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HANNAH CHAPELLE WOJCIEHOWSKI, VITTORIO GALLESE, Introduction

ible with the scientific method; hence, a empted combinations of
these two mega-frameworks — the humanities and the sciences —
result in an uneasy and unpersuasive conceptual fit at best, and, at
worst, a fundamental loss of disciplinary identity and/or the capital-
ization or weaponization of the humanities. There is some legitimacy
to those concerns. Nevertheless, a vast frontier for new interdiscipli-
nary, biocultural research has opened up, and many in the humanities
are choosing to explore that frontier.
Meanwhile scientists in the last decades have started investi-
gating topics and issues that have for ages been the exclusive domain
of study of various disciplines in the humanities. They have done it
in many different ways: a) by using artistic expressions to under-
stand how the brain works; b) by localizing in the brain and/or re-
ducing to its functioning — aesthetic concepts (beauty, the sublime,
etc.); c) by studying the brain to explain art; d) by studying the brain-
body interface in relation to artistic expressions in order to under-
stand the constitutive elements of aesthetic experience and the gen-
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esis of aesthetic concepts. We believe that the contribution of science
to the humanities can be highly relevant, particularly if spelled out
as in d). If science can abandon its delusion of total explanatory self-
sufficiency, it can greatly benefit from a transdisciplinary dialogue
and collaboration, as it brings to the attention of the scientific ap-
proach an enormous corpus of knowledge testifying to the great di-
versity of culture, and at the same time some universal principle pre-
siding over the way human beings relate to the reality through the
lens of fictional narrative.
In her book A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpre-
tation, Nancy Easterlin, one of the pioneers in the emergent field of
cognitive literary and cultural studies, makes a powerful case for
studying art and literature through the lens of cognitive evolutionary
theory. She argues, “Adopting a biocultural approach to literary inter-

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For a recent survey, see Vi orio Gallese and Michele Guerra, Lo schermo em-
patico. Cinema e neuroscienze (Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2015).

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