Being Fragmented and Being Whole: Explorations in Cognitive Sciences, Contemplative Religious Traditions, and Art Practice

Abstract

Contemporary advances in cognitive sciences, and especially in cognitive neuroscience, caused a gradual but major shift of a paradigm within the humanities. From dualistic mind/body, subjective/objective, abstract/concrete, cognition/emotion approaches, the focus progressively moved toward embodied and enactive non-dualist perspective. The research chronicled by this thesis contributes to this current. It utilises both theory and praxis as methodological tools for instigating a dialogue between cognitive sciences and contemplative religious and art practices. Its primary concern is to re-examine these practices within the totality of the human condition in the context of cognitive sciences, offering a new perspective on some of the underlying processes that define us as human beings. Particular attention has been given to dynamic embodied processes inherent to the enactment of brain-body-environment meaning-structures and the formation of hexis. The experiential focus of the entire project completes its circle in the final, experimental part of the research that is illustrated by self-exegesis of the author’s own art practice, performed in part also as an “embodied enquiry” into contemplative religious traditions. This interaction between the theoretical and practical/performative research resulted in a particular contribution to knowledge: the new enactive methodological interpretative framework which was developed by drawing on the findings of cognitive sciences and is applicable to the studies in religion, as well as to the practice-based art research that preferences a self-reflective and a craft-based contemplative focus.