ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the importance of aesthetic preferences in everyday life and considers how pleasure of a more general kind is related to aesthetic pleasures, among which it is important to distinguish those related to natural objects from those derived from artistic artefacts. It reviews main families of theories in aesthetic philosophy. The book deals with a very general consideration of the biological concept of homeostasis before describing how information is registered and organised in the human brain. It explores the importance of novelty as the key element in what constitutes information, with reference to brain responses to language, including rhyme, rhythm and semantic variation. The book examines the form of language most characteristic of - though by no means confined to - creative literature and especially poetry, namely figuration, of which metaphor is the most striking example.
