The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

This sculpture has many layers of meaning, and indologists like Heinrich Zimmer and Ananda Coomaraswamy wax lyrically about them. While most Western sculptors try to capture a moment or snapshot in time, the Indian artist tries to convey the very nature of time itself. The ring of fire symbolizes the eternal cyclical nature of creation and destruction of the Universe, a common theme in Eastern philosophy, which is also occasionally hit upon by thinkers in the West. (I am reminded in particular of Fred Hoyle’s theory of the oscillating universe.) One of Shiva’s right hands holds a tambour, which beats the Universe into creation and also represents perhaps the pulse beat of animate matter. But one of his left hands holds the fire that not only heats up and energizes the universe but also consumes it, allowing destruction to perfectly balance out creation in the eternal cycle. And so it is that the Nataraja conveys the abstract, paradoxical nature of time, all devouring yet ever creative.

Below Shiva’s right foot is a hideous demonic creature called Apasmara, or “the illusion of ignorance,” which Shiva is crushing. What is this illusion? It’s the illusion that all of us scientific types suffer from, that there is nothing more to the Universe than the mindless gyrations of atoms and molecules, that there is no deeper reality behind appearances. It is also the delusion of some religions that each of us has a private soul who is watching the phenomena of life from his or her own special vantage point. It is the logical delusion that after death there is nothing but a timeless void. Shiva is telling us that if you destroy this illusion and seek solace under his raised left foot (which he points to with one of his left hands), you will realize that behind external appearances (Maya), there is a deeper truth. And once you realize this, you see that, far from being an aloof spectator, here to briefly watch the show until you die, you are in fact part of the ebb and flow of the cosmos—part of the cosmic dance of Shiva himself. And with this realization comes immortality, or moksha: liberation from the spell of illusion and union with the supreme truth of Shiva himself. There is, in my mind, no greater instantiation of the abstract idea of god—as opposed to a personal God—than the Shiva/Nataraja. As the art critic Coomaraswamy says, “This is poetry, but it is science nonetheless.”

I am afraid I have strayed too far afield. This is a book about neurology, not Indian art. I showed you the Shiva/Nataraja only to underscore that the reductionist approach to aesthetics presented in this chapter is in no way meant to diminish great works of art. On the contrary, it may actually enhance our appreciation of their intrinsic value.

I OFFER THESE nine laws as a way to explain why artists create art and why people enjoy viewing it.³ Just as we consume gourmet food to generate complex, multidimensional taste and texture experiences that titillate our palate, we appreciate art as gourmet food for the visual centers in the brain (as opposed to junk food, which is analogous to kitsch). Even though the rules that artists exploit originally evolved because of their survival value, the production of art itself doesn’t have survival value. We do it because it’s fun and that’s all the justification it needs.

But is that the whole story? Apart from its role in pure enjoyment, I wonder if there might be other, less obvious reasons why humans engage in art so passionately. I can think of four candidate theories. They are about the value of art itself, not merely of aesthetic enjoyment.

First, there is the very clever, if somewhat cheeky and cynical, suggestion favored by Steven Pinker that acquiring or owning unique, one-of-a-kind works may have been a status symbol to advertise superior access to resources (a psychological rule of thumb evolved for assessing superior genes). This is especially true today as the increasing availability of mass copying methods places an ever higher premium (from the art buyer’s perspective) on owning an original—or at least (from the art seller’s perspective) on fooling the buyer into the mock status conferred by purchasing limited-edition prints. No one who has been to an art show cocktail reception in Boston or La Jolla can fail to see that there is some truth to this view.