Natural Classicism

This book presents Turner's exploration of - and attempt to integrate - principles of literature, art, music, biology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics and aesthetics. It is Turner's contention that a non-reductive reconciliation of disciplines is possible, and he proposes a new "great chain of being" that is "evolutionary and dynamic, and both proved and empowered by the achievements of the great detour the West took through materialistic empiricism". In the six essays that comprise this volume, Turner examines such diverse subjects as the relationship of performance and literature, the biochemical underpinnings of human motivation, Thoreau and the birth of American anthropology, and the neurophysiology of poetic meter. He probes the right brain/left brain dichotomy and theorizes about "the neurochemistry of aesthetic delight." He also predicts the nature of the successor movement to modernism and post-modernism.