Strange tools: art and human nature - Alva No�

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• A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature , the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva No argues that our obsession with works of art has gotten in the way of understanding how art works on us.
• For No , art isn't a phenomenon in need of an explanation but a mode of research, a method of investigating what makes us human--a strange tool.
• Art isn't just something to look at or listen to--it is a challenge, a dare to try to make sense of what it is all about.
• Art aims not for satisfaction but for confrontation, intervention, and subversion.
• Through diverse and provocative examples from the history of art-making, No reveals the transformative power of artistic production.
• By staging a dance, choreographers cast light on the way bodily movement organizes us.
• Painting goes beyond depiction and representation to call into question the role of pictures in our lives.
• Accordingly, we cannot reduce art to some natural aesthetic sense or trigger; recent efforts to frame questions of art in terms of neurobiology and evolutionary theory alone are doomed to fail.
• By engaging with art, we are able to study ourselves in profoundly novel ways.
• In fact, art and philosophy have much more in common than we might think.