Aesthetic Science
Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience
Arthur P Shimamura editor Stephen E Palmer editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:12th Jan '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£52.00(9780199355808)
What do we do when we view a work of art? What does it mean to have an "aesthetic" experience? Are such experiences purely in the eye (and brain) of the beholder? Such questions have entertained philosophers for millennia and psychologists for over a century. More recently, with the advent of functional neuroimaging methods, a handful of ambitious brain scientists have begun to explore the neural correlates of such experiences. The notion of aesthetics is generally linked to the way art evokes an hedonic response--we like it or we don't. Of course, a multitude of factors can influence such judgments, such as personal interest, past experience, prior knowledge, and cultural biases. In this book, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists were asked to address the nature of aesthetic experiences from their own discipline's perspective. In particular, we asked these scholars to consider whether a multidisciplinary approach, an aesthetic science, could help connect mind, brain, and aesthetics. As such, this book offers an introduction to the way art is perceived, interpreted, and felt and approaches these mindful events from a multidisciplinary perspective.
"Shimamura and Palmer's excellent book resurrects Gustav Theodor Fechner's plan from the 1870s for an empirical science of art and aesthetics, a project which briefly flourished before withering during the 20th century. In a millennial renaissance, the cognitive sciences have readdressed art and aesthetics, in what Shimamura and Palmer aptly call 'Aesthetic Science'." -- Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London
ISBN: 9780199732142
Dimensions: 165mm x 236mm x 25mm
Weight: 882g
424 pages