Anjan Chatterjee

There's this fad nowadays, the neuro-fill-in-the-blank approach that seeks to reduce explanations of just about anything to a combination of neural mechanics and vague evolutionary Just-So stories. Maybe some people find such tales reassuring. As a child I loved Kipling's Just-So stories precisely because they showed up the ridiculousness of ex post facto pseudo-evolutionary reasoning. I am more susceptible to the minority view, that "Instinct is a Cheshire Cat" (Klopfer 1973, see N.S. show more Thompson's review in Quarterly Review of Biology 49.2). To my relief and pleasure, Anjan Chatterjee's volume is smart and well-informed, and takes a generous and open-minded approach to art. No pleasantly simple origin stories are spun in this book, which will be accessible to casual readers. A true scientist, Chatterjee savors complexity rather than trying to reduce it, and he does so with modest charm. show less

يتناول الكتاب تأثير الفن والجمال على الدماغ، لماذا نرى أشياء أجمل من أخرى، ولماذا بدأ البشر بصناعة الفن من الأساس.