This concluding chapter revisits naturalized aesthetics, in which our understanding of art and aesthetic experience is clarified through a bidirectional exchange between philosophy and the empirical sciences, arguing for further collaboration with history and literature—disciplines whose existing cognitivist subfields are known as the cognitive humanities. The first part takes a closer look at the troublesome concept of the ‘natural,’ noting a tendency for neuroaesthetic approaches to search for human universals rather than attending to the particulars of culture and era. By contrast, naturalized aesthetics is—and ought to be—centrally concerned with other ‘natural’ connotations such as coherence with empirical evidence. The second part argues for the historical contingency of mental taxonomies and offers the history of emotions as a model for historicizing cognition and the arts. Awareness of past conceptions helps us ‘denaturalize’ present-day understandings to better appreciate how cognition is emergent and biocultural. The third part discusses scholarship applying the framework of distributed or situated (4E) cognition to aspects of the Early Modern theatre and the Enlightenment novel. Overall, a robust engagement between naturalized aesthetics and the cognitive humanities transforms the topic of cognition and the arts as well as the interdisciplinary exchange known as cognitive science.

Chapter 1 examines Agnolo Gaddi’s work between 1392 and 1395 in the chapel in Prato cathedral, which was built to house the Virgin’s Belt, the most important relic in the city. Primary sources allow reconstruction of the ceremony during which the precious relic of the Virgin’s Belt was displayed to the public. The monumental narratives of the origins of the Holy Belt and its journey to Prato celebrated Prato’s favored status as custodian of the relic. Detailed surviving payments, here published in full for the first time, reveal a narrative of the chapel’s construction and decoration and bring to light how the artist, Agnolo Gaddi, collaborated with Florentine and Pratese artisans in the enterprise. Agnolo’s  professional and personal connections with the Pratese Opera, and the social identities of its members, expose a rich network of relationships in which the commission unfolded.

Chapter 2 focuses on the extensive decoration of the Camposanto in Pisa, the monumental cemetery adjacent to the cathedral complex. Here the author describes the ceremonies associated with death, burial and remembrance that animated the vast spaces. Unlike previous assumptions of a single program that from the beginning guided the mural decoration, it is proposed here that the wall paintings, completed during three discrete periods, reflected the changing social and religious significance of the Camposanto as a communal burial space open to all classes of Pisans. The murals of the life of the Pisan patron saint Rainerius were begun by Andrea di Buonaiuti (also called Andrea da Firenze) and completed by Antonio Veneziano in 1386. Commisssioned by Pietro Gambacorta, the signore of Pisa, they celebrated Pisa’s identity as a vibrant polity with a venerable history, against the backdrop of a fast-changing political reality.

Chapter 1 introduces the main arguments, findings, and contributions of the book. Counterrevolution is a subject that has often been overlooked by scholars, even as counterrevolutions have been responsible for establishing some of history’s most brutal regimes, for cutting short experiments in democracy and radical change, and for perpetuating vicious cycles of conflict and instability. The chapter reveals some of the most important statistics from the book’s original dataset of counterrevolution worldwide. These statistics raise a number of puzzling questions, which motivate the theoretical argument about counterrevolutionary emergence and success. After previewing this argument, the chapter discusses the main contributions of the book, including to theories of revolution, democratization, and nonviolence; to ongoing debates about Egypt’s revolution and the failures of the 2011 Arab Spring; and to our understanding of the present-day resurgence of authoritarianism worldwide. It finishes by laying out the multi-method research strategy and providing an overview of the chapters to come.

Chapter 4 pivots to Umbria, where Fra Filippo Lippi painted the apse decoration in the cathedral of Spoleto between 1466 and 1469. Here again, primary and secondary sources reveal the ceremonies that took place in the cathedral and highlight the relationship of the apse paintings and the venerated Madonna icon of the cathedral. The bishop of Spoleto, Berardo Eroli, played a leading role in the commission, which is set in the context of his art patronage in Umbria and Rome. From the copious documentation for the Spoleto project – here published in full for the first time – emerges evidence that Eroli conceived the Coronation murals as a magnificent setting for the Madonna icon of the cathedral and its display on holy days, especially the feast of the Virgin’s Assumption, August 15. In his vision and his active involvement in the project during its execution, Eroli sought to link the Spoleto Duomo visually and liturgically with the venerable basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

This chapter considers a fundamental question about how the mind works: Are the algorithms of cognition specifically implemented by the nervous system, with a unique role played by representations and processes internal to the brain? Alternatively, is cognition better understood as a product of the brain and body—or perhaps the result of the entire organism interacting with its environment? The first part focuses on the theoretical shift from mental representation and mind–brain identity to the embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive mind, approaches collectively known as 4E, distributed, or situated cognition. In the second part, 4E concepts such as epistemic action are applied to aspects of art and music, specifically the creation of visual depictions, the invention of musical notation, and the use of musical instruments. In the third part, the scope widens to the interdisciplinary exchange itself. Consistent with the themes of this book, I suggest that expanding the concept of cognition benefits from bringing the empirical sciences in closer dialogue with philosophy and the humanities. Specifically, the distributed perspective strengthens the interdisciplinary framework of naturalized aesthetics by drawing increased attention to the conceptual rigour valued by philosophers and to the cultural–historical contingencies emphasized by scholars of the humanities.