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An Evolutionary Perspective on the Nature of Art
Nancy E. Aiken
Independent Scholar
Abstract
Aesthetics, the philosophy of art, is built upon Plato's Idealism, but this structure has brought theory to nihilism, and the legacy of traditional aesthetics has obscured the potential role that post-Darwinian science might offer. Nevertheless, scholars from many disciplines from the humanities to the social and life sciences have been thinking about art from the viewpoint of evolution. This paper briefly discusses the route most aestheticians have taken toward ascertaining the nature of art, suggests why a new approach is needed, offers a brief introduction to what evolutionary theory can provide as a framework for thinking about art, and notes some of the progress already made by evolutionists who have been studying the nature of art.
An Evolutionary Perspective on the Nature of Art
A number of years ago as a student in a graduate class in aesthetics, I was told that I asked the wrong kind of questions about art. The professor informed me that the appropriate philosophical questions were "What is art?" and "How can it be defined?" The questions I was asking were "Why do we make art?" and "What is aesthetic response?" These questions, he emphasized, were psychological questions - not philosophical questions. Since my questions were "psychological" questions, I began my research with psychology and soon included neuroscience and the study of emotional response. In the process I discovered two scholars who took evolutionary theory as the basis for scientific inquiry into the nature of art, Richard G. Coss and Ellen Dissanayake, and I felt confident that I was now on my way to making progress in my quest to learn about the nature of art.
Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, it has been realized that art evokes emotion; Aristotle, unafraid of the kind of questions he should ask, gave considerable attention to the question "How does art evoke emotion?" That is the question I wanted to answer. I felt that the answer to that question, if one could be found, would open many more doors to discovering the nature of art. I believe, now, that I was correct. I have found a way that art evokes emotion, and that has explained the neural mechanism which causes feelings to arise in the presence of art, and, enroute, has begun to open those many doors (Aiken, 1998a, 1998b). The key factor in the success of this quest is taking evolutionary theory as the framework from which to work. I am not alone. Besides Coss, Dissanayake and me, several other scholars have based their study of art on evolutionary theory and the results are very exciting. Currently, I am preparing a review article on the study of the nature of art from an evolutionary viewpoint and an overview of this work can be seen there (Aiken, in preparation). Here, I will discuss the route philosophical aesthetics has traveled to answer questions about the nature of art, provide a little of the evolutionary framework which scholars have used to think about art, and discuss some of the progress made by evolutionists who see art as a necessary part of being human.
Aesthetic theory
Historically, most aestheticians have regarded art as superfluous, as icing on the cake of culture. (Clive Bell and John Dewey are two notable exceptions.) Most recently Stephen Pinker in his best-selling How the Mind Works asks "What is it about the mind that lets people take pleasure in shapes and colors and sounds and jokes and stories and myths?" (Pinker, 1997, p. 523). This is a good question and one that scholars who take an evolutionary perspective are beginning to answer. However, Pinker adopts the prevalent attitude and assumes art is nonutilitarian. He discusses the mysteriousness of art and concludes that a reason for this obscurity is that the arts are not adaptive in the evolutionary sense. He writes, "As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless." (Pinker, 1997, p. 528). Furthermore, he suspects that "music is auditory cheesecake" (Pinker, 1997, p. 534). Pinker is assuming the stance of over 2000 years of philosophical thought about art, but he notes that "Theories of art carry the seeds of their own destruction" (Pinker, 1997, p. 523) and, on this, his perception is quite clear. Those of us who have taken an evolutionary perspective when thinking about art have reached the same conclusion, but, rather than accept the conclusions of a theory that carries "the seeds of its own destruction," we have looked for the possibility that art has adaptive value.
