Dear John,
I confess that I get a little alarmed when people prepend "neuro" to
everything. So perhaps you can justify exactly why you regard neural
plasticity as a "tool" of explanation. What is it about plasticity
that would allow explanation in the history of Art? And why would this
provide any better explanation than any other variable physical
characteristic, for example, the cellular life-cycle, body weight or
organism topology?
With respect,
Steven
--
Dr. Steven Ericsson-Zenith
Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering
http://iase.info
http://senses.info
On Sep 21, 2008, at 10:08 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi,everyone,
> I have been listening in and behaving myself till now, taking great
> interest in the discussion of big issues. Now I want to step in
> because
> with Ramachandran's 'laws' the big issues are coming down to
> specifics in
> my area. For the last fifteen years I have been trying to use
> neuroscience to help understand the history of art and have been
> delighted
> to discover that neuroscientists are similarly engaged, following a
> two
> and a half thousand year tradition. Indeed, last year I published a
> book
> with Yale reviewing that history 'Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle and
> Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki'. It is fascinating that big thinkers
> have
> been trying to formulate laws-or at least principles-in this area.
> But of
> course nobobody until today had enough knowledge of the brain to
> explore
> the neurological foundations of those principles. Now I believe we
> do,
> and my next two books will endeavour to do that. One puzzle for me
> is
> that people in neuroaesthetics tend to disregard neural plasticity
> which
> to me is an essential tool as I try to explain why different
> individuals
> have made art in different ways at different times and in different
> places. That is why I differentiate my activity, which has much in
> common with neuroaesthetics, as neuroarthistory. What I am trying
> to do
> is to formulate principles which explain those differences, using the
> record of all art worldwide from prehistory to the present as
> experimental
> material. If you want to find out a bit about this project you can
> read
> the introductory material to my Atlas of World Art 2004(just
> reissued in a
> cheaper edition as the Atlas of Art 2008). I like to think that the
> wealth of data provided by that rich record allows us both to
> formulate
> and test such principles. The testing is the essential part.
> Whether
> the principles I -and others working in this area-come up with are
> eventually recognised as laws remains to be seen, John
>
>
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