scholarly journals Musicking as ecological behaviour: an integrated ‘4E’ view

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
pp. 230-247
Author(s):  
Michael Golden
Keyword(s):  
Active Process ◽  
The Arts ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Ecological Behaviour

In this article, I bring together research from ethnomusicology, ecology, neuroscience, ‘4E’ cognition theory and evolutionary musicology in support of the idea that musicking, human musicking in particular, can best be understood as an emergent ecological behaviour. ‘Ecological’ here is used to mean an active process of engaging with and connecting ourselves to our various environmental domains – social, physical and metaphysical – and although I will focus on musicking, these concepts may apply to other artistic behaviours as well. The essential ideas from the Santiago theory of cognition, the work of Maturana and Varela and one of the foundations of contemporary 4E cognition theory, are that we as living beings ‘bring forth’ both the inner and outer worlds we experience, and this process (cognition) is common to all life. Music is also a process (not an object), one that emerges from properties of life itself and serves to link body/mind and environment. Understood this way, ‘co-constructing body-environments’ applies to the arts in general.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

4E Cognition and the Humanities

2018 ◽  
pp. 874-890
Author(s):  
Amy Cook
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
And Performance

The arts and humanities move us and change our minds—not just metaphorically but literally. This chapter provides a snapshot of some of the work that has occurred at the intersection of cognitive science and theater and literature. I provide a description and analysis of a theatrical experience that staged a challenge to traditional theories of cognition, demonstrating how artists are responding to and prodding work being done across the disciplines. If thinking is “world-making,” rather than processing stimuli into meaning, then the hermeneutic tradition of literary and art scholarship must adapt. If thinking means using objects in our environment in order to make changes to our own extended ecosystem, then an interaction with a work of art can be aesthetic, poetic, and autopoetic. Contemporary art, literature, and performance may suggest a new language—and a richer perspective on old language—for 4E cognition.

scholarly journals Museums at the Crossroads: Between Digitality, Reality, and COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tula Giannini ◽  
Jonathan P. Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Performing Arts ◽  
New World ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
The Impact

When Covid-19 rushed into our lives, it sent shockwaves across the globe – suddenly we faced “lockdown” – we said goodbye to the way it was but did not understand what this brave new world of isolation and separation would mean and how it would the impact life as we knew it – our identity, relationships and freedoms we enjoyed, and wondered what daily routine post-Covid-19 would look like, while the experiences defining life itself were up for grabs. With social distancing, masks and work from home mandates, the arts and performing arts from theatres, museums, galleries and the public square were shuttered – their very existence challenged and spiralling out of control as staff were laid-off, exhibitions cancelled while concurrently creating an urgency to go online to dwell in cyberspace, the new daily destination.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

The Education of the Soul

1998 ◽  
pp. 87-92
Author(s):  
Brian K. Etter
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Value Of Life ◽  
Moral Concept ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Utilitarian Value ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Objects Of Knowledge ◽  
Concept Of Beauty

I argue that the contemporary crisis in education — that nothing appears valid as a discipline unless it has a utilitarian value — may be challenged from the perspective of the Platonist tradition. The ascent through philosophy to the vision of Beauty in itself in Plato's Symposium affirms the perception of beauty or nobility as the ultimate end and value of all knowledge. Marsilio Ficino's adaption of Plato in the Renaissance articulates a more metaphysical ascent which broadens the objects of knowledge in order to include the cosmos and the arts as well as philosophy. Together, these two accounts provide a foundation for understanding the ordering of all knowledge toward the end of the perception of beauty or nobility. There is no dichotomy between the sciences and the humanities: there is only a hierarchy of disciplines according to a scale of metaphysical nobility. The sciences, the arts, history, and philosophy are the steps toward knowledge of Beauty in itself. They constitute a vision of liberal education that is not utilitarian, but whose value must be understood precisely through the moral concept of nobility that is the end of such an education. In embracing the concept of beauty or nobility, liberal education affirms the value of life itself.

Plato's Commonwealth

1935 ◽  
Vol 4 (11) ◽  
pp. 92-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. M. Cornford
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Trade ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
To Come ◽  
At Home

A country so situated that its growth depends on sea-power and foreign trade heads an alliance against an emperor bent on adding a good part of Europe to his dominions. The emperor is defeated; and in an ample stretch of comparatively quiet years the champion of freedom finds opportunity to take the lead among its neighbours in the arts of peace. At home, democratic institutions are developed towards their logical completion; abroad, ambition is satisfied by consolidating an empire overseas. A golden age of prosperity and progress—or so it will seem when men look back upon it from the darker days that are to come. For an expanding prosperity has to reckon with the jealousy of commercial rivals; and an expanding empire is not always welcomed as a boon by the countries it penetrates and absorbs. There is a growing tension. A continental power, whose citizens are trained to the highest pitch of military efficiency, declares war. The States are grouped in two alliances, neither of which is strong enough to overpower the other or to inflict a fatal wound. No soldier of genius appears on either side, and the war drags on in a series of futile successes and futile defeats. The strain of anxiety and the release of those ugliest passions which, in time of war, assume the name of virtue, demoralize the combatants. The tacit conventions that lie at the base of civilized life are called in question or openly denied. Men lose faith in democracy, and even in freedom; they come near to losing faith in life itself. Somewhere at the heart of their being a nerve snaps; and when the war of exhaustion comes to a disastrous close, they are left disheartened and listless, unable to believe in a future worth the effort they lack the driving power to make.

Electron Microscopy in Molecular Biology

1967 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Cecil E. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Noise Level ◽  
Molecular Structures ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Shadow Casting ◽  
Electron Image ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Very High

The visualization of organic macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, viruses and virus components has reached its high degree of effectiveness owing to refinements and reliability of instruments and to the invention of methods for enhancing the structure of these materials within the electron image. The latter techniques have been most important because what can be seen depends upon the molecular and atomic character of the object as modified which is rarely evident in the pristine material. Structure may thus be displayed by the arts of positive and negative staining, shadow casting, replication and other techniques. Enhancement of contrast, which delineates bounds of isolated macromolecules has been effected progressively over the years as illustrated in Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4 by these methods. We now look to the future wondering what other visions are waiting to be seen. The instrument designers will need to exact from the arts of fabrication the performance that theory has prescribed as well as methods for phase and interference contrast with explorations of the potentialities of very high and very low voltages. Chemistry must play an increasingly important part in future progress by providing specific stain molecules of high visibility, substrates of vanishing “noise” level and means for preservation of molecular structures that usually exist in a solvated condition.

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