Edward Slingerland, What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), xv + 370 Pps. $24.99
Edward Slingerland taught in the School of Religion and Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California, where he was recipient of the 2002 General Education Teaching Award. He is currently Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia and is Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition. His previous books include Confucius Annalects (Hackett, 2003) and Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (Oxford University Press, 2007), which won the American Academy of Religion’s 2003 Best First Book in the History of Religions Award. In the current title, What Science Offers the Humanities, Slingerland examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture.
Whereas the human intuition of mind-body dualism is widespread, it should nevertheless be dismissed. Artificial Intelligence, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and behavioral neuroscience, all call mind-body dualism into question. In calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the ‘blank slate’ theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, the author also provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Slingerland argues for six particular claims in this text: 1) Cognition is situated; 2) Cognition is time pressured; 3) Cognitive work is offloaded onto the environment; 4) The environment is part of the cognitive system; 5) Cognition is designed for action; and 6) Offline cognition is body based. It is the later of these claims that Slingerland most highlights in this text (13). In so doing, he argues that to take an embodied approach to culture is to realize that the body does more than merely carry our brain or serve as a raw material for cultural inscription.
More pointedly, he focuses on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism’s harshest critics. He takes as the core distinctive of postmodern as being its approach to the study of culture that assumes humans are fundamentally linguistic-cultural beings, and that as such, our experience of the world is constitutionally mediated by language and culture (15). However, even while conceding some truths to postmodernism, he thinks the postmodern movement in general has outlived its usefulness, as it is framed in an empirically false and internally incoherent epistemology (16). Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take the natural sciences seriously – particularly research done in human cognition, research that demonstrates the separation of the mind and the body is impossible.
Part I, entitled “Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine,” is made up of three chapters, all of which build a case against dualistic approaches to epistemology. In chapter one, he sketches out the objectivist position, and then reviews some recent work in cognitive science that calls this position into question. Chapters two and three cover what Slingerland refers to as ‘postmodernism’. In the second, he demonstrates that the approach known as ‘postmodern’ is vibrant in today’s academy, and that it is in fact the ‘foundational’ theoretical dogma in most areas of the humanities. The third chapter attempts to finally put to rest postmodern epistemology and ontology, a move that he contends will remove the intellectual miasma in the academy today. He notes herein that linguistic and cultural constructivism is simply false.
The second part of the book, “Embodying Culture,” is composed of a singular chapter. It explicates how a shared embodied mind could produce the sort of cultural variety that is the single most salient phenomena to humanists. The bulk of this chapter is devoted to voluntary, temporary, and partial synaethesia, that is, metaphor, analogy, and metaphoric blends. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how culture and language shape the human mind. Slingerland presents the attempts of various philosophers and philosophers of science to formulate a pragmatic model of empirical inquiry, one that acknowledges its embeddedness, in the third part, which is entitled “Defending Vertical Integration.” In chapter five, he asserts that embodied realism can provide us with a coherent account of the status of natural scientific claims, and that it is a middle ground, of sorts, between traditional objectivism and postmodern relativism. Slingerland confronts “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” in chapter six, noting that whereas the physicalist position may be disturbing, there does not appear to be any viable alternatives to it at present. It is in response to this chapter that I offer my single criticism of this title: it should have incorporated more discussion regarding emergence, for it is in fact a viable alternative to physicalist reductionism.
As per the author, this title is intended principally for his colleagues in the humanities to see points of contact between their own work and the research coming out of the cognitive and biological sciences, as well as how an ‘embodied’ view of the person somewhat belies the dualistic model of the self that informs most of the work done in the humanities (xiv). This title is not only useful for a very broad academic audience, however, but also for interested general readers. In sum, it addresses the particular concerns of humanists and provides non-specialists with a helpful introduction to cognitive science. It is essentially a constructive and coherent response, one that is empirically responsible, to objectivist and postmodernist approaches to the study of culture, a response that also posits what humanists might gain from dialogue with the natural sciences. Not only this, however, but Slingerland also asserts that humanists have much to contribute to the study of natural science. Notably, the title includes a bibliography for further reading regarding “Embodying Culture,” and a useful index. This book should be read by those interested in interdisciplinary reflection between the sciences and the humanities.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA