Mark Johnson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, is author of The Body in the Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1997) and co-author (with George Lakoff) of Metaphors We Live By (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Philosophy in the Flesh (Basic Books, 1999). The exploration of the imaginative capacity of the embodied mind is Mark Johnson's focus, including ways in which cognitive metaphoric procedures and image-schemas provide the basis not only for how we have understanding, but for how we have a world.

Ellen Dissanayake, independent scholar and writer, is author of What is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus (1992), and Art and Intimacy (2000) (all published by the University of Washington Press). Ms. Dissanayake's work demonstrates how the arts have been essential to our evolution as a species. Most recently, she has traced the beginnings of human practice and experiences of the arts to our earliest infancy, in interrelatedness with other persons.

Lewis Hyde, Luce Professor of Art and Politics at Kenyon College (and Macarthur Fellow), is author of The Gift (Vintage Books, 1983) and Trickster Makes The World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). Lewis Hyde's focus is the phenomenon of the trickster in mythology and its existence in contemporary society (especially in the arts). Tricksters are boundary-crossers and subvert defenses to satisfy their immense appetites. They may cheat, steal, and lie, but are nevertheless indispensable cultural heroes.

Nancy E. Aiken, an independent scholar and artist, is the author of The Biological Origins of Art (Praeger, 1998). Ms. Aiken offers a solution to the problem of how art evokes emotion and has outlined with empirical evidence the impact of art on individuals and speculated on how this, in turn, impacts on society and culture.