Storia dell’arte e neuroscienze: come progettare oggi nuove forme di collaborazione

Although the topic is very much in vogue, the question of the origins of creativity has been gradually abandoned by the art faction and picked up by cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, by social scientists interested in grasping the secret of the prosperity or decline of nations, and by management model theoreticians. What is the relationship between historical knowledge and “hard sciences”? Between art history and psychobiology, art history and neuroaesthetics? These are questions of particular interest at a time when the social utility of humanistic studies (or of “theoretical” studies in general) seems to be coming under fierce challenge in the name of technology, mathematics and applied sciences, disciplines gathered under the apt acronym “STEM”. The very bitterness of the debate compels to wonder about the nature of the process of innovation, and to bring one’s skills as an art historian together with current scientific research.