The Historical Mind: Visit by Nicolas Bullot from Charles Darwin University
How people think has been the main topic in psychology since the cognitive revolution. In contrast to the earlier research that assumed an empiricist foundation for psychology, an influential group of cognitive scientists developed nativist and individualist programs of research based on the idea that the mind is composed of domain-specific modules assigned to specific topics, such as physics, biology, and psychology. An example of such folk psychology is the theory of mind, the assumption emerging in children from the age of about 6 that other humans – and not only they themselves – have minds, too.
In summer 2019, Nicolas Bullot from Charles Darwin visited LCE (host: Rolf Reber) to expand their collaborative research on the fundamental links between human thinking and historical cognition. In previous research, Bullot and Reber demonstrated that contextual and historical enquiry had a major impact on the appreciation of works of art. This finding raised a challenge for nativist and individualistic models that had neglected the critical role of historical cognition in human thinking. During the visit, they discovered other domains of thinking where historical cognition plays a critical role and has been left unanalyzed by earlier research. This includes research into common sense preferences and economic decisions. For example, people do not want to wear a T-shirt worn by a mass murderer but they think a spoon that belonged to Queen Elisabeth is more valuable than an identical spoon without this past. Literature is replete of descriptions of personal histories, which further supports the notion that people have a capacity for historical thinking that has been overlooked by prior research.
Nicolas gave a reading group session on art and science. He showed how science influenced art, how art influenced science, and how science might have contributed to the understanding of art. The discussion revealed that these ideas could be applied to the case of the relationship between literature and science, a topic relevant for LCE and its transdisciplinary research program.