The theories of art which "carry the seeds of their own destruction" are based largely on the ideas of pre-Darwinian philosophers. Mainstream aesthetic theory is based upon Plato and Aristotle and the Greek Ideal. In the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, which is the main journal of philosophical aesthetics, are papers which cite Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. In fact, in the fall, 2000 issue is an article on Aristotle (Worth, 2000) and an article which derives directly from Plato in its contention that the value of a work of art is independent of the experience of the work of art (Sharpe, 2000). Postmoderism (poststructuralism or deconstructionism) is a reaction against Platonism, but it has not escaped Platonic ideas. Led by Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault in France, the deconstructionists refute Plato but offer in return only the notions that we cannot really know anything and that everything is relative (See Caputo, 1997; Derrida, 1987; Evans,1991; Sallis,1987; and for a carefully reasoned discussion of deconstructionist theory and an evolutionary alternative see Carroll, 1995). How did these scholars, mainstream and postmodern, arrive at these conclusions and what are the "seeds of their own destruction"?
The Greek ideal. Plato had a grand plan of what we are and what we should do, including ideas on religion, ethics, society, culture, and art. At the core of Plato's philosophy was the notion that our everyday doings are but mere shadows of reality. Reality was the "Ideal" or what ought to be. Our purpose in life should be to aspire to know what is the ideal person, the ideal way to live, the ideal government - to obtain knowledge of what ought to be. According to Plato, the gods made the "forms" or the "ideals." For example , there is a Divine Realm in which exists the form or Ideal of a bed; a carpenter makes beds after the Ideal of a bed; and a painter makes copies of the carpenter's beds. A carpenter is a craftsman and a maker of things after the Ideals, but a painter is an imitator, third from the Ideal, because the painter tries to imitate not the Ideal but the work of craftsmen. Therefore, painters imitate appearances and not the truth of the object; painters draw beds only from certain angles and the whole truth of the bed cannot be discerned (Plato, Bk. X, pp. 597e-598a). In the same way poets, such as Homer, may "imitate images of virtue" but have no grasp of the truth of virtue (Plato, Bk. X, p. 600e). Plato thought that poets strengthen the worst in people by arousing and nourishing their emotions. To him, reason is good; emotion is bad. Because they arouse emotions, Plato would not allow "imitative artists" in his utopia (Plato, Bk. X, pp. 602a - 608c).
Looking at what Plato thought about art, I find at least two major problems. First, his idea about art does not hold true for all art. While his idea may have seemed appropriate for his time and culture, it does not apply to non-imitative art or to the arts of pre-industrial cultures, which comprise the preponderance of examples of art over many tens of thousands of years. How can one argue that one of Picasso's cubist portraits is, indeed, an imitation of an image of an Ideal person? What Ideal does a performance artist imitate when he stands on a street corner and cuts himself with razor blades? How can African or Oceanic art be explained in terms of Platonic Ideals? One way out of this difficulty for the Platonist is to assert that none of these examples is art. Given, however, the overwhelming acceptance of all of these examples as art, that method of defense is, no doubt, overruled. A definition must be comprehensive or it has no value as a definition. A theory of what art is must be comprehensive, and for an evolutionist, it should include everything from decorated spear throwers to the performance artist spattered in blood.
Second, Plato's argument is inconsistent. Plato characterized artists as imitators of things as they ought to be, e.g. craftsmen of sculptures of Ideal men and women and not just ordinary men and women. In Plato's view art should help people learn about the Ideals. Although Plato would exile poets such as Homer who arouse emotions, he also felt that "education in music and poetry is most important" (Plato, Bk. III, p. 401e). In Plato's utopian Republic the only poets allowed would be "austere and less pleasure-giving" and would "imitate the speech of a decent person" (Plato, Bk. III, p. 398b). The proper music and poetry were important to Plato "because rhythm and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul more than anything else, affecting it most strongly and bringing it grace, so that if someone is properly educated in music and poetry it makes him graceful, but if not, then the opposite." (PAGE #?) Also, the proper education in music and poetry will allow a person to "sense it acutely" when a thing has not been finely crafted or "made in the likeness of nature." A person so educated will have the right taste and will "praise fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by them, become fine and good" (Plato, Bk. III, p. 401e). While Plato would have art to be cerebral and coolly instructive, his description includes sensual terms. It appears that while Plato thought art ought to be cerebral, at the same time it actually is visceral. James Urmson suggests that Plato's real problem with poets and painters is that he thought only philosophers could comprehend good and evil. Urmson points out that Plato, in his Apology (p. 21d), has Socrates say, "The poets say many fine things, but know nothing of that of which they speak" (Urmson, p. 130).
