The Science of Beauty – lecture
In pursuing this aim, neuroesthetics bases its approach on two foundations. The first is that the capacity to experience beauty is “common to all and peculiar to none” and that therefore all humans - regardless of ethnic origin, religious education, or cultural background - are capable of experiencing beauty; moreover, that the same neural mechanisms are engaged in all humans when they experience beauty and chief among these is field A1 of the medial orbito-frontal cortex (A1 of mOFC), which is co-activated with the relevant sensory areas. Hence what all things that are experienced as beautiful have in common is that the experience correlates with activity in A1 of mOFC, even if different individuals have different preferences.
The second foundation is that one can divide all things that are experienced as beautiful as belonging to one of two broad categories: biological and artefactual. The variance in biological beauty is much less than the variance in artefactual beauty; hence one can assume, for example, that a face that one finds very beautiful will also be characterized as very beautiful by others (the sensus communis of Kant), because it is based on a largely common and inherited brain concepts. Artefactual beauty is based on post-natally acquired brain concepts and is very dependent on culture and environment; it is therefore much more variable and hence such a common assumption about artefactual beauty cannot be made. Interestingly, for reasons to be discussed, mathematical beauty (which Plato considered to be the highest form of beauty) belongs to the category of biological beauty.
Welcome to hear this fascinating lecture by Professor Semir Zeki (University College London) on the Science of Beauty. The lecture is in relation to Mamdooh Afdile's Doctoral Defence with the title "Filmmaking Practice Through a Cognitive Penetration Lens: A Practitioner’s Inquiry into Implicit Social Perception" on 21st of May 2026.
Semir Zeki is based at University College London (UCL), where he was Professor of Neurobiology before becoming Professor of Neuroesthetics. He has specialized in studying the organization of the primate visual brain and learning about the brain mechanisms that correlate with aesthetic and allied experience, such as love and desire. He is a fellow of several of several learned academies, including the Royal Society, London; the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Mass. USA. He is recipient of four honorary doctorates in science and medicine and of numerous prizes. He is the author of three books A Vision of the Brain; Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain; and Splendors and Miseries of the Brain. Collectively his books have been translated into seven languages. He is also the co-author of a book (in French) with the late painter Balthus (Count Klossowski de Rola).