[Bmi] brain-mind-society-culture

[hans kuijper]

Dear BMILISTS,

Over the last three months or so, I have been following some of your work with great interest, trying to understand it in the context of fast developing cognitive science(s?). I do believe that the mind is embodied and consequently biologists, particularly brain scientists, (will) have a lot to say about this ill-defined 'thing'. 

However, educated in the humanities (I graduated in sinology from Leyden University) and becoming increasingly interested in the science of complexity, I believe that the mind is also embedded. For, as Lev Vygotsky already argued in his book Mind in Society (1930): 'The mind cannot be understood in isolation from the surrounding society', an original idea revisited in Andrzej Nowak, Katarzyna Winkowska-Nowak and David Brée (eds.), Complex Human Dynamics: From Mind to Society, Springer, 2013.

Culture (that other notoriously difficult to describe 'thing', about which many books have been written) seems to be the missing link between mind and society. So the conundrum workers in the natural and cultural (i.e. social and human) sciences should address collaboratively is the identification, characterisation and understanding of the intimate connection between mind's embodiedness and embeddedness. 

Arguably, there is nothing more complex than a country, or a culture, being a hypercomplex system of complex systems in context (its outside world). If 'a revolution is occurring in the social sciences', as the editors of Complex Human Dynamics claim, that easily overlooked point is to be taken into account. See the article 'Lifting the study of China onto a higher plane' that I recently posted on the website www.academia.edu.     

Since I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled The Complexity of Countries, I wonder if anyone of you could suggest what I should definitely read to be well-informed about the cutting edge research not only on brain, mind, society and culture but also (and perhaps in the first place) on the relationships between these intricately patterned entities. 

Needless to say, I would be most grateful if you could help me.

Yours sincerely, 

Hans Kuijper
Joliotplaats 5
3069 JJ Rotterdam
The Netherlands
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