Abstract
Science can uncover neural mechanisms by looking at the work of artists. The ingenuity of a titan of classical music, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), in combining all the sensory modalities into a polyphony of aesthetical experience, and his creation of a chord based on fourths rather than the conventional thirds are proposed as putative points of departure for insight, in future studies, into the neural processes that underlie the perception of beauty, individually or universally. Scriabin’s “Omni-art” was a new synthesis of music, philosophy and religion, and a new aesthetic language, a unification of music, vision, olfaction, drama, poetry, dance, image, and conceptualization, all governed by logic, in the quest for the integrative action of the human mind toward a “higher reality” of which music is only a component.
Highlights
The ingenuity of a titan of classical music, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), in combining all the sensory modalities into a polyphony of aesthetical experience, and his creation of a chord based on fourths rather than the conventional thirds are proposed as putative points of departure for insight, in future studies, into the neural processes that underlie the perception of beauty, individually or universally
This essay is spurred by the premise that neurobiological mechanisms may be tackled experimentally subsequent to a simple but acuminous behavioral observation, as, e.g., in the case of the discovery of mirror neurons (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004) or hippocampal positional cells (Hartley et al, 2014)
York (2010) argues that, if painters are neurologists, as Zeki (2002) implies, musicians are neurologists who manipulate the auditory brain of audiences for their aesthetic pleasure
Summary
ART TO SCIENCEThis essay is spurred by the premise that neurobiological mechanisms may be tackled experimentally subsequent to a simple but acuminous behavioral observation, as, e.g., in the case of the discovery of mirror neurons (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004) or hippocampal positional cells (Hartley et al, 2014).Neuroaesthetics attempts to decipher the neural processes that underlie aesthetical experience by focusing on the properties of and interaction among a triad of neural circuits: sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge (Chatterjee and Vartanian, 2014).York (2010) argues that, if painters are neurologists, as Zeki (2002) implies, musicians are neurologists who manipulate the auditory brain of audiences for their aesthetic pleasure. Zeki (2002) suggested that Richard Wagner created his “Tristan chord” being knowledgeable about the operations of the mind and relying on ancient laws of tonality derived from the nature of our perceptive mechanisms, without though having any direct knowledge about brain tissue; through a profound understanding of the workings of the musical brain, Wagner probed it with techniques unique to artists. The ingenuity of a titan of classical music, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), in combining all the sensory modalities into a polyphony of aesthetical experience, and his creation of a chord based on fourths rather than the conventional thirds are proposed as putative points of departure for insight, in future studies, into the neural processes that underlie the perception of beauty, individually or universally.
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