Main entry:

Stafford, Barbara Maria, 1941- author.

Title & Author:

Ribbon of darkness : inferencing from the shadowy arts and sciences / Barbara Maria Stafford.

Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.
©2019

Description:

x, 217 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Preface: the bottom of the garden -- Introduction: on being struck: hitting the eye/arousing the mind -- Inscrutability. "Black and glittering": the inscrutable sublime ; Lying side by side: fitting color to eros ; The ultimate conjuncture: what shadows the brain-mind merger? ; Reconceiving the Warburg Library as a working museum of the mind -- Ineffability. From communicable matter to incommunicable "stuff": extreme combinatorics and the return of ineffability ; Impossible to name: performing the ineffable ; "Totally visual?": op art's neural iconography and the engineered picture ; Dark wonder: belowness, or the ineffable underground ; Still deeper: the non-conscious sublime or the art and science of submergence -- Intuitability. Strange shadows/marred screens ; Thought gems: inferencing from the impersonal crystalline ; The jewel game: gems, fascination, and the neuroscience of visual attention ; From observant eye to non-attentive "I": the camera as cognitive device ; Seizing attention: devices and desires.

Summary:

Over the course of her career, Barbara Stafford has established herself the preeminent scholar of the intersections of the arts and sciences, articulating new theories and methods for understanding the sublime, the mysterious, the inscrutable. Omnivorous in her research, she has published work that embraces neuroscience and philosophy, biology and culture, pinpointing connections among each discipline's parallel concerns. Ribbon of Darkness is a monument to the scope of her work and the range of her intellect. At times associative, but always incisive, the essays in this new volume take on a distinctly contemporary purpose: to uncover the ethical force and moral aspects of overlapping scientific and creative inquiries. This shared territory, Stafford argues, offers important insights into - and clarifications of - current dilemmas about personhood, the supposedly menial nature of manual skill, the questionable borderlands of gene editing, the potentially refining value of dualism, and the limits of a materialist worldview. Stafford organizes these essays around three concepts that structure the book: inscrutability, ineffability, and intuitability. All three, she explains, allow us to examine how both the arts and the sciences imaginatively infer meaning from the "veiled behavior of matter," bringing these historically divided subjects into a shared intellectual inquiry and imbuing them with an ethical urgency. A vanguard work at the intersection of the arts and sciences, this book will be sure to guide readers from either realm into unfamiliar yet undeniably fertile territory.

ISBN:

9780226630489 hardcover ; alkaline paper
022663048X hardcover ; alkaline paper
9780226630519 paperback ; alkaline paper
022663051X paperback ; alkaline paper
electronic book
9780226630656

Subject:

Art Aesthetics.
Sublime, The, in art.
Art and science.
Art and technology.
Art Esthétique.
Sublime dans l'art.
Art et sciences.
Art et technologie.
ART / General.
Ästhetik
Bild
Das Erhabene
Kunst
Wissenschaft
Esthétique.
Matière Philosophie.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 305737
Call No.: BIB 251593
Status: Available