In the years since Plato wrote about what he thought art ought to be philosophers have followed in Plato's footsteps. Perhaps Plato's successors have confused Plato's notion of what art ought to be with Plato's unhappiness with art's visceral qualities. This situation has resulted, I think, in an attempt by philosophy to provide for art criticism, which deals with art as it is, a basis built upon what art ought to be according to Plato. As will be seen, this situation has brought aesthetic theory to a dead end which has resulted in the nihilism and relativism of postmodern thinking. Aesthetics is in a position now much as it was when David Hume brought it to nihilism and relativism in the late eighteenth century (See Hume,1965) causing Immanuel Kant to react with new and positive ideas which propelled aesthetics as a discipline into the twentieth century (Kant, 1951).
Kantian improvements upon the Greek ideal. Kant, by most accounts, described the core of aesthetic thinking that has prevailed, at least, until the last several decades. Kant's ideas about art were concerned only with the "high" or "fine" art of Western civilization which tended to be imitative art not unlike that which provoked Plato's views on art. Looking at some of Kant's tenets about art, we shall see where they lead and how science might resolve some conflicts.
In actual practice people agree on the "goodness" of some works of art some of the time. This implies a common sense assessment that people should agree on the "goodness" of some works of art some of the time. Apparently, Kant agreed with this common sense premise because he assumed that there are "universal aesthetic judgments," (Kant, 1951) which is in opposition to David Hume's view that aesthetic judgments are relative to the person and the culture in which the person lives. If, however, Kant were right, at least two questions come to mind: 1) What is "good" in art? and 2) On what basis can aesthetic judgments be universal? Kant answered the first question by mirroring Plato's demand that good art be beautiful and beautiful art should imitate nature. "Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art while yet it looks like nature" (Kant, 1951, p. 149). Kant was not only echoing Plato, but also the artistic convention of his own time and place when he argued that "good" art must be beautiful and to be beautiful, art must imitate nature. As aesthetician Arthur Danto writes: "aesthetics was hammered out as a discipline at a time when art had been singularly stable in its practice and conception over several centuries, and where such revolutions in art as there may have been were in the nature of reversions to earlier conditions - from rococo to neoclassicism in the time of Kant, and from romanticism to Pre-Raphaelitism in the time of Schopenhauer" (Danto, 1996, p. 107). As Danto points out, Kant's idea about "good" in art has become more and more difficult to defend in light of the artistic developments of the twentieth century (Danto, 1996). This philosophical argument, which grew out of European tradition, has also proved difficult to defend upon late twentieth century acknowledgment of the arts of other societies. Kant's definition of what constitutes good art simply does not hold for the arts of all cultures; thus, it is exclusive and fails as a definition.
The second question raised by Kant's notion that universal aesthetic judgments are possible is "On what basis can aesthetic judgments be universal?" Aesthetician Patricia Matthews writes that Kant solves this "problem of taste" by arguing that a particular feeling of pleasure is uniform among people and is the source of agreement in matters of taste or aesthetic judgments, and that this feeling of pleasure is "pure aesthetic reflection" which is universally valid (Matthews, 1996, p. 165). In Kant's effort to sort out the components of aesthetic response, he noted that this pleasure which art evokes does not seem to have anything to do with any interest in the objects depicted in paintings (see Matthews, 1996, pp. 166-167). The pleasure we get from Andy Warhol's painting of a can of soup has nothing to do with the soup. The quality of the painting does not depend on how good the soup tastes; the painting does not make us hungry for soup. (Note that this point is relevant to the "preference" studies which evolutionary psychologists have applied to their ideas about art and which are discussed later in this paper.) Kant called this aspect of aesthetic response "disinterest" which his followers construed to mean that since art does not interest people for any utilitarian reason, it must have not utilitarian value. Ever since Kant, the assumed nonutilitarian quality of art works has been the focus of discussions about what is meant by "disinterest." Thus, Stephen Pinker's comment that "music is auditory cheesecake" (Pinker, 1997, p. 528) is the result of a long tradition. While it seems to be the case that objects depicted in paintings are not the source of aesthetic pleasure, this insight of Kant's was miscontrued into the idea that art has no utilitarian value.
