What's up with Beauty Studies (ie Neuroaesthetics) these days?
A quote from Beauty and the Brain (by the proprietor of Neurophilosophy) in Seed (h/t, Dr. X):
...recent work by several researchers at University College London?—?including the establishment of the first major grant-driven research program for the neurobiological investigation of aesthetics, or neuroaesthetics?—?has made the first steps toward a unified biocultural theory of art.
An object's beauty may not be universal, but the neural basis for appreciating beauty probably is. The researchers' initial discoveries and the increasing formalization of the field promise to open the way for the first time to an understanding of beauty based on something other than speculation.
Can things of the soul and spirit be understood in terms of neurotransmitters and neural wiring? Count me a skeptic. Different levels of organization have different rules and patterns which do not transfer one to the other. For example, you could know everything about atoms but never predict a living cell, and you could understand everything about a cortical network without predicting Moby Dick. (And, for me, on a good day I see beauty everywhere but on a bad day I see it nowhere.)
Still, they may as well give it a try. I get skeptical when they call it a bio-cultural model, however. It makes it too clear that they seek to detour around the psychology part.
