The Aesthetic Brain
How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 28 November 2013
- ISBN 9780199811809
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages248 pages
- Size 218x145x22 mm
- Weight 363 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
The Aesthetic Brain takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey addressing fundamental questions about aesthetics and art. Using neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Chatterjee shows how beauty, pleasure, and art are grounded biologically, and offers explanations for why beauty, pleasure, and art exist at all.
MoreLong description:
The Aesthetic Brain takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey through the world of beauty, pleasure, and art. Chatterjee uses neuroscience to probe how an aesthetic sense is etched in our minds and evolutionary psychology to explain why aesthetic concerns feature centrally in our lives. Along the way, Chatterjee addresses fundamental questions: What is beauty? Is beauty universal? How is beauty related to pleasure? What is art? Should art be beautiful? Do we have an instinct for art? Chatterjee starts by probing the reasons that we find people, places, and even numbers beautiful. At the root of beauty, he finds, is pleasure. He then examines our pleasures by dissecting why we want and why we like food, sex, and money and how these rewards relate to aesthetic encounters. His ruminations on beauty and pleasure prepare him and the reader to face art. He wanders through the problems of defining art, understanding contemporary art, and interpreting ancient art. He explores why art, something that seems so useless, also feels fundamental to our humanity. Replete with facts, anecdotes, and analogies, this empirical guide to aesthetics offers scientific answers without deflating the wonders of beauty and art.
In this book, Dr Anjan Chatterjee. . . introduces us to the emerging field of neuroasthetics. . . In his cogent review of the long history of human artifact-making art, he carefully considers the many definitions of aesthetics, art, and beauty. . . The author comes to his persuasive conclusion after having carefully examined prehistoric art objects, the history of art, evolutionary biology, brain anatomy, and functional studies.
Table of Contents:
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
BEAUTY
1. What is this thing called beauty?
2. Captivating faces
3. The measure of facial beauty
4. The body beautiful
5. How the brain works
6. Brains behind beauty
7. Evolving beauty
8. Landscapes
9. Numbering beauty
10. The illogic of beauty
PLEASURE
1. What is this thing called pleasure?
2. Food
3. Sex
4. Money
5. Liking, wanting, learning
6. The logic of pleasure
ART
1. What is this thing called art?
2. Art: Biology and culture
3. Descriptive science of the arts
4. Experimental science of the arts
5. Conceptual art
6. The inception of art
7. Messy minds
8. Evolving art
9. Art: A tail or a song?
10. The serendipity of art
