-- By Tom Phillips
What is art for? Does
it have any use at all? Does it give us
anything beyond pleasure, or a momentary release from the cares of life?
These questions have been around for thousands of
years. Today, there is a burst of
renewed interest in them, because they have moved from the realm of
philosophical speculation to the solider ground of scientific research. Here the answers are confirmed not just by
experience, but by pictures of brain activity.
And these pictures show us that the experience of beauty is central not
just to human pleasure, but to human growth.
In Feeling Beauty -- The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience, G.
Gabrielle Starr weaves together the language of neuroscience with a deep
understanding of the arts, and makes a convincing case that by taking us out of
ordinary experience, the arts offer us a window into ourselves – what we are,
and what we can become.
