Essays on Art and Science Hardcover – March 26, 2024

Nobel Laureate Eric R. Kandel's Essays on Art and Science is an ambitious though somewhat repetitive and narrowly focused collection. Kandel presents a range of arguments about how neuroscience informs subjective responses to art. This is accompanied by the application of these ideas to the analysis of art and aesthetic movements. Almost all of this analysis is done with respect to the Vienna School of Art or Modernist artists of Jewish ancestry. Eventually, the essays just become actual art criticism, including a comparison of sculpture and painting. There are some interesting insights that Kandel's syncretic approach does generate. However, I worry Kandel's confidence in the neuroscience involved is a bit too robust. He is still apparently a credulous reader of the "mirror neuron" literature, which seems out of step with the current field. Kandel is in his mid-90s after-all so it is remarkable that he's managed to produce this collection.Kandel is particularly preoccupied with the influence of Freudianism on the Vienna School and the zeitgeist of early 20th century Vienna. This was the cultural moment a bit prior to his birth. It is a bit like a child born in the aughts becoming obsessed with the totems of the 80s - a familiar phenomenon. Yet it is interesting this attachment has persisted so long and animated actual research projects. The alleged consilience between Modern art and the social awareness of unconscious processes in the brain seems plausible but also currently beyond the ken of science. It also risks impressing science into the service of ideas which cannot be science at all. Much of Freudian thought is quite unscientific. I would have like to have seen Kandel wrestle with some of these epistemological questions.As the above hints, this is very much a collection inspired by pet ideas sustained by vicarious nostalgia. It will be of limited interest to most general readers. This is for those who are deeply interested in the subject matter or want to read all of Kandel's work (I fit loosely into both camps). This collection would have been greatly enhanced by an original essay that synthesized Kandel's comprehensive view of the nexus of art and science. A broader theoretical model would have helped knit this collection together. Further, these essay would have benefitted from thorough editing to prevent near verbatim recapitulations of arguments.