The Seductions of Darwin

The Seductions of Darwin PDF Author: Matthew Rampley
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079002
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in applying scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history intersect. Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the humanities. Rampley’s inquiry examines models of artistic development, the theories and development of aesthetic response, and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge. Engaging and compelling, The Seductions of Darwin is a rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.

The Seductions of Darwin

The Seductions of Darwin PDF Author: Matthew Rampley
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271079002
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
The surge of evolutionary and neurological analyses of art and its effects raises questions of how art, culture, and the biological sciences influence one another, and what we gain in applying scientific methods to the interpretation of artwork. In this insightful book, Matthew Rampley addresses these questions by exploring key areas where Darwinism, neuroscience, and art history intersect. Taking a scientific approach to understanding art has led to novel and provocative ideas about its origins, the basis of aesthetic experience, and the nature of research into art and the humanities. Rampley’s inquiry examines models of artistic development, the theories and development of aesthetic response, and ideas about brain processes underlying creative work. He considers the validity of the arguments put forward by advocates of evolutionary and neuroscientific analysis, as well as its value as a way of understanding art and culture. With the goal of bridging the divide between science and culture, Rampley advocates for wider recognition of the human motivations that drive inquiry of all types, and he argues that our engagement with art can never be encapsulated in a single notion of scientific knowledge. Engaging and compelling, The Seductions of Darwin is a rewarding look at the identity and development of art history and its complicated ties to the world of scientific thought.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea PDF Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126291
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet," focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.

Theatricality and the Arts

Theatricality and the Arts PDF Author: Richard Rushton
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 139951167X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Theatricality and the Arts presents a series of investigations of the notion of 'theatricality'. Primarily, theatricality concerns that which pertains to theatre, but the term has always carried with it the potentially pejorative associations of exaggeration and fakery. The essays here question and contest such associations. The book is divided into four sections which together provide a comprehensive interrogation of theatricality. The four sections begin with multimedia, where theatricality is examined in relation to mixed modes of media (internet art, painting, performance and digital display). A second section takes a philosophical approach to questions of theatricality. A third section looks at art, broadly speaking, but also at the historical contexts of art, photography and other media (literature, film, music). A final section features reflections on theatre and cinema, often in conjunction. Considered as a whole, the collection contributes to debates on theatricality in various fields, while also enabling a cross-examination of approaches to the topic.

The Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe

The Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe PDF Author: Thomas F. Glick
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1780937229
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 776

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Book Description
Beyond his pivotal place in the history of scientific thought, Charles Darwin's writings and his theory of evolution by natural selection have also had a profound impact on art and culture and continue to do so to this day. The Literary and Cultural Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe is a comprehensive survey of this enduring cultural impact throughout the continent. With chapters written by leading international scholars that explore how literary writers and popular culture responded to Darwin's thought, the book also includes an extensive timeline of his cultural reception in Europe and bibliographies of major translations in each country.

The Mental Life of Modernism

The Mental Life of Modernism PDF Author: Samuel Jay Keyser
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262356953
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
An argument that Modernism is a cognitive phenomenon rather than a cultural one. At the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry, music, and painting all underwent a sea change. Poetry abandoned rhyme and meter; music ceased to be tonally centered; and painting no longer aimed at faithful representation. These artistic developments have been attributed to cultural factors ranging from the Industrial Revolution and the technical innovation of photography to Freudian psychoanalysis. In this book, Samuel Jay Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations. Keyser argues that the transformation in poetry, music, and painting (the so-called sister arts) is the result of the abandonment of a natural aesthetic based on a set of rules shared between artist and audience, and that this is virtually the same cognitive shift that occurred when scientists abandoned the mechanical philosophy of the Galilean revolution. The cultural explanations for Modernism may still be relevant, but they are epiphenomenal rather than causal. Artists felt that traditional forms of art had been exhausted, and they began to resort to private formats—Easter eggs with hidden and often inaccessible meaning. Keyser proposes that when artists discarded their natural rule-governed aesthetic, it marked a cognitive shift; general intelligence took over from hardwired proclivity. Artists used a different part of the brain to create, and audiences were forced to play catch up.

Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies

Cognitive Sciences and Medieval Studies PDF Author: Juliana Dresvina
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786836750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
This study brings together medieval studies and cognitive methodologies in a study specifically aimed at medievalists. It presents a longer history of certain mental health conditions and locates contemporary debates about the mind in a broader historical framework. It considers both the benefits of incorporating insights from contemporary neuroscientific and cognitive studies into the exploration of the past, and the benefits of employing historical models and case studies in order to reflect on modern methods.

Numinous Fields: Perceiving the Sacred in Nature, Landscape, and Art

Numinous Fields: Perceiving the Sacred in Nature, Landscape, and Art PDF Author: Samer Akkach
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004687386
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Numinous Fields has its roots in a phenomenological understanding of perception. It seeks to understand what, beyond the mere sensory data they provide, landscape, nature, and art, both separately and jointly, may mean when we experience them. It focuses on actual or potential experiences of the numinous, or sacred, that such encounters may give rise to. This volume is multi-disciplinary in scope. It examines perceptions of place, space, nature, and art as well as perceptions of place, space, and nature in art. It includes chapters written by art curators, and historians and scholars in the fields of landscape, architecture, cultural geography, religious studies, philosophy, and art. Its chapters examine ideas, objects, and practices from the ancient time of Aboriginal Australians’ Dreaming through to the present. The volume is also multi-cultural in scope and includes chapters focussed on manifestations of the sacred in indigenous culture, in cultures influenced by each of the world’s major religions, and in the secular, contemporary world. Foreword by Jeff Malpas Contributors: Samer Akkach, James Bennett, Veronica della Dora, Alasdair Forbes, Virginia Hooker, Philip Jones, Russell Kelty, Muchammadun,Tracey Lock, Ellen Philpott-Teo, John Powell, Rebekah Pryor, Wendy Shaw.

Queer Ecopedagogies

Queer Ecopedagogies PDF Author: Joshua Russell
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030653684
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This volume builds on the momentum surrounding queer work within environmental education, while also encouraging new connections between environmental education research and the growing bodies of literature dedicated to queer deconstructions of categories such as “nature,” “environment,” and “animal.” The book is composed of submissions that engage with existing literature from queer ecology, queer theory, and various explorations of sexuality and gender within the context of human-animal-nature relationships. The book deepens and diversifies environmental education by providing new theoretical and methodological insights for scholarship and practice across a variety of educational contexts. Queer pedagogies provide important critical points of view for educators who seek broader goals centred around social and ecological justice by encouraging counter-hegemonic views of bodies, nature, and community. The scope of this book is multi- or interdisciplinary in order to cast a wide net around what kinds of spaces, relationships, and practices are considered educational, pedagogical, or curricular. The volume includes chapters that are conceptual, theoretical, and empirical.

Darwin's Worms

Darwin's Worms PDF Author: Adam Phillips
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786748613
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Adam Phillips has been called "the psychotherapist of the floating world" and "the closest thing we have to a philosopher of happiness." His style is epigrammatic; his intelligence, electric. His new book, Darwin's Worms, uses the biographical details of Darwin's and Freud's lives to examine endings-suffering, mortality, extinction, and death. Both Freud and Darwin were interested in how destruction conserves life. They took their inspiration from fossils or from half-remembered dreams. Each told a story that has altered our perception of our lives. For Darwin, Phillips explains, "the story to tell was how species can drift towards extinction; for Freud, the story was how the individual tended to, and tended towards his own death." In each case, it is a death story that uniquely illuminates the life story.

The Art Of Seduction

The Art Of Seduction PDF Author: Robert Greene
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651402
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.