The Naturalist Turn in Literary and Art Study: Two-Way Interdisciplinarity and the Sciences of Mind

In recent years, a bourgeoning area of paradigm-revising scholarly investigation involves what could be referred to as a “Naturalist” or “Cognitive” turn in literary and art study, exploring the interface between theory in the arts and humanities and scientific theory of the type produced in disciplines belonging to the empirical and cognitive paradigm such as linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy of mind and cognitive neuropsychology. In this paper, I will discuss a range of theoretical, epistemic and methodological issues raised by such an interdisciplinary enterprise including the possibility of a genuine methodological merger with the cognitive paradigm, the plea for psychological realism, the extent to which the scientific method is compatible with the nature of literature and art as an investigative object and the need for genuine, two-way interdisciplinary practices in literary and art study. I will also briefly consider the role Relevance Theory might have to play in this interdisciplinary venture as both a pragmatic and epistemological framework.