Positive Technology Journal

My friend and science journalist Pierangelo Garzia has written an interesting piece on the neuroscientific basis of collecting that will appear soon in the Cartier Art Magazine, "Collectors".

Here is the abstract:

Recent studies in neuroscience have demonstrated that collecting is a biological necessity even more than a psychological one. For early man collecting was a means of providing for his vital needs. For contemporary man is an important way of providing for psychological well-being.

Prehistoric man set aside the fundamental elements he needed for his survival and so do we. The refrigerator and the supermarket are the modern equivalents of cold cellars and food caches of earlier times.

Collecting is born of a basic need: survival, not only physical, but psychical well. There's not a great deal of difference between prehistoric man and urbanized third millennium beings like ourselves.

 

Cartier 19, 2008, Cartier Art Magazine, "Collectors" (monographic issue).