Abstract
Small things matter, especially in the so-called ‘arts’. From the visual arts
to music and literature, ‘miniatures’ are a transcultural and transhistorical
phenomenon that involves our aesthetic attitudes but also our everyday life,
our emotional, social and cognitive life. Miniaturisation characterises our
cognitive life and, of course, the ‘cognitive life of things’ that we produce,
manipulate and discard. My paper is articulated into two sections: the first
gives a quick overview of the miniatures of Homo sapiens, especially those
of the paleolithic age, and a brief survey of the very challenging history
of miniature-interpretation in twentieth-century philosophy of culture.
In the second part I focus on five cognitive interpretations of miniature,
which are supported by some experimental evidence.
Publisher
Amsterdam University Press
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