Medicine has evolved from the undertaking of the individual practitioner to a state in which many disciplines become involved in administering both diagnostic and treatment services. It has become a standard of care in hospital and clinic-based practice to utilize a multidisciplinary approach to medical care. Multidisciplinary modes of practice, however, do not ensure that participants interact cooperatively, or with the exclusive purpose of patient benefit. The usual mode of interaction within medical academic and clinical environments promotes individualism, protectionism, and some degree of isolation, not infrequently to the detriment of patient care. The stated purpose of this book is to provide a synthesis of theories and methodologies that promote a growing permeability of boundaries and that allow for intellectual accommodation. Health care professionals have been turning to interdisciplinary intervention approaches for several reasons, but the most compelling in medicine is the need to solve problems that are beyond the

Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice

The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination

Can we really be surprised that readers have overlooked Nabokov’s ironies in Lolita, when Humbert Humbert is given full and unlimited control over the rhetorical resources? . . . One of the delights of this delightful, profound book is that of watching Humbert almost make a case for himself. But Nabokov has insured that many, perhaps most, of his readers will be unsuccessful, in that they will identify Humbert with the author more than Nabokov intends. (391) Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chapter 13

Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of Lolita

The crooked timber of humanity: Chapters in the history of ideas: Isaiah Berlin, ed. Henry Hardy (London: John Murray, 1990), 276 pp., £18.95

The emergence of substance abuse as a major social problem, the growing awareness of the risks of iatrogenic drug addiction, and the increasing government surveillance of narcotic distribution are affecting physicians’ attitudes toward therapeutic use of opiates and inhibiting many clinicians who treat cancer patients from prescribing adequate drugs for pain control. This volume critically examines the cultural, legal, and medical factors that influence physicians’ decisions on use of narcotics for cancer pain and establishes objective guidelines for making these decisions. Most of the fundamental issues in the field of pain -including epistemological questions -are addressed by a truly multidisciplinary group of contributors, including drug abuse experts, government regulators, lawyers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and theologians, as well as basic scientists, clinical pharmacologists, pharmacists, anesthesiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, oncologists, internists, and nurses.

Does God Play Dice The Mathematics Of Chaos

This book brings together the study of self-reflective fiction and the contemporary 4E theories of cognition in order to challenge existing cognitive-theoretical models and approaches to literary phenomena. Polvinen presents reflective attention on artifice as an integral part of engagement with fictional narratives, rather than as an external viewpoint that would obscure immersive experiences. The detailed analyses included are both of traditionally metafictional texts by John Barth, A.S. Byatt, Dave Eggers, and Ali Smith, as well as of speculative fictions by Ted Chiang, China Miéville, Christopher Priest, and Catherynne M. Valente. Each of the chapters focuses on a specific issue of fictional cognition: on metaphorical representation, spatiality, temporality, and fictionality. As a whole, the book argues that by combining a literary and theoretically complex view of artifice with the enactive paradigm of perception and imagination, practitioners of cognitive literary studies can further sharpen their own conceptual and terminological apparatus and continue to generate fruitful hermeneutic circulation around the study of the imagination in both the sciences and the humanities. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in cognitive approaches to literary studies, speculative fiction, metafiction, and narrative studies. 

Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition

This article presents an account of the design and perceived results of a course on cognitive narratology. The course aims to introduce the theoretical apparatus of cognitive narratology, including issues such as social cognition (mind reading) and the mental construction of fictional worlds. Students explore these issues by reading and analyzing science fiction and fantasy texts in which various narrative conventions are concretized within what would normally be impossible worlds and scenarios. The aim in using texts from popular genres is both to create in students reading experiences that engage their imaginations and to give them explicit illustrations of the cognitive functions of narrative. Of these functions, the course focuses on literature as mental work, that is, on texts providing dynamic patterns of thought for readers to act out. A focus on literature as mental work can provide students with a theoretical outlook and analytical toolbox while at the same time preserving a central role for their individual reading experiences.

Merja Polvinen

Papers

Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition

Engaged Reading as Mental Work: Reflections on Teaching Cognitive Narratology