One has to be careful to not overdo this type of reductionist thinking about art and the brain. I recently heard an evolutionary psychologist give a lecture about why we like kinetic art, which includes pieces like Calder mobiles made up of moving cutout shapes dangling from the ceiling. With a perfectly straight face he proclaimed that we like such art because an area in our brain called the MT (middle temporal) area possesses cells that are specialized for detecting the direction of motion. This claim is nonsense. Kinetic art obviously excites such cells, but so would a snowstorm. So would a copy of the Mona Lisa set spinning on a peg. Neural circuitry for motion detection is certainly necessary for kinetic art but it’s not sufficient: It doesn’t explain the appeal of kinetic art by any stretch of logic. This chap’s explanation is like saying that the existence of face-sensitive cells in the fusiform gyrus of your brain explains why you like Rembrandt.

— The tell-tale brain

A useful analogy comes from Horace Barlow, a British visual neuroscientist whose work is central to understanding the statistics of natural scenes. Imagine that a Martian biologist arrives on Earth. The Martian is asexual and reproduces by duplication, like an amoeba, so it doesn’t know anything about sex. The Martian dissects a man’s testicles, studies its microstructure in excruciating detail, and finds innumerable sperm swimming around. Unless the Martian knew about sex (which it doesn’t), it wouldn’t have the foggiest understanding of the structure and function of the testes despite all its meticulous dissections. The Martian would be mystified by these spherical balls dangling in half the human population and might even conclude that the wriggling sperm were parasites. The plight of many of my colleagues in physiology is not unlike that of the Martian. Knowing the minute detail doesn’t necessarily mean you comprehend the function of the whole from its parts.

— The tell-tale brain

+ ذكرني بمحاضرة الـ chaos & reductionism مال روبرت سابولسكي

Bot:
اكلك يعني من تنشر انكليزي مطمئن ان احد حيقرا؟

أمانةً اني بعدني مصدوم اكو 6k مهتمين أصلًا باللي ينشمر هنا

+ لا، بس اللي الة واهس يقراه، يقراه. اللي ماله واهس، يشوف الميمز 🍻

Bot:
محد يقرة ترة
بس يسوون روحهم مثقفين شوفونا مشتركين بقناة تنشر انجليزي

هذا ادمن قناة منافِسة ضايج لأن ما قريت اخر بوست نشره

Bot:
خويه دعوف هل حموضه واكتب بس بالعربية

Bot:
اني ما اقرا العربي اقرا الإنكليزي

بوت القناة، دائمًا:

متتصورون انو تعلم اللغة الانكليزية هسة من ضروريات الحياة؟

Quī docet, discit.

He Who Teaches, Learns.

.

هاي يوتيوبر ترانس تسوي فيديوهات فلسفية، مدري شجابها لـ HOTD

وهذا زيد بن سيحون بمسلسل الحشاشين، هم مدري شجابه

Crossovers للنعال

Bot:
عمي شوكت اصير مثقف مثلك