Or towards a materialization of the soul? Can everything be reduced to mere neuroscience? Of course not, but an article by Roger Scruton in the Spectator argues against neuroaesthetics as a legitimate discipline, while neuroscientists such as Semir Zeki and Eric Kandel, whose work is featured in an article by Alexander Kafka in the Chronicle Review, show that the humanities ignore recent discoveries at their own peril.

From Roger Scruton in the Spectator:

When it comes to the subtle features of the human condition, to the byways of culpability and the secrets of happiness and grief, we need guidance and study if we are to interpret things correctly. That is what the humanities provide, and that is why, when scholars who purport to practise them, add the prefix ‘neuro’ to their studies, we should expect their researches to be nonsense.

From Alexander Kafka’s article in the Chronicle Review:

Of neuroaesthetics, Zeki says, “I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t explode in the next 10 to 15 years.” He expects [Kandel’s] The Age of Insight to be embraced by neurobiologists and the general public, but says it will be a further “irritation to people hostile to the idea” that cognition can be traced to specific neural correlates.

 

Zeki’s message to art historians, aesthetic philosophers, and others who chafe at that idea is twofold. The more diplomatic pitch is that neuroaesthetics is different, complementary, and not oppositional to other forms of arts scholarship. But “the stick,” as he puts it, is that if arts scholars “want to be taken seriously” by neurobiologists, they need to take advantage of the discoveries of the past half-century. If they don’t, he says, “it’s a bit like the guys who said to Galileo that we’d rather not look through your telescope.”