I’m reading some material in cognitive science to develop an understanding of the role of embodiment in cognition and thus in cultural development and phenomena. This I feel is essential both in understanding the encounters between Iranians and Europeans and how they shaped the two sides in relation to each other, and in terms of the creative processes I will use in this project. I am more and more convinced that the body is the locus of exchange here, and the language is but an extension of embodiment. Therefore, reading a little in cognitive linguistics as well.
Embodiment in the field of cognitive science refers to understanding the role of an agen’s own body in its everyday, situated cognition. (Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science, 1)
People’s subjective, felt experience of their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for language and thought. Cognition is what occurs when the body engages the physical, cultural world and must be studied in terms of the dynamical interactions between people and the environments. Human language and thought emerge from recurring patterns of embodied activity that constrain ongoing intelligent behavior. We must not assume cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the gross and detailed ways that language and thought are inextricably shaped by embodied action. (Ibid, 9)