I want it recorded somewhere that I’m not a complete reductionist. Recently, I’ve been harping on about stuff like the neurological basis for scoppophilia, neuroaesthetics and so forth. This makes art seem like the mere byproduct of electrochemical reactions in the brain.

I have a major problem with this concept. Logically, I know that a thing can only be the sum of it’s parts, and therefore art can be paired down to mental processes, which can be studied ‘scientifically’. Yet where does that leave beauty? The wonder of a poem lies in it’s meaning, not in the words themselves. Yet this posits that something can indeed be more than the sum of it’s parts.

What a paradox! The only solution, I think, is to leave it well alone. I feel that all approaches to art are equally valid, so one need not weigh, say, the neuroaesthetic approach against the psychoanalytic one. Both are interesting in themselves, and do not cancel each other out. After all, in art, as increasingly in science, there is no right answer. The problem is, this has implications for creationism…