The eleventh KNEW workshop will take place in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, in August, 10th to 14th. The topic for this year’s workshop is Placing Art and Music in Nature. Recent scientific research concerning art and music has thrown up a plethora of new aspects to be integrated into our understanding of these phenomena. Individual studies, such as attempts to explain aesthetic responses in terms of some aspect of human neurology, have at times been deemed reductionist. Quite apart from such ‘accusations’ often being wholehearted accepted by researchers, the overall picture of art that science is revealing is anything from simplistic. Instead, research coming out of a variety of disciplines is presenting philosophy with ever new challenges if it is to provide anything like an integrated understanding of art and music. Thus, among others, ecological approaches provide a novel perspective upon meaning in music, embodied approaches explore the role of the specific played by the body in experiencing music and evolutionary approaches examine the significance of human evolutionary history for art and music. Far from being simplified, the view that tended to focus upon cultural factors has been enriched by consideration of cognitive and evolutionary factors as well as novel tools and ways of thinking about the interplay between art and music and the broader cultures in which they exist. In effect, it is philosophy that is forced to extend its perspective in order to seek a synthesis that reflects the new research. In our workshop we will seek to further this process by engaging philosophers and scientists in a dialogue concerning the multifaceted place that art and music hold in nature.
The keynotes are Ian Cross (University of Cambridge), Ellen Dissanayake (University of Washington), Piotr Przybysz (Adam Mickiewicz University). The deadline for abstracts is June, 30.
The full call for papers is found at the workshop website. The event is organized by Marcin Miłkowski, Jakub Ryszard Matyja, and Konrad Talmont-Kaminski.