The “THINKING: Bioengineering of Science and Art” is to discuss about philosophical aspects of thinking at the context of Science and Art. External representations provide evidence that the fundamental process of thinking exists in both animal subjects and humans. However, the diversity and complexity of thinking in humans is astonishing because humans have been permitted to integrate scientific accounts into their accounts and create excellent illustrations for the effects of this integration. The book necessarily begins with the origins of human thinking and human thinking into self and others, body, and life. Multiple factors tend to modify the pattern of thinking. They all will come into play by this book that brings thinking into different disciplines: humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and applied sciences. The thinking demands full processing of information, and therefore, the book considers the economy of thinking as well. The book thoroughly intends to explore thinking beyond the boundaries. Specifically, several chapters are devoted to discipline this exploration either by artistic thinking alone or by art and mathematics-aided engineering of complexities. In this manner, the book models variations on thinking at the individual and systems levels and accumulates a list of solutions, each good for specific scenarios and maximal outcomes.

The Routledge International Handbook of Neuroaesthetics is an authoritative reference work that provides the reader with a wide-ranging introduction to this exciting new scientific discipline. The book brings together leading international academics to offer a well-balanced overview of this burgeoning field while addressing two questions central to the field: how the brain computes aesthetic appreciation for sensory objects and how art is created and experienced. The editors, Martin Skov and Marcos Nadal, have compiled a neuroscientific, physiological, and psychological overview of the systems underlying the evaluation of sensory objects and aesthetic appreciation. Covering a variety of art forms mediated by vision, audition, movement, and language, the handbook puts forward a critical review of the current research to explain how and why perceptual and emotional processes are essential for art production. The work also unravels the interaction of art with expectations, experience and knowledge and the modulation of artistic appreciation through social and contextual settings, eventually bringing to light the potential of art to influence mental states, health, and well-being. The concepts are presented through research on the neural processes enabling artistic creativity, artistic expertise, and the evolution of symbolic cognition. This handbook is a compelling read for anyone interested in making a first venture into this exciting new area of study and is best suited for students and researchers in the fields of neuroaesthetics, perceptual learning, and cognitive psychology.

Musical Sense-Making: Enaction, Experience, and Computation broadens the scope of musical sense-making from a disembodied cognitivist approach to an experiential approach. Revolving around the definition of music as a temporal and sounding art, it argues for an interactional and experiential approach that brings together the richness of sensory experience and principles of cognitive economy. Starting from the major distinction between in-time and outside-of-time processing of the sounds, this volume provides a conceptual and operational framework for dealing with sounds in a real-time listening situation, relying heavily on the theoretical groundings of ecology, cybernetics, and systems theory, and stressing the role of epistemic interactions with the sounds. These interactions are considered from different perspectives, bringing together insights from previous theoretical groundings and more recent empirical research. The author’s findings are framed within the context of the broader field of enactive and embodied cognition, recent action and perception studies, and the emerging field of neurophenomenology and dynamical systems theory. This volume will particularly appeal to scholars and researchers interested in the intersection between music, philosophy, and/or psychology.

The taste of chocolate, the noise of a crowd, the visual impressions of filmic images—such sensory perceptions are rarely if ever discussed in relation to democratic theory. In response, Davide Panagia argues that by overlooking sensation political theorists ignore a crucial dimension of political life. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s and Jacques Rancière’s readings of Kantian aesthetics, Panagia posits sensation as a radical democratic moment of aesthetic judgment. He contends that sensory experience interrupts our perceptual givens, creating occasions to suspend authority and reconfigure the arrangement of a political order. Panagia claims that the rule of narrative governs our inherited notions of political subjectivity and agency, such that reading and writing are the established modes of political deliberation. Yet the contemporary citizen-subject is a viewing subject, influenced by film, photos, and other perceptual stimuli as much as by text. Challenging the rule of narrative, Panagia analyzes diverse sites of cultural engagement including the visual dynamics portrayed in the film The Ring, the growth of festival culture in late-fifteenth-century Florence, the practices of convivium espoused by the Slow Food movement, and the architectural design of public newsstands. He then ties these occasions for sensation to notable moments in the history of political thought and shows the political potential of a dislocated subjectivity therein. Democratic politics, Panagia concludes, involves a taking part in those everyday practices that interrupt our common modes of sensing and afford us an awareness of what had previously been insensible.

Frameworks -- Beauty -- Art -- Music -- Dance -- Architecture.

Once upon a time, neuroscience was born. A dazzling array of neurotechnologies emerged that, according to popular belief, have finally begun to unlock the secrets of the brain. But as the brain sciences now extend into all corners of cultural, social, political, and economic life, a yet newer world has taken shape: “neuroculture,” which goes further than ever before to tackle the profound ethical implications we face in consequence. The Assemblage Brain unveils a major new concept of sense making, one that challenges conventional scientific and philosophical understandings of the brain. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, Tony D. Sampson calls for a radical critical theory that operates in the interferences between philosophy, science, art, and politics. From this novel perspective the book is structured around two questions: “What can be done to a brain?” and “What can a brain do?” Sampson examines the rise of neuroeconomics in informing significant developments in computer work, marketing, and the neuropharmaceutical control of inattentiveness in the classroom. Moving beyond the neurocapitalist framework, he then reestablishes a place for proto-subjectivity in which biological and cultural distinctions are reintegrated in an understanding of the brain as an assemblage. The Assemblage Brain unravels the conventional image of thought that underpins many scientific and philosophical accounts of how sense is produced, providing a new view of our current time in which capitalism and the neurosciences endeavor to colonize the brain.

This book assesses the role aesthetic factors play in shaping what forms of mass violence are viewed as international crimes.

Emotions in the workplace have until recently been seen simply as a distraction. We often think of work as rational, logical and non-emotional. But organisations are waking up to the key role of emotions and affect at work. Emotions influence how we make decisions, how we relate with one another and how we make sense of our surroundings. Whilst organisations are slowly embracing the pivotal role of emotions, designers and managers of workplaces have been struggling to keep up. New insights from hard sciences such as neuropsychology are presenting a radically different interpretation of emotions. Yet workplace designers and facilities managers still rely on measuring non-specific states such as satisfaction and stress. In this book we attempt to capture modern-day interpretations of emotion, looking at emotion in terms of transactions and processes rather than simple cause and effect. We entertain the idea of an ‘emotionally intelligent building’ as an alternative to the much-hyped intelligent building. The assertion is that we should create environments that are emotionally intelligent. Rather than focusing on the aptitudes or shortcomings of individuals at work, we should place closer attention on the office environment. It’s not that we are emotionally disabled – it’s the environment that disables us! The ability of you and me to interpret, control and express emotions may not simply be a result of our own make-up. A radically different outlook considers how our workspace and workplace debilitates or enables our emotional understanding. In the modern workplace there are many innovations that can undermine our emotional intelligence, such poorly implemented hot-desking or lean environments. Contrariwise there are key innovations such as Activity Based Working (ABW) that have the potential to enhance our emotional state. Through a series of unique case studies from around the world, we investigate key concepts that can be used by designers and facilities managers alike. No longer should designers be asked to incorporate emotional elements as intangible un-costed ‘add-ons’. This book provides a shot in the arm for workplace design professionals, pointing to a new way of thinking based on the emotional intelligence of the workplace.