Cognitive Science, Literature and the Arts (review)

Contemporary thinkers frequently lament the difficulty in finding materials that strengthen foundations for cross-disciplinary communication. Cognitive Science, Literature and the Arts, by Patrick Colm Hogan, is an exception. A quite readable book, the volume will prove to be a useful tool for those who wish to participate in and contribute to a research program that combines humanities and cognitive science. The interactive feel of the book makes it appealing without compromising its value in explaining scientific concepts. Indeed, as the book progressed, I kept thinking that it would be an effective text in a classroom, where students from the various fields could directly engage with the scientific studies, access the artistic works used to reference artistic concepts (e.g. James Cameron's Titanic, John Coltrane's rendition of "My Favorite Things," and Shakespeare's King Lear) and flesh out areas that receive little treatment in the text, such as visual art. In this kind of environment, I believe, the whole would prove to be greater than the parts.

Several factors serve Hogan well as he tackles the task of simplifying relationships among cognitive science, literature and the arts. One is his use of questions to aid in leading us through the material. (A sampling includes: Why are some sequences of sound music and others noise? What are the differences between a literal statement and a metaphorical one? Why do we feel literary emotion, even though we know the events in the work are fictional? Why do many people feel sad at precisely the same moment when watching a movie such as Titanic? Is it the music?) A second is the book's overall organization into sections that build on one another as the material is presented. All of these factors allow Hogan to leave the reader with a sense that dynamics are a major part of the book's construction as well as the appreciation process we bring to art itself. Listening to music, reading a book, watching a movie and exploring a painting are all dynamic processes. In other words, the work has to be constructed to appropriately activate both the cognitive (cortical) and emotional (limbic) brain parts in their natural dynamic interplay. Shakespeare does not just tell a story, he interweaves comedy and tragedy, mystery and romance so as to keep all the components bubbling with their different dynamics holding our interest. While most of us intuitively recognize the degree to which it is the dynamic resonance that makes music so powerful emotionally, Cognitive Science, Literature and the Arts makes us aware of this explicitly and offers a compelling account of how similar dynamics are evident in literary and visual arts.

In Chapter 1, Hogan gently eases the reader into the subject with a taste of how a listener cognitively processes music. From here, in Chapter 2, Hogan moves to cognitive science more generally, offering an overview of cognitive theory. Chapter 3 then outlines basic principles of creativity (emphasizing Howard Gardner's work). Next Hogan turns to metaphor (e.g. Lakoff, Turner, Ortony and Tversky), followed by information on how a viewer reconstructs a story from the "discourse" or presentation of it. The theme of Chapter 6 is the emotive response to literature, framed in terms of a work's narrative structure as well as an individual's memories, literary emotion and recent work in neurobiology, all the time grappling with the question of why we are moved by the experiences of characters we know to be fictional. Concluding with an overview of evolutionary psychology, and pointing out areas of methodological laxity, Hogan gives us much to think about in terms of the overall potential and roadblocks we must consider in combining cognitive science, literature and the arts.

The strongest part of Hogan's study comes from his ability to lead us through scientific schools of thought without overlooking the need to simplify technical topics such as represen-tationalism, connectionism, parallel and serial processing, encoding, types of memory...