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Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts
Edited by Colin Martindale, Paul Locher and Vladimir M. Petrov
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Foundations and Frontiers of Aesthetics Series, Series Editors: Colin Martindale and Arnold Berleant
You can read the
Preface for free right now, just click here.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this book, well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to aesthetics, creativity, and psychology of the arts, approaching these topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music, and visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric archaeological evidence, this
arose very early in human development. Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration of ten theories on the evolutionary function of the arts, and this is followed by several chapters that consider the possible evolutionary function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is
shown in several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two exciting chapters describing
brain-scan research on what happens in the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and creativity.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Colin Martindale is Professor of Psychology at the University of Maine and Honorary Professor at the Perm (Russia) State Institute of Arts and Culture. He received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University (1970) and a Doctorat Honoris Causa from the Université Catholique de Louvain (1988). He is an Academician of the International Informatization Academy (Moscow). Martindale has been President of American Psychological Association Division 10 (Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts) (1986-87), the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (1994-98), and the Perm Institute of Sociocultural Dynamics (2002-2004). His awards include the 1984 Socio-Psychological Prize, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the 1998 Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Contributions to Psychology and the Arts and the 2001 Paul M. Farnsworth Award for Outstanding Contributions to APA Division 10, from Division 10 of the American Psychological Association; and the 2000 Gustav Theodor Fechner Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Aesthetics, from the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. He has served as editor of Empirical Studies of the Arts (1983-2005) and Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts (2001-2004) and is currently on the editorial boards of Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior, and Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology. He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications; his major books include Romantic Progression: The Psychology of Literary History (1975), The Clockwork Muse: The Predictability of Artistic Change (1990), Cognition and Consciousness (1981), and Cognitive Psychology: A Neural-Network Approach (1991). Martindale's current research interests include sociocultural evolution, neural-network explanations of aesthetic preference and creativity, and the relationship between physics and psychology.
Paul Locher is Professor of Psychology at Montclair State University. He has held positions as Visiting Scholar at Eindhoven University of Technology, Delft University of Technology, and the University of Leuven. He received a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Temple University (1973). Locher is President of the American Psychological Association Division 10 (Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts) (2004-2005) and President and Fellow of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics (2004-2006); he has been a member of the Psychonomic Society since 1982. Locher is editor of Empirical Studies of the Arts and on the editorial board of Acta Psychologica and Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts. His research findings have been published as book chapters and in many articles, in such journals as Perception, Acta Psychologica, Leonardo, Perception and Psychophysics, Computers and Mathematics with Applications, and Empirical Studies of the Arts. Locher received the 1999 Distinguished Researcher Award from the American Psychological Association and the New Jersey Psychological Association for his work in the field of experimental aesthetics. The major focus of his work is the influence of pictorial symmetry and balance on the creation, perception, and aesthetic evaluation of visual art. He also explores the effects of presentation format (original paintings housed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art versus slide-projected and computer-generated images and paper reproductions of the originals) and viewer training in the visual arts on the perception of pictorial and aesthetic qualities of paintings.
Vladimir M. Petrov is Principal Researcher at the State Institute for Art Studies (Moscow), Professor at the State University of Social Sciences (Moscow), and Honorary Professor at the Perm State Institute of Arts and Culture. He has held positions at the Institute of Applied Physics (Moscow), the Central Institute for Mathematical Economics (Moscow), and Moscow State University. He received his Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from the Institute of Applied Physics (1968) and D.Sc. in theory of culture from the State Institute of Art Studies (1993). Petrov is an Academician of the Academy of Human Sciences and of the International Informatization Academy, Vice-President of the Department of Information Culture of the International Informatization Academy, and Vice-President for Russia of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. He is the author of more than 400 scientific papers and 14 books. His best- known book in English (with G. A. Golitsyn) is Information and Creation: Integrating the 'Two Cultures' (1995). Recent books in Russian include Forecasting Artistical Culture: Methodological and Methodical Problems (1991), Direct and Indirect Impact of Art: Methodology and Methods of Investigation (1997), and Quantitative Methods in Art Studies (2004). He has also published several volumes of his poetry. Petrov was an active member of the Russian dissident movement from the 1960s through the 1980s. His major fields of interest are quantitative methods in the humanities, information theory, and linguistics.
ITENDED AUDIENCE: Researchers in creativity, aesthetics, and psychology of the arts (visual arts, literature, music).
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