1. Lost in the museum

Abstract

The Greek word aesthesis means ‘perception’ and when the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten (1714–62) introduced the concept of ‘aesthetics’ in 1750, what he meant by it was precisely the study of sensory experiences. ‘Lost in the museum’ explains that the scope of aesthetics is far wider than that of art, high or low; it includes much of what we care about in life. It is not the job of aesthetics to tell you which artworks are good and which ones are bad or to tell you what experiences are worth having. Aesthetics is a way of analysing what it means to have these experiences. Aesthetics is, and should be, completely non-judgemental.