ABSTRACT
In their book, A Universe of Consciousness, experimental neurobiologists Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi seek 'a new view of how matter becomes imagination' based on the proposition that consciousness is embodied uniquely and privately in each individual (Universe xiii; 208). Gilbert Sorrentino, an experimental novelist, has his own view of the 'imaginative qualities of actual things,' which he comes to by way of a modernist tradition that sees literature as a world apart. It is more than a metaphorical leap from esthetic modernism - a generalized cultural condition grounded in the uniqueness and autonomy of each text, the materiality of each abstract painting, and the arrangement of any and all component sounds into music - to the systematic study of a common consciousness uniquely embodied in each individual mind. By juxtaposing these two views and considering imaginative qualities in the same framework as qualia, the possibility arises for a convergence of science and esthetics appropriate to our own modernity, a period not yet historicized though clearly marked by a heightened investigation into the material basis of human cognition.
