Monday, December 13, 2010

From the Sensory Order to the Literary Order?

How might Hayek's The Sensory Order inform or affect the way we understand literature?

One might object that this gets us too far afield from the issues surrounding the use of Austrian economics to understand certain elements in literature and literary production -- yet Hayek saw The Sensory Order as central to his work in economics and social theory (D'Amico and Boettke's objections notwithstanding). Whether Hayek thought his economics came from his ideas on the brain, or his ideas on the brain came from his economics, there might be some benefit to using his understanding of how the brain worked to understanding literature. Or should we just skip ahead to contemporary theories of the brain and have a separate area of study, such as neuro-literary studies, or Evolution and Literature?

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