There is an intriguing job vacancy at University College London for a PhD interested in neuroaesthetics. The successful candidate will be investigating “the neural bases of creativity and affective mental states such as the experience of beauty”. Is this another sign of a growing conviction that neuroscience will explain everything?

Could be. A bit of Googling reveals that this job is part of a £1 million grant from the Wellcome Foundation to Professor Semir Zeki. According to last year’s press release, his mission is to search for “the neural and biological basis for creativity, beauty and love”. The Wellcome Trust, which disburses over £600 million every year for medical research, is the largest non-government medical research donor. 

"The new field of neuroaesthetics will teach biologists to use the products of the brain in art, music, literature and mathematics to better understand how the brain functions," says Professor Zeki. "Success will encourage an interdisciplinary approach to other fields, such as the study of economics or jurisprudence in terms of brain activity. This will have a deep impact on social issues."

And the Wellcome Trust seems convinced that this is not phrenology for modern man. It praised Professor Zeki as "a Renaissance man for the 21st century," whose "research sees no boundaries between science and the arts and humanities, and will provide an exciting insight into issues that strike at the heart of what it is to be human."