Kant also noted that the pleasure evoked by art seems to have nothing to do with conception; that is, art can be responded to without first forming ideas about it. The response can be visceral, as Plato admitted but disliked. Plato preferred art that is cerebral, but it took 20th century pop and concept art to make aestheticians see that art can be both cerebral and visceral. Consequently, this notion of Kant's cannot answer the question of universality, without help from science.
The question of universality can be answered by the visceral quality of art, however. We now know that human beings share common emotions. I have argued that it is these universal emotions which are aroused by art (Aiken, 1998a). We now know that it is not necessary to conceive of an idea of an emotion for the emotion to behaviorally take place (for example: Cannon, 1929; LeDoux, 1994; Panksepp, 1998). Emotions are controlled by precortical centers in the brain and can operate without cognition or conscious thought, which is controlled by centers in the cortex (LeDoux, 1992, 1994; Panksepp, 1998). Because emotions can be generated subconsciously, we have difficulty expressing in words what we have felt. Therefore, while we feel something when we contemplate art and, as Kant explained, it is not interest in the object depicted, it has been most difficult to describe the feeling or to determine from whence it has arisen. This is the so-called problem of expression which has interested aestheticians since Aristotle.
Because our interest in art lies not in any utilitarian value, the notion of "disinterest," as accepted by aestheticians since Kant, has effectively stamped out any urge to ask if aesthetic response has any practical value (Danto, p. 105). This is an important end result of the dialectic on "pure aesthetic reflection" because it has closed off important avenues of reflection and research. For example, the psychological and neurobiological research on emotion has not been interesting to aestheticians because, I would assume, normal emotional response was not equated with aesthetic response. It would seem that the assumption is that since normal emotional response seems to have practical value and aesthetic response does not, there must be no connection between the two. Yet, no one had described aesthetic response in biological terms until I tried to do so, and my description is in terms of normal emotional response (Aiken, 1998a). So, while it can be argued that aesthetic response can have a universal quality, that quality goes beyond Kant's notion of "disinterest." Futhermore, the idea of "disinterest" has led aestheticians into theoretical dead ends.
What evolutionary theory has to offer aesthetics
Evolutionary theory can offer aesthetics a new framework for theory and research. It can replace Idealism with an empirically validated base from which to work. It can provide scholars who study the nature of art many opportunities for productive ideas and research.
Darwin discussed the beauty of bird song and plumage that seemingly resulted from the pressures of sexual selection (Darwin, 1874). Following Darwin a number of scholars gave special attention to art from an evolutionary point of view (Aiken, 1999), but interest subsequently waned as a result of social darwinism. However, with the publication of E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology in 1975 scholars from various disciplines again began looking at their research from an evolutionary point of view. They began to think of behavior as an evolved mechanism just like a wing or an arm, a hand or a paw. Behavior, it began to be understood, was as important to an organism's survival as its morphology - and the two are intertwined. Morphology and behavior obviously evolved together; therefore, evolutionary theory would apply to animal behavior as well as animal anatomy.
Human beings, of course, pose problems for study because we have obscured our evolutionary history with cultural history. That makes our study more difficult than other animals, but it does not make it impossible. We have discovered that our behavior revolves around the same motives that drive other animals: food in our bellies, shelter, mates, raising offspring, and survival. Our cultural traditions sometimes mask these drives, but significant progress, nevertheless, has been made in understanding why we do the things we do. Understanding why we make art has been a difficult endeavor, but the first solid breakthroughs are taking shape.
