art

            Considering myself to be a fairly cognizant, observant person, I always notice when my heart goes aflutter, or sinks, or starts beating faster. There are several events that make my heart react this way: when I hope for eye contact with someone and then they meet my stare, when someone I like looks me in the eye, when I think of something scary that could happen or something very important that is impending or a deadline that is approaching, when I witness something so nice or so cute that my heart melts in approval. I understand that these reactions are due to the hormonal responses my body has to what my senses perceive in the environment around me.

"All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets IT- everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He's filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows its not the tune that counts but IT." -from On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1)

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”-- C. P. Snow

Character Study

By Arielle Seidman

As human beings, by simple virtue of existing in the world, we are in a constant state of aesthetic appraisal. We engage reality in a dialogue through the use of our senses, perceiving external stimuli and assigning values to each input (whether consciously or not) through a reward mechanism. Of particular interest is the way in which this mechanism is employed in the appreciation of visual art. Through the use of neuroimaging technology scientists are beginning to understand how the brain encounters and creates art. This study, known as neuroesthetics, sheds light on why art has been so prevalent and valued over the course of human history and raises questions concerning the nature and future of art.