ABSTRACT
The idea of science of aesthetics goes back to the nineteenth century, when Gustav Theodor Fechner in his Vorschule der Ästhetik studied people's preferences for certain shapes and colours in the hope of ultimately reaching a psychological understanding of complex aesthetic experiences. Such hopes are much more widespread today when empirical psychology has been joined by neuroscience as a provider of systematic research in order to resolve questions in aesthetics. It is a commonplace truth that a lot of fine art is not immediately accessible. At the centre of Wittgenstein's account of aesthetics lies the notion of a cultured taste. Moreover, a cultured taste is hardly ever fully determined by a culture, but also to a large extent shaped by personal inclinations. Psychology investigates the causes of people's responses. There could indeed be a sophisticated psychology of art, investigating why certain things appeal to us.
