Book cover of The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art

Book description

The Aesthetic Brain takes readers on an exciting journey through the world of beauty, pleasure, and art. Using the latest advances in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Anjan Chatterjee investigates how an aesthetic sense is etched into our minds, and explains why artistic concerns feature centrally in our lives. Along the…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Aesthetic Brain as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The brain people are all over art.

Anjan Chatterjee has managed to write a book that a) is very accessible, b) provides thorough coverage of current attempts to understand art and aesthetic experience by using information from the cognitive sciences, and c) outlines an original hypothesis about why humans evolved a love for art. That last part changes the book from a nice review of the topic to a groundbreaking attempt at an explanation of our art practices.

Chatterjee examines our judgments of peoples’ attractiveness, the brain’s system of reward chemicals, and our evolutionary history, in an attempt to understand…

From William's list on bridging the gap between mind and brain.

If you love The Aesthetic Brain...

Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancĆ©, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

Want books like The Aesthetic Brain?

Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Aesthetic Brain.

Browse books like The Aesthetic Brain

Book cover of The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
Book cover of Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition
Book cover of The Border Between Seeing and Thinking

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,395

readers submitted
so far, will you?

šŸ“š If you like The Aesthetic Brain, you might also like...

Book cover of Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence

Need to Know by Nicholas Reynolds,

The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.

Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…

Book cover of Tsunami

Tsunami by LeeAnn Pickrell,

On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…

5 book lists we think you will like!