 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Ellen Spolsky
Professor of English, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Second Speaker, Main Forum Session
Abstract
Cognitive Universals and Historical Change
The architecture of the mind/brain, specifically the gaps caused by its modularity,
makes it interestingly unstable. It is this very instability, however that
builds in the possibility of creativity. The job of the modular processes
is to produce representations which are not entirely overlapping. The derived
interpretation, then is the outcome of a negotiation aimed at achieving a kind
of satisfaction. Because any representation will always be a compromise,
it will always be unstable, teetering between obsolescence and novelty. (Witness
the way one sees the Necker cube in two competing ways.)
How, then, does the interpreting mind/brain react in the event of historical/
cultural change? Evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists
focus their study on how the brain, like any other organism, adapts to a changed
environment. But our cultural theory and our literary texts demand that
we investigate the reverse process as well. Our special contribution is
to study historical examples of the mind/brain as more than a passive reactor
or adapter. We need to develop more fully a cognitive description of the
mind’s productivity - its interpretive creativity - and how it effects changes
in the external culture.
Ellen Spolsky
Bar-Ilan University
|
|
|