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Historisk tidskrift 130:4 • 2010

Innehåll (Contents) 2010:4

Uppsatser (Articles)

Kognitiv historia. En introduktion

Av David Dunér

 

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Summary

Cognitive history: an introduction

Cognitive history concerns human cognitive processes, and the interaction be- tween man and the world. It rests on the supposition that people in history, as well as in the present, use cognitive abilities obtained through millions of years. Differences between cultures in history can be understood with reference to how humans in different ways used their universally shared cognitive tools in interaction with their specific environment in time and space. A cognitive history studies how humans in history have acted on and tried to understand their environment, time, and culture. Traces of these cognitive processes can be found in the historical sources. Cognitive history has an interdisciplinary approach. It strives to include perspectives from other acquired knowledge production, but can also contribute to the knowledge of the human cognitive evolution. In many ways it is connected to the Annales tradition in the use of long timelines, spatial circumstances, and mentalities. This article introduces what has been called the “cognitive turn” in the humanities. It begins with some comments on the meaning of time in history, and then proceeds by giving some examples of what a cognitive history can be about and how it can be useful and relevant for historical research. The focus is on the embodied mind, situated cognition, distributed cognition, perception, metaphors, and categorization. The article concludes with a suggestion of eight topics for a future cognitive history.

Keywords

categorization, cognitive history, cognitive turn, distributed cogni- tion, embodied mind, evolution, history of ideas, la longue durée, metaphors, perception, situated cognition