Renaissance Considered as a Creative Phenomenon

<p>By using the fresh investigative language of <i>cognitive history</i> a symbiosis of the methods of cognitive science and historical inquiry this book departs from almost all previous approaches to Renaissance studies.</p><p>The Renaissance has attracted the attention of distinguished scholars from many different vantage points – political social economic intellectual and cultural. In this volume Subrata Dasgupta sheds an alternative light on the Renaissance by considering it as a creative phenomenon. To be creative is to <i>make history </i>by producing material and/or abstract <i>artifacts </i>that are both new and consequential; to be creative also entails drawing on history and on the culture of the time. Most significantly the creative process occurs in individual minds: it is a cognitive process of a very special kind. Beginning with a ‘prehistory’ set in classical Greece and medieval Islam this book explores a variety of inventions and discoveries through the 14th–16th centuries mainly in Italy in humanities painting architecture craft technology anatomy natural science and engineering.</p><p>This book will be of interest not only to Renaissance scholars but also to students interested in Renaissance history and the nature of the creative tradition.</p>