Description
Book SynopsisIn Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, leading neurobiologist Semir Zeki, explores the huge price humans pay, in terms of happiness, for the enormously elegant and efficient machinery of the brain. The book has two main interrelated themes.
Trade Review"'Courageous and carefully considered ... Zeki's book is wide in its sympathies and sources, and it deserves attention as part of a fascinating enquiry set to continue for many years to come." (
Brain, November 2009)
“Set ... quite apart from the snappiness of most contemporary science-writing ... the book thinks hard, feels warmly and puts out provocative suggestions.” (London Review of Books, October 2009)
“I enjoyed reading this book and appreciated the attempt of the author to bridge the expansive chasm between experimental result on visual sensory input and the intimate human experiences for which we all strive.” (The Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, September 2009)
"Zeki’s book has a beautiful and enigmatic cover and title. Zeki explores the unachievable through the works of artists and writers, concluding with Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents. Counsellors with a background both in neuroscience and an interest in the arts will find it a fascinating read." (Therapy Today, September 2009)
"An exuberant read." (Times Higher Education, April 2009)
"The book offers a glimpse into the physiological, neurological and emotional mechanisms of the most profound human part of our experience." (Yoga and Health, February 2009)
“This is a brave and unusual book¯what you are trying to do is look at the detailed neuroarchitecture of the brain, your particular specialty is how the brain sees (vision), and then apply it to a wider range of cultural ideas. I loved this book.” (Andrew Marr, Start The Week, Radio 4, November 2008)
"What was once dangerous territory is now the hottest theme in brain research. the subtitle of Semir Zeki's excellent new book is Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness ... .One of the world's leading neurophysiologist [Zeki] has turned to brain imaging to explore matters as seemingly outside brain science's territory as beauty in literature and art - and even 'romantic love.'" (Guardian, December 2008)
“This is going to lead to a new way of writing about the arts, and a new audience for certain kinds of science at the same time. (Start The Week, Radio 4, November 2008)
Table of ContentsList of Figures vii
Note to the Reader ix
Acknowledgments x
Introduction 1
PART I Abstraction and the Brain 7
1 Abstraction 9
2 The Brain and its Concepts 21
3 Inherited Brain Concepts 26
4 The Distributed Knowledge-Acquiring System of the Brain 35
5 The Acquired Synthetic Brain Concepts 42
6 The Synthetic Brain Concept and the Platonic Ideal 46
7 Creativity and the Source of Perfection in the Brain 50
PART II Brain Concepts and Ambiguity 59
8 Ambiguity in the Brain and in Art 61
9 Processing and Perceptual Sites in the Brain 65
10 From Unambiguous to Ambiguous Knowledge 73
11 Higher Levels of Ambiguity 87
PART III Unachievable Brain Concepts 99
Introduction 101
12 Michelangelo and the Non finito 102
13 Paul Cézanne and the Unfinished 111
14 Unfinished Art in Literature 120
PART IV Brain Concepts of Love 129
Conte by Arthur Rimbaud 131
15 The Brain's Concepts of Love 132
16 The Neural Correlates of Love 137
17 Brain Concepts of Unity and Annihilation in Love 150
18 Sacred and Profane 158
19 The Metamorphosis of the Brain Concept of Love in Dante 170
20 Wagner and Tristan und Isolde 182
21 Thomas Mann and Death in Venice 193
22 A neurobiological analysis of Freud's Civilization and its Discontents 203
Notes 213
Index 227
