| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Aesthetics and Psychobiology by D. E. Berlyne (see record 1973-00821-000). Progress in the aesthetic disciplines has been at a snail's pace. Berlyne charges six factors with having impeded advance: the belief in art as a supernatural phenomenon, the failure to separate factual from normative questions, the conception of art as a unitary phenomenon, the habit of treating art in isolation from nonartistic forms of behavior, the preoccupation with uniqueness in aesthetic taste, and the concentration on verbal judgments in aesthetic work. But the future looks brighter, due primarily to the following developments: (1) the rise of information theory, which provides procedures for rigorously analyzing some of the features of stimulus patterns that most concern aesthetics, (2) recent empirical and theoretical contributions in both psychology and neurophysiology to the understanding of pleasure and arousal, and (3) findings bearing on the nature of exploratory behavior, both in animals and humans, particularly as these teach the motivational importance of such elements as complexity, novelty and uncertainty, so-called "collative" variables, that "seem to be identifiable with the irreducibly essential ingredients of art and of whatever else is aesthetically appealing" (viii). The principal aim of Berlyne's book is to establish the ground gained in these three areas, compare it to the contributions made by earlier workers, and effectuate "a provisional synthesis that will at least bring key problems to the fore" (viii). It is a formidable task. Inevitably, the effort fares better in some assignments than others. Ironically, what discrepancies in quality do exist would probably project less were Berlyne not so knowledgeable about his subject matter. He is, quite obviously, in the tradition of those "cultured gentlemen" with whom he is wont to populate the early history of psychological science. Parenthetically, one suspects that he could supplement the present work with a very creditable companion volume in the philosophy of aesthetics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
