The Riddles of Monism: An Introductory Essay

Recent developments in the cognitive sciences point to a convergence, for some a clash, of the humanities and natural science. In 2004, a group of leading neurobiologists published a manifesto in the German journal Gehirn und Geist (Brain and Mind), claiming that advances in their discipline meant that it was poised to tackle the problems of consciousness and free will. In the growing field of evolutionary psychology, the leading research question “what is the evolutionary good of God?” indicates that religion has been subsumed under the explanatory framework of Darwinian natural selection. 1 In the humanities, meanwhile, some scholars are looking to the physiology of affective response to support new theories of emotions, subjectivity, and cognition, while others have argued that historical inquiry needs to extend its reach beyond written and archaeological sources and examine the brain itself as an evolving social product, where the “features of culture” have been “wired in human physiology.” 2 As they cross over the disciplinary boundaries of natural science and the humanities, these varied scholarly endeavors represent a common challenge to the Cartesian conception of mind and body as essentially separate domains. Against dualistic understandings of human reality, they seek to analyze nature and culture from a single vantage point. Philosophically, this stance is called monism. 3 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.