Book description
Splendors and Miseries of the Brain
examines the elegant and efficient machinery of the brain, showing that
by studying music, art, literature, and love, we can reach important
conclusions about how the brain functions.
- discusses creativity and the search for perfection in the brain
- examines the power of the unfinished and why it has such a
powerful hold on the imagination
- discusses Platonic concepts in light of the brain
- shows that aesthetic theories are best understood in terms of the brain
- discusses the inherited concept of unity-in-love using evidence
derived from the world literature of love
- addresses the role of the synthetic concept in the brain (the
synthesis of many experiences) in relation to art, using examples
taken from the work of Michelangelo, Cézanne, Balzac, Dante, and others
Semir Zeki
is a visual neurobiologist in the Department of Cognitive Neurology at
University College London. Zeki has pioneered the study of the primate
visual brain and furthered research on how affective states are
generated by visual inputs. He has published extensively in his field,
including the books
Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain
(1999) and
A Vision of the Brain
(Blackwell Scientific, Oxford), and has also co-authored a book with
the late French painter Balthus, entitled
La Quête de l'essentiel
(1995).
