Some years ago I gave a lecture on my work at the University of Iowa and when I 
finished a student blurted "You're a romantic!" and the audience twittered.  I 
replied in the affirmative...dryly.

I can't give you mileposts for my "experience".  I can't even relate my 
experience the same way twice because, like everyone else, I reinvent my 
experiences with each recollection.  And any experience is too complex to be 
set up as a mechanistic process. Nevertheless, my comment was clear enough in 
suggesting that. a., my human brain has genetically and evolved preferences for 
apprehending information and b., I happen to know a lot about art, its history 
and practices, to say nothing of a decades long acquaintance with the artist 
whose work I saw and wrote about in my post.  These two conditions help to make 
my "aesthetic" experience unique and helpful to my basic preferences for 
newness.

WC


--- On Wed, 8/6/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: an aesthetic experience and science
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 6:11 PM
> In a message dated 8/5/08 9:46:09 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
> 
> 
> > If there is an esthetic experience here, it is
> something explained by the
> > patterns of neural activity in my brain together with
> my keenness to the
> > practices of painting, a memory of similar art...and
> most of all, my
> constant
> > desire for more freedom of thought and experience --
> of wanting to see the
> other
> > side of the hill with every step. 
> >
> It's a romantic line, William, but what you have in
> mind with "explain" comes
> across as so indeterminate, so disparately multiplex, it
> may suit a fellow
> poet, but not an earnest thinker who wants to follow your
> thought.
> 
> 
> 
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> 17 )

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