Music and the Cognitive Humanities: Interdisciplinary Insights

Music and the Cognitive Humanities explores how music and its web of cultures, practices, and experiences can be examined through perspectives that combine the sciences and the humanities. Bringing together nineteen leading international scholars from complementary disciplines, it investigates how scientific and humanities approaches to the musical mind can inspire richer understandings of what it means to experience and engage with music. The volume challenges conventional disciplinary boundaries to foster a unique dialogue between empirical and theoretical research. To this end, each chapter is co-authored by researchers representing both scientific and humanities traditions. These partnerships yield fresh insights into complex topics such as musical creativity, empathy, development, performance, and subjectivity, unlocking new avenues of inquiry that pave the way for a more integrated approach. As part of the Music as Art and Science series, Music and the Cognitive Humanities embodies a new model of radical interdisciplinarity and invites readers to consider how cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, musicology, cultural history, and performance studies can, when working in concert, illuminate aspects of musical life that may not be disclosed by any single disciplinary account. Combining intellectual rigor with clear and accessible writing, this book offers a compelling vision of how the cognitive humanities can contribute to a richer, deeper, and more inclusive understanding of human musicality in the twenty-first century.