Editorial

Readers will have noticed a new design for the cover, which appeared just in time for the previous issue but too late for editorial comment. This design is the most visible of several changes that have been made recently better to communicate the raison d’être of this journal. Apart from the cover image, these include a new brief statement, a longer one beneath it on ISR’s leading web page and improvements in how unsolicited submissions are processed. The image, ‘Two men discussing coming hunt’ (1961), by Inuit artist Qabaroak Qaisiya of Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset), Nunavut, Canada, was already an altogether too indistinct and incomplete part of ISR’s cover. With communication of the journal’s fundamental purpose in mind, I wanted to foreground Qaisiya’s powerful image so that it would act emphatically on the word ‘science’, by implication enlarging its semantics beyond the natural sciences, back to the larger dimensions of scientia, as is the journal’s actual scope. This is not to exclude, push away or ‘soften’ the scientific but to stretch its meaning (Lloyd 2021). I also wanted by means of the image to suggest ISR’s communal purpose. Students of conversation and of social intelligence more broadly will, I trust, appreciate Qaisiya’s conjuring of the two hunters’ shared mind. To paraphrase cognitive scientist Andy Clark, we are nudged to attend to how, in the betweenness of their relation, they create a common understanding, hence to see that much of what matters about our intelligence is hidden not in the brain, nor invested in any technology, but brought about through the complex and integrated interactions and collaborations between ourselves, each other and the world (Clark 2001, 153–4). Thanks are due to Dorset Fine Arts, Toronto, Canada, for permission to reproduce ‘Two men discussing coming hunt’ and to the staff of Taylor & Francis for patiently translating into an effective design my notions of what would look right. I would also like to welcome to the Editorial Board, Dr Ksenia Tatarchenko (Singapore Management University). In addition I am happy to announce the appointment of our new Communications Editor, Gee Abraham.