Interview with Ellen Dissanayake
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2025.814.2930Keywords:
art, behavior, evolution, mutuality, biologyAbstract
Ellen Dissanayake (Rock Island, 1936) is an independent writer and researcher with a professional affiliation to the University of Washington. The focus of her research is transdisciplinary, incorporating evolutionary biology, ethology and neuroscience, among other fields of study. Over the years, combining her interest in the arts with evolutionary biology, and using her own experience from living for more than 15 years in non-Western countries, Ellen Dissanayake has developed a new way of looking at the arts as a normal, natural and necessary component of our evolutionary nature as human beings.
In her work she addresses art as behavior and its evolution, the biological and neurobiological foundations of aesthetics and the arts, etc. Given the great relevance of his thinking for my research and that I was cotranslating her latest book Art and Intimacy. How the Arts Began (2000) into Spanish, the University to which I belong, UNED, financed a visit to her current residence in Seattle. There we had the opportunity to talk about different aspects of his academic and personal work, both being inseparable in his career. This interview is the result of conversations held.
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