Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture

The first systematic application of theories of distributed cognition to this historical period. This collection brings together eleven essays by international specialists in Romantic and Enlightenment culture and provides a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. The essays revitalise our reading of Romantic and Enlightenment works in the fields of archaeology, history, drama, literature, art, philosophy, science and medicine, by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. Collectively the essays in the book makes evident the ways in which the particular range of sociocultural and technological contexts that existed during the long eighteenth century periods fostered and reflected particular notions of distributed cognition.