Variations on this essential dynamic scaffold succeeding discussion. Indeed, cognitive constraints already in place constitute the familiar/habitual that allows us to recognize the unfamiliar/novel a healthy brain subsequently extends the range of the familiar by including the erstwhile unfamiliar. Although the brain is predisposed to respond to stable forms, it also relies on the integration of stimuli that challenge this stability, setting off a hermeneutic spiral that helps to maintain its vital plasticity. First and foremost, optimal cortical functioning depends upon both constancy and flexibility. The Preface and Chapter One ('The Brain and the Aesthetic Experience') present the foundational concepts brought to bear in Armstrong’s subsequent account of the neurobiology of the aesthetic experience. In recognizing this unbreachable 'explanatory disciplinary gap,' Armstrong repudiates any attempt to reduce art to science.
The author is quick to point out, however, that such biological constraints can never fully explain an individual’s reaction to a work of art, because particular historical, emotional, and social circumstances make each aesthetic experience subjective and irreducible to scientific causality. Indeed, his fundamental assertion is that the human brain is hard-wired to react in specific ways to certain aesthetic forms. ISBN: 978-1-4214-1576-5Īlthough this study covers ground familiar to anyone conversant with scientific and/or humanist perspectives on such notions as empathy, de-familiarization or hermeneutics, Armstrong’s analysis - as suggested by the title - is addressing both audiences in his well researched and richly documented explanation of how brain processes frame the aesthetic experience. Armstrong, How Literature Plays with the Brain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) xv+221 pp.
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