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Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Reveals Diverse Notions of Distributed Cognition in the Early Greek and Roman Worlds

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Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Reveals Diverse Notions of Distributed Cognition in the Early Greek and Roman Worlds Edited by Miranda Anderson, THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF DISTRIBUTED COGNITION Douglas Cairns and THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF DISTRIBUTED COGNITION Mark Sprevak ‘Once we look for it, distributed cognition is ubiquitous in classical antiquity. This book is a fascinating examination of the tools that made thinking easier and of the complex boundaries between the individual mind and the group.’ Ruth Scodel, University of Michigan Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Reveals diverse notions of distributed cognition in the early Greek and Roman worlds This collection brings together eleven essays by international specialists in classical antiquity and provides a general and a period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. The essays look at the ways in which cognition is explicitly or implicitly conceived of as distributed across brain, body and world in Greek and Roman technology, science and medicine, material culture, philosophy and literary studies. This exploratory work will be valuable across the humanities as it reveals the historical foundations of our theoretical and practical attempts to comprehend and optimise the distributed nature of human cognition. Miranda Anderson is a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Douglas Cairns is Professor of Classics in the University of Edinburgh. Mark Sprevak is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Cover image: © János Kass, etching made for the illustration of Madách Imre’s Az ember tragédiája (Tragedy of Man), Egypt Cover design: Bekah Mackenzie and Stuart Dalziel Edited by Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns and Mark Sprevak 2 Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Distributed Cognition in Classical Antiquity Edited by Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns and Mark Sprevak Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns and Mark Sprevak, 2019 © the chapters their several authors, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12 Monotype Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 2974 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 2976 4 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 2977 1 (epub) The right of Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns and Mark Sprevak to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Contents List of Illustrations v Series Preface vi 1. Distributed Cognition and the Humanities 1 Miranda Anderson, Michael Wheeler and Mark Sprevak 2. Distributed Cognition and the Classics 18 Douglas Cairns 3. Physical Sciences: Ptolemy’s Extended Mind 37 Courtney Roby 4. Distributed Cognition and the Diffusion of Information Technologies in the Roman World 57 Andrew M. Riggsby 5. Mask as Mind Tool: A Methodology of Material Engagement 71 Peter Meineck 6. Embodied, Extended and Distributed Cognition in Roman Technical Practice 92 William Michael Short 7. Roman-period Theatres as Distributed Cognitive Micro-ecologies 117 Diana Y. Ng 8. Cognition, Emotions and the Feeling Body in the Hippocratic Corpus 132 George Kazantzidis 9. Enactivism and Embodied Cognition in Stoicism and Plato’s Timaeus 150 Christopher Gill 10. Enargeia, Enactivism and the Ancient Readerly Imagination 169 Luuk Huitink iv contents 11. Group Minds in Classical Athens? Chorus and Dēmos as Case Studies of Collective Cognition 190 Felix Budelmann 12. One Soul in Two Bodies: Distributed Cognition and Ancient Greek Friendship 209 David Konstan 13. Distributed Cognition and its Discontents: A Dialogue across History and Artistic Genre 225 Thomas Habinek and Hector Reyes Notes on Contributors 240 Bibliography 243 Index 287 List of Illustrations Figure 6.1 Detail after an artist’s rendition of the Darius Vase (South Italian red-figure vase found at Canosa, Puglia, dating to about 340 to 320 bce, now housed at the Museo Archaeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy). The seated calculator manipulates a mounted counting board while holding a writing tablet. 105 Figure 6.2 Schematic images metaphorically underlying Latin’s expressions of mental activity. 111 The plate section can be found between pages 70 and 71. Plate 1 Detail from the Pronomos Vase. Attic red-figured volute krater by the Pronomos Painter, c. 420–400 bce (Naples, NM 81673). Credit: akg- images/Album/Oronoz. Plate 2 Red-figure chous or oinochoe fragment, c. 430 bce. American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Agora Excavations (P. 32870). Plate 3 Raphael, School of Athens, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican Palace. Photo credit: Erich Lessing/ART RESOURCE, New York. Plate 4 Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria, Musée Condé, Chantilly. Photo credit: Harry Bréjat/RMN-Grand Palais (Domaine de Chantilly). Series Preface This book, like the series of which it is part, explores the notion that the mind is spread out across brain, body and world, for which we have adopted ‘distributed cognition’ as the most comprehensive term. Distributed cognition primarily draws evidence from philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, linguistics and neurosci- ence. Distributed cognition covers an intertwined group of theories, which include enactivism and embodied, embedded and extended cognition, and which are also together known as ‘4E cognition’. An overview and explanation of the various strands of distributed cognition are provided in the general introduction. Distributed cognition can be used as a methodology through which to pursue study of the humanities and is also evident in past practices and thought. Our series considers a wide range of works from classical antiquity to modernism in order to explore ways in which the humanities benefits from thinking of cognition as distributed via objects, language and social, technological and natural resources and environments, and to examine earlier notions that cognition is distributed. Theories of distributed cognition are transformative in terms of how we understand human nature and the humanities: they enable a different way of perceiving our interactions in the world, highlighting the significant role of texts and other cultural artefacts as part of a biologically based and environmentally grounded account of the mind. Theories of distributed cognition offer an opportunity to integrate the humanities and the sciences through an account that combines biologically and culturally situated aspects of the mind. The series illuminates the ways in which past ideas and practices of distributed cognition are historically and culturally inflected and highlights the cognitive significance of material, linguistic and other sociocul- tural developments. This evidence has the potential to feed back into cognitive sci- ence and philosophy of mind, casting new light on current definitions and debates. Each volume provides a general and a period-specific introduction. The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate read- ers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. The period-specific introductions provide a more detailed analysis of work in the cognitive humanities in the period covered series preface vii by the volume, before going on to reflect on how the essays in the volume advance understanding in the humanities via distributed cognition. The project from which this series emerged provided participants with an online seminar series by philosophers working on various aspects of distributed cogni- tion. These seminars are publicly available on the project’s website (http://www. hdc.ed.ac.uk/seminars). The seminars aim to help researchers in the humanities think about how ideas in distributed cognition could inform, and be informed by, their work. Four workshops were held in the summer of 2015 at the University of Edinburgh and were attended by nearly all the volume contributors. The work- shops brought participants together to collaborate in ways that contributed not just to the making of this series but to the development of this approach to the humanities. From the springboard of the seminar series, through the gathering together of scholars from across a range of disciplines and by ongoing interaction with the editorial team during the production of the final essays, the aim has been to provide a set of rigorous analyses of historical notions of distributed cognition. The series is deliberately exploratory: the areas covered by the essays are indica- tive of the benefits of the general approach of using distributed cognition to inform cultural interpretations. The first four volumes of the series concentrate primarily on Western Europe; however, we envisage further future volumes that will expand the scope of the series. If distributed cognition is understood as we contend,
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