[Adta] Mark Johnson: The meaning of the body

[Sabine Koch]

Just appeared.
Enjoy! (sorry for cross posting)

Sabine Koch
University of Heidelberg, Germany

*Mark Johnson.*

*The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.*

*Synopsis*
The belief that the mind and the body are separate and that the mind is 
the source of all meaning has been a part of Western culture for 
centuries. Both philosophers and scientists have questioned this 
dualism, but their efforts have rarely converged. Many philosophers 
continue to rely on disembodied models of human thought, while 
scientists tend to reduce the complex process of thinking to a merely 
physical phenomenon. In "The Meaning of the Body", Mark Johnson 
continues his pioneering work on the exciting connections between 
cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic 
"Metaphors We Live By". Johnson uses recent research into infant 
psychology to show how the body generates meaning even before 
self-consciousness has fully developed. From there he turns to cognitive 
neuroscience to further explore the bodily origins of meaning, thought, 
and language and examines the many dimensions of meaning - including 
images, qualities, emotions, and metaphors - that are all rooted in the 
body's physical encounters with the world. Drawing on the psychology of 
art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all these aspects of 
meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. Thus, the arts are the 
culmination of human attempts to find meaning, and studying the 
aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking the 
bodily sources of meaning. Brilliantly synthesizing a broad range of 
scientific research and philosophical inquiry in clear and original 
writing, Johnson's "The Meaning of the Body" puts forth a bold new 
conception of the mind rooted in the understanding that philosophy will 
matter to non-philosophers only if it is built on a visceral connection 
to the world.