Biography
Eleanor Rosch is an American psychologist and Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She obtained her doctorate at Harvard University and conducted foundational research on concept formation, categorisation and the relationships between language, cognition and experience.
Her work on natural categories and prototypes helped transform our understanding of how people conceptually organise the world. In contrast to models that described categories through strict membership conditions, her research demonstrated the importance of degrees of typicality and prototypical examples. She co-edited Cognition and Categorization (1978) with Barbara B. Lloyd.
Together with Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson, she published The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (1991), a book connecting cognitive science with phenomenology and certain contemplative traditions. Her career also encompasses research into Eastern psychologies, experience and processes of knowing.
Published books