Aesthetics: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) Paperback – Illustrated, 24 Oct. 2019

It's really for very young students who know virtually nothing about psychology, perception or art history, western or non-western. He is so concerned not to scare anyone away with anything complex that he spends too much time worrying about occidentocentricity. We all get it that other cultures have made different art, and that we won't ever be able to fully understand why they made the art that they did. He says almost nothing about music, a fault in my view.

I bought this book because I'm the sort of person who is mostly interested in science, finance, and history. I'm don't really know what looks good and thought it might be interesting to learn a bit about what characteristics make things look aesthetically appealing. I don't know much about this but know that certain proportions, colour combinations and symmetries obviously appeal to a majority of people. Unfortunately this book seems to come from the angle of a university trying to teach people critical thinking and that different things appeal to different people, a point that is very obvious to me, but despite this about half the book is focused on making the point. This is done with some good examples of how some cultures like different things to what appeals in the west. However there isn't much discussion of what sort of things are liked across different cultures, and the book seems to skip these basics and jump straight to exceptions and long arguments about why you often can't say one thing is aesthetically better than another, again something that is quite obvious given it depends on taste, background and culture. This was a bit of a shame, and I was hoping to get more out the book than I did.

More of an explanation of the authors own interpretation rather than a neutral attempt to explain the subject.In that regard its a great introduction to the authors learned and respected opinion, but I wanted to make my own mind up through just bettering my understanding of the subject for myself.Where's the other half of the book??