What Science Offers the Humanities Integrating Body and Culture [Hardcover]

This book examines some of the problems facing the study of culture.What Science Offers the Humanities examines the current problems with the study of culture. Slingerland proposes moving beyond the mind-body dualism set forth by postmodernism and Enlightenment objectivism and towards a vertically integrated approach to the study of culture.What Science Offers the Humanities examines the current problems with the study of culture. Slingerland proposes moving beyond the mind-body dualism set forth by postmodernism and Enlightenment objectivism and towards a vertically integrated approach to the study of culture.What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture. It focuses especially on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism's harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciencesand particular research on human cognitionwhich demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the blank slate theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture.Introduction; Part I. Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine: 1. The disembodied mind; 2. They live among us; 3. Pulling the plug; Part II. Embodying Culture: 4. Embodying culture; Part III. Defending Vertical Integration: 5. Defending the empirical; 6. Who's afraid of reductionism?; Conclusion. For years humanists have been heralding the end of the great aglÃè