Bibliography

Introduction.

page

See images of the Korous here.
4. Margolis published his findings in a triumphant article in: Stanley V. Margolis.
"Authenticating Ancient Marble Sculpture." Scientific American. June, 1989. 104-110.
www.sciam.com
5. The kouros story has been told in a number of places. The best account is by Thomas Hoving, in chapter eighteen of:
False Impressions: The Hunt for Big Time Art Fakes. 1996. London: Andre Deutsch.
6. The accounts of the art experts who saw the kouros in Athens are collected in:
  • The Getty Kouros Colloquium: Athens, 25-27 May 1992. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation, Museum of Art, Athens, Greece. 1993.
  • Michael Kimmelman. "Absolutely Real? Absolutely Fake?" New York Times. August 4, 1991. www.nytimes.com
  • Marion True. "A Kouros at the Getty Museum." Burlington Magazine. January 1987. Vol. CXIX. No. 1006. pp. 3-11. www.burlington.org.uk
  • George Ortiz. "Connoisseurship and Antiquity." Small Bronze Sculpture from the Ancient World. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum. 1990. pp. 275-78.
  • Robert Steven Bianchi. "Saga of the Getty Kouros." Archaeology. May/June 1994. p. 99. www.archaeology.org
  • Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Daniel Tranel, and Antonio R. Damasio. "Deciding
  • Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy." Science. February 1997. www.sciencemag.org. Full text available here. (subscription required)
8. 1. Fast and Frugal

The ideas behind "Fast and Frugal" can be found in:
Gerd Gigerenzer, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group. "Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart." 1999. New York: Oxford University Press.

11. 2. The Internal Computer

The person who has thought extensively about the adaptive unconscious, and who has written the most accessible account of the "computer" inside our mind is the psychologist Timothy Wilson. I am greatly indebted to his wonderful book:
"Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious." 2002. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

9. Wilson also discusses, at some length, the Iowa gambling experiment.
12. Nalini Ambady's research on professors:
Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal. "Half a Minute: Predicting Teacher Evaluations from Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1993, Vol. 64. No. 3. 431-441. Full article available here.
I give a handful of examples of professions where the ability to sum up a situation in an unconscious instant is a critical part of expertise--coup 'doeil, the art experts with the Kouros, the bird-watchers detecting "giss." But the truth is that there are many more. Here is a note I received from Robert Lebowitz, a radiologist at Harvard Medical School:

"When radiologists look at a radiograph or some other type of diagnostic image, we sometimes know the diagnosis "in the blink of an eye" or certainly in less time than it takes to think about it. This type of pattern recognition is called an "augenblick." It is also known as an "Aunt Minnie." Apparently it got that name because when you are walking down the street and meet your Aunt Minnie, you know who she is instantly, without thinking about it."

The German word "augenblick," instantly refers to something that can be understood in less time than it takes to blink.

Here, along the same lines, is a passage from Anthony Swofford's best-selling book "Jarhead," p. 228, describing the experience of a soldier in battle:

"Johnny and I dig a shallow hide and settle in for the afternoon. The air control tower is our main target of interest. I read it at eight hundred yards and Johnny agrees. Distance estimation cannot be taught. You can show a marine a target and tell him that it's five hundred yards from him, but unless that five hundred yards is felt, he'll believe you but he'll never know for sure how you came up with that figure; he'll believe you but he won't know. He'll say, I have no idea how you figured that out, it looks like five thousand yards to me, or fifty. He can stare all day at that target and never understand. And another marine, you can tell him that it's five hundred yards away and he'll say, I knew that. That is the marine you want next to you, the marine who understands distance."
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