If an evolutionary perspective is taken when studying any behavior, the questions generally asked are: "Is this behavior more or less universal in this species?" "Is this behavior rather stereotyped within the species?" "Does this behavior appear without special training?" If the answers are yes, then the assumption is made that the behavior probably was shaped by evolutionary forces, is inherited, and has purpose for the survival, well-being, or reproductive efforts of the individual. While much animal behavior falls into this category, many human behaviors do not. Therefore, those who study human behavior have the added problem of sorting so-called innate behaviors from so-called cultural behaviors.
We readily concede that walking upright, talking, and conscious thought are behaviors universal to our species, but until Ellen Dissayanake proposed it, no one considered art making and art appreciating also to be universal human behaviors (see, for example, Dissanayake, 1988, 1992, 2000). I considered her notion in some depth (Aiken, 1998a) and argued that aesthetic response 1) appears universally in the human species, 2) requires little conscious thought (the emotional response requirement of aesthetic response), 3) requires no training for the initial emotional response, and 4) is relatively stereotyped in that the emotional response is predictable depending on what stimuli elicits it. These meet the requirements of highly biologically constrained behaviors (see Jolly, 1972; Keil, 1981). Art making also fits these requirements. As Ellen Dissayanake has pointed out 1) the arts appear universally in human societies, 2) in pre-industrial societies enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources often are devoted to the arts, 3) the arts are generally a source of great pleasure, and 4) young children are naturally predisposed to engage in the arts in terms of mark-making, moving to music, singing, wordplay, dressing up, and inventing and acting out stories (Aiken, in preparation). In fact, the rudimentary images universally drawn by young children are also drawn by prehistoric and by traditional peoples throughout the world (Aiken, 1998a; Fein, 1993). Dissanayake argues that human beings have a propensity to make the ordinary extraordinary especially in biologically important circumstances where the outcome is significant (Dissanayake, 1988, 1992, 2000). This propensity, which can be seen in ceremonial rituals in all human societies, accounts for the origin of art making. Consequently, two species specific behaviors, aesthetic response and art making, can be considered as highly biologically constrained behaviors, and, as such, can be considered for study as behaviors that are evolved (genetically predisposed) and adaptive (contributing to the well-being of the individual). What this analysis immediately does is to make possible a scientific inquiry into the nature of art and to invalidate the notion that art is "cheesecake."
Probably, the most important thing evolutionary theory can offer aesthetics is the validation of art as a necessary part of human life rather than as a nonutilitarian extra. If one looks at art from an evolutionary perspective, the pervasiveness of artful behavior is widely observable in human activities. That is, art - in one form or another - is part of every culture in every known time and place. The arts result from the human behavior of making ordinary things special through elaboration and care and include everything from body decoration to symphonies (Dissanayake, 1988, 1992, 2000). Consequently, even though aestheticians have never agreed upon a definition of art, those of us who take an evolutionary perspective when thinking about art, stretch the unwritten definition of art in Western culture to include artifact and decoration. We have found that expanding the unwritten exclusive definition, which includes only "high" or "fine" art, to make it inclusive of virtually anything "made special" by artful behavior allows us to examine art in ways never before attempted. This examination has proven to be very productive and illuminating. It has given us the opportunity to say that art has adaptive value and to consider what that value might be.
To an evolutionist, adaptive value means that the behavior or activity or organic structure is necessary for the survival and/or the reproduction of the organism. Behaviors and organic structures that are necessary for the survival and/or the reproduction of the organism possessing them tend to be wide-spread in the species. That is, most, if not all, of the members of the species under consideration are predisposed to develop the particular behavior or organic structure. Just as all human beings have hearts and lungs, walk upright, and have opposable thumbs, all human beings exhibit artful behavior in circumstances about which they care. Singing, dancing, styling hair, painting fingernails, dressing fashionably, arranging flowers for the dinner table, selecting the appropriate tie to go with a shirt are examples of artful behavior. Artful behavior is elaborating the ordinary (and a key question for evolutionists is why do we elaborate ordinary behaviors and things). Thus, if an evolutionary perspective is adopted when thinking about the nature of art, it becomes apparent that art must be useful to us and that artful behavior probably holds the key to understanding the nature of art.
