Questioning how knowledge acts: the relationship between the performer's pedagogy and cognitive neuroscience

The thesis addresses these questions: Can the actor’s pedagogy contribute to the scientific investigation of human cognitive processes? If yes, how? The dissertation affirmatively stated that the actor’s pedagogy could bring an important scientific contribution to studies in human cognition, given that theatre research grounded on pedagogy, as opposed to a training which is merely functional to acquiring specific acting skills, originated and continued to be strongly characterized by a scientific investigation of action, which cognitive neuroscience recognizes as the fulcrum of human knowing. Thus the actor’s pedagogy could contribute to scientific research into human cognition already at a fundamental theoretical level, which is basic to all research, in addition to lending instances of actor training to the analytic instruments of cognitive science. For the scientific exchange between the performer’s pedagogy and cognitive neuroscience to reach its full potential, therefore, important epistemological questions had to be addressed. The dissertation thus produced strong arguments against the still widespread dichotomy between art and science, and identified general complexity theory as a common epistemological ground upon which the performer’s pedagogy and cognitive neuroscience may dialogue to enhance the research into the essential relationship between knowledge and action.