Social Cognition, Collective Imagination, Arts and Zeitgeist

Abstract

Cognition and imagination are human faculties that are often thought as individual processes. In recent decades, however, they have been studied as one collective experience. Cognition and imagination are so strongly linked to both mind and body that they characterize what it means to be human. Body, brain, cognition and imagination are, in turn, related to culture; culture is manifested by the Arts. We propose that community art reflects its own zeitgeist and changes when collective cognition changes. Thus, humans continuously modify their understanding of themselves and the world. Here, we describe the changing of Arts from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, when Arts became known by their authors and each work individualized. Concomitantly, advances in Medicine lead to the developing of a detailed human Anatomy as Perspective became increasingly visual. Shifting trends from the Renaissance to the Baroque also accompanied the manifestation of body movement in Arts as Physiology emerged in Medicine, altogether with collective cognition and imagination changing.