Some progress made by evolutionists in the study of the nature of art
Using evolutionary theory as the framework for thinking about the nature of art has resulted in some progress in answering ancient questions such as "What is aesthetic response?" "What is beauty?" "What is good art?" and "What is universal value?" Although the last three questions are not exactly the same, for our purposes here, let us group them together as one: "What is good art?' Let us look first at this question.
Evolutionary theory can help clarify what is meant by "good" art. Evolutionary psychologists have made some interesting discoveries about what they think people consider to be good art. Kant equated good art with beautiful art, and beautiful art, he wrote, looks like nature. Gordon Orians has studied what landscapes we prefer and points out that landscape paintings that have proved to be popular are those which include our preferred habitat which he has found to be the savannah (see Orians, this issue; Orians & Heerwagen, 1992). Orians has carried Kant's Platonic notion one step further: not only is a painting beautiful because it looks like nature, it is especially beautiful because it looks like a habitat suitable for successful human survival. Other researchers have found that people find symmetrical faces and bodies more attractive than their irregular counterparts (For example, see Gangestad, Thornhill, & Yeo, 1994; Manning, 1995; Singh, 1993; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994). The underlying theory driving these studies is the notion that we, like other animals, have inherited tendencies to select habitats where our ancestors thrived and mates whose regular features signaled a healthy body. These studies have merit because they give us some information on personal preferences which may have some universal basis and which probably are adaptive.
However, these studies cannot answer the question "What is good art?" because they make two invalid assumptions 1) art is beautiful because it looks like nature and 2) that value in art is based on popular preference. The argument that we like certain landscape paintings because they employ all of the things we need for a safe habitat that also has food, water, and shelter is much the same as Plato's argument that painters paint pictures of ideal things. We have already seen that interest in art does not arise from interest in the objects depicted. Also, these are "preference" studies; that is, the researchers asked people what they preferred from an array of pictures of landscapes or faces. Aestheticians will argue that beauty or goodness or value in art is not decided by a popular poll. If popularity determined good art, paintings of Elvis Presley on black velvet would be high on the list of most-wanted museum acquisitions (see Komar & Melamid, 1997 and Dissanayake, 1998 for further discussion).
The question of what determines good art is a complex and difficult one to answer, but taking an evolutionary point of view allows us to look at art from all times and cultures and the assessments of that art by peers and those of other times and cultures. It allows us to assume a certain universality to our aesthetic judgments, and - something aestheticians seldom have felt free to do - look for universals in aesthetic judgments. We can also divide the emotional content from the cognitive content of an aesthetic judgment, and examine it from psychological, physiological, and experiential angles (see my analysis in Aiken, 1998a).
An evolutionary perspective can help determine what is aesthetic response.
Aesthetic judgments imply aesthetic response. My research indicates that aesthetic response is based on normal emotional responses which are evoked by unconditioned and conditioned stimuli that are part of works of art (Aiken, 1998a). I argue that the normal emotional response to unconditioned stimuli in works of art accounts for the universality of our response to certain works of art. My work is based on that of Richard G. Coss, who proposed that we respond emotionally to certain visual configurations such as snake-like shapes and "eye spots" or two circles placed horizontally so that they might appear to be eyes. Coss found that subjects' eyes dilated significantly in response to the eye spot pattern as opposed to other patterns with two circles (Coss, 1965). He suggested that artists use these stimuli to evoke emotion (Coss, 1968). I found that subjects' heart rates and finger pulse volumes changed differently in response to eye spots than to other circular patterns (Aiken, 1998b). Eye spots had demonstrated their ability to evoke autonomic nervous system responses which were associated with fear. Neuroscience research had reached a point which allowed me not only to explain the neural mechanism which causes this unconditioned response to such visual and auditory stimuli, but, also, how a fear response could be evoked by art yet be construed as pleasurable by the appreciator of that art. Thanks to the work of Joseph E. LeDoux (and others, e.g. the work of Zuckerman, 1985) I could make such an explanation (see Aiken, 1998a): generally, and very simply, our fear response to certain works of art is so slight that we do not realize that we have been frightened; our cognitive evaluation of our experience is that we have been "excited" by the work of art, and we are pleased.
Emotions tend to be subconsciously generated (Cannon, 1929; Panksepp, 1998). While we can respond emotionally without will or cognition, as Kant suggested and as Cannon and others have proved, evaluation of art requires conscious thought. Emotions can be felt without "thinking" but thinking about art requires more than emotional activity. Aesthetic response usually includes both emotional response and conscious cognition. Conscious evaluation of the art work might result from unconscious emotional response evoked by the art, but the two processes are not the same and should be considered as two parts of aesthetic response. While all people at all times might experience a similar emotional response evoked by a particular work of art (the universal aspect of aesthetic response), their evaluation or discussion of the art work will be relative to their experiences with art, their cultural expectations, their personal preferences and knowledge, and other factors such as mood, attentiveness, and personal biases. Consequently, art has both universal and relative qualities - or - evokes both universal and relative responses.
This kind of analysis of aesthetic response is possible by taking an evolutionary viewpoint and an interdisciplinary approach combining neuroscience, art history, aesthetics, anthropology, ethology, and psychology. An increasing number of scholars from a variety of disciplines are thinking about art from an evolutionary perspective. Fresh ideas are being generated, and new research routes are being found - thanks to a broadening of perspective.
How is art adaptive?
If an evolutionary approach to examining the nature of art is, indeed, the correct approach, a utilitarian function must be found for the arts. That is, art making and art appreciating must have adaptive value if artful behavior is an evolved behavior necessary for our survival and/or reproductive success. As a conclusion, we will look at the beginnings of a theory of the function of art.
Evolutionary psychology supports sexual selection theory. Evolutionary psychology holds tightly to Darwin's brief discussion of sexual selection (Darwin, 1998, pp. 117-120 and his more elaborate discussion (1874)), which relied heavily on animal ornamentation. Animal ornamentation, he noted, evolved due - not to environmental pressure - but to selection pressure by the opposite sex (Darwin, 1998). Darwin's discussion of a "standard of beauty" contributing to evolved combined with Kant's notion that what is beautiful in art is beautiful in nature, has led some modern evolutionary psychologists not only to look for physical features in ourselves, which have evolved due to sexual selection, but, also, to construe this situation into a tentative theory of art (Thornhill, 1998; Miller, 2000). The adaptive significance of art, according to this line of thinking, would be as a vehicle for sexual selection.
Sexual selection refers to evolution by selective pressure from potential mates. As Miller points out (pp. 13-14) adaptations from sexual selection (based mostly on studies of animals other than ourselves) have special features: 1) adaptations for courtship are highly developed in sexually mature adults, but not at other life stages, 2) courtship display is usually by males (females do the choosing), 3) females find these displays attractive, and 4) the display often includes weaponry such as big antlers for deer and/or ornamentation such as the peacock's tail.
According to feature 1), above, young, sexually mature adults should be our artists of the world. However, very young children are natural and very productive artists. They scribble, they make up stories, they dance and sing with very little provocation. If only professional artists are considered, success for them often comes with middle age. (Rock musicians are the current exception in the Western world.) Art making and appreciating occurs at every age.
The second feature of a behavior or trait that has evolved via sexual selection calls for males to be the artists. Although it can be said that most recognized artists historically have been men, that fact is confounded by the lack of opportunity for women. Women were not allowed to act in Shakespeare's plays in Elizabethan England; boys filled the female rolls. Mary Ann Evans had a compelling reason for writing under the pen name George Eliot. Women have traditionally been responsible for most care of offspring, food preparation, gathering food, and planting kitchen gardens. However, they also wove beautiful cloth and baskets, embroidered elaborate designs, sewed decorated