A gourmet's principal activities involve discovering, tasting, experiencing, researching, understanding and writing about foods. Gastronomy is therefore an inter-disciplinary activity. Good observation will reveal that around the food, there exists dance, dramatic arts, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, and music; in other words, the Fine Arts. But it also involves physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, geology, agronomy, and also anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The application of scientific knowledge to cooking and gastronomy has become known as molecular gastronomy.
The first formal study of gastronomy is probably The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (early 19th century). As opposed to the traditional cooking recipe books, it studies the relationship between the senses and food, treating enjoyment at the table as a science. Most recently, in 2004, the founders of the Slow Food movement founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra, Italy, devoted to the principles of gastronomy.
Etymologically, the word "gastronomy" is derived from Ancient Greek gastros "stomach", and nomos "knowledge" or "law".