Semir Zeki

Splendors and Miseries of the Brain

Love, Creativity, and the Quest for Human Happiness

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, leading neurobiologistSemir Zeki, explores the huge price humans pay, in terms ofhappiness, for the enormously elegant and efficient machinery ofthe brain.

The book has two main interrelated themes.

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The brain is an evolutionary triumph of neural engineering. Its capacity to seek knowledge and form generalized concepts is boundless. In this ground-breaking new study, Semir Zeki explores the enormously elegant and efficient machinery of the brain to analyze its products in creative disciplines, and discover whether or not this intricate system brings different solutions to bear in solving problems in disparate fields.

Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, which is derived from Balzac's novel of the same name, delves into the brain's key functions of obtaining knowledge and forming concepts about the world. While these functions have been more thoroughly documented in neurobiology's traditional disciplines -physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, mathematics, and computer science to name but a few - Zeki goes beyond these fields to scientifically study the products of the brain in literature, music, art, and other fields. By studying these fields, Zeki shows that we can reach important conclusions about how the brain functions and its common processes. He also examines the heavy price to be paid in terms of human happiness that comes with the exquisite capacity of the brain, and shows how misery can ultimately be turned to advantage, due to its intimate link to creativity.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley & Sons
• 1. Auflage
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 31. Dezember 2008
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 160mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 502g
• ISBN-13: 9781405185585
• ISBN-10: 1405185589
• Artikelnr.: 25050394

Autorenporträt

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 (Wiley-Blackwell, 1993), and has also co-authored a book with the late French painter Balthus, entitled La Quête de l'essentiel (1995).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements. Introduction. Part I. Abstraction and the Brain. 1.
Abstraction. 2. The Brain and Its Concepts. 3. Inherited Brain Concepts. 4.
The Distributed Knowledge-Acquiring System of the Brain. 5. The Acquired
Synthetic Brain Concepts. 6. The Synthetic Brain Concept and the Platonic
Ideal. 7. Creativity and the Source of Perfection in the Brain. Part II.
Brain Concepts and Ambiguity. 8. Ambiguity in the Brain and in Art. 9.
Processing and Perceptual Sites in the Brain. 10. From Unambiguous to
Ambiguous Knowledge. 11. Higher Levels of Ambiguity. Part III. Unachievable
Brain Concepts. Introduction. 12. Michelangelo and the non-finito. 13. Paul
Cézanne and the Unfinished. 14. Unfinished Art in Literature. Part VI.
Brain Concepts of Love. Conte By Arthur Rimbaud, in English and in French.
15. The Brain's Concepts of Love. 16. The Neural Correlates of Love. 17.
Brain Concepts of Unity and Annihilation in Love. 18. Sacred and Profane.
19. The Metamorphosis of the Brain Concept of Love in Dante. 20. Wagner and
Tristan und Isolde. 21. Thomas Mann and Death in Venice. 22. A
neurobiological analysis of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents

Rezensionen

"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)