CFP:

Consilience (or Sunderance?): Art, Language, and Biology

In his 1998 book Consilience, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson called
for the unity of knowledge between science and the humanities. That his
work was largely misunderstood by the academic community has already been
addressed by Stephen Pinker in The Blank Slate (2002). Specifically,
Wilson called for "consilient research;" this Art History session poses,
for example, the following questions (allowing, of course, for questions
that are their opposites): What is the relationship between form and
narrative (language) in art? How does the scientific language of systems,
laws, reduction, cause-effect, pattern, and elegance relate to art-making
and art interpretation? What is the relationship of mind (language) and
matter in art? What is the role of "para-language" (facial expression,
posture, and gesture) in art? How does art develop & express science?
Where does art come from in both history and personal experience? How are
truth and beauty in art, for example, described through ordinary language?
What are the ways in which art ("born in the imagination of individuals")
can be seen in the context of gene evolution?
What do cross-culture analyses of color vocabulary and color vision tell
us? What roles do metaphor and archetype play in both art production and
interpretation? What is the relationship between the language of art and
art interpretation and neuroscience/evolutionary biology?

Please send paper proposals or abstracts to:

scordulackmail.millikin.edu

or

Shelley Cordulack
Art History Dept.
Millikin University
1184 West Main St.
Decatur, IL

Conference Link is:

http://issei2008.haifa.ac.il/

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