A Neurophenomenology of Awe and Wonder Towards a Non-Reductionist Cognitive Science

Employing methods from neuroscience, psychology, phenomenology and simulation technology, the authors designed the first scientific study of the feelings of awe and wonder experienced by astronauts during space flight. This study provides a detailed analysis of the categories of awe and wonder experiences and their replication in two interdisciplinary experiments. It explores questions that pertain to the representations of these experiences in science, art, and culture, and the effect of these representations on our expectations concerning space. This study is offered as a model for integrating first-person phenomenology and third-person experimental science, with considerations about how culture can shape experience. By pursuing these 'large' interdisciplinary methods, the authors argue for an integrated, non-reductionist approach to cognitive science.

Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis. He has a secondary research appointment at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and is Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen and Durham University (UK), and Honorary Professor of Health Sciences at the University of Tromsø, Norway. He has held visiting positions at Cambridge, Copenhagen, Paris, Lyon and Berlin. Professor Gallagher is the recipient of the Humboldt Foundation's Anneliese Maier Research Award [Anneliese Maier-Forschungspreis] (2012-17).

Chapter 1. Introduction: How to study subjective experiences
PART I: STUDYING AWE AND WONDER
Chapter 2: Hermeneutical explorations
Chapter 3: Awe and wonder in a simulated space flight: Experiment 1
Chapter 4: Neurophenomenology and simulation: Philosophical ground control and a sharpening of our tools
Chapter 5: Redesigning Plato's cave: Experiment 2
PART II: INSIGHTS AND EXTENSIONS
Chapter 6: The phenomenology of unprecedented experience: Ontological and cognitive wonder
Chapter 7: Science and science fiction: How popular culture shapes our expectations about space
Chapter 8: The very idea of non-reductionist science