ABSTRACT
This is a foundational chapter in which a framework is established for the method of cognitive history. It begins with psychologist Jerome Bruner’s notion of cognition as making meaning of our experiences in the world. Cognitive science is thus the science of meaning-making. We introduce the idea of a cognitive historical space as constituted of an “ecological space” containing culture, community and nature, a “cognitive space” containing a person’s beliefs/knowledge, affects, needs/goals and mental operations, and the attribute of historicity. The cognitive historical space characterizes the space in which creative phenomena unfold; it also provides the conceptual framework in which the cognitive historian will strive to make sense of creative phenomena.
