
history and the future and between cultural structure and social
structure. One of my goals in writing this book is to make clear that
the findings of pure research on cognition in the wild should
change our ideas about the nature of human cognition in general.
This is not news to anthropologists, who have been doing pure re-
search in the form of ethnography for decades.
This book is an attempt to put cognition back into the social and
cultural world. In doing this I hope to show that human cognition is
not just influenced by culture and society, but that it is in a very
fundamental sense a cultural and social process. To do this I will
move the boundaries of the cognitive unit of analysis out beyond
the skin of the individual person and treat the navigation team as a
cognitive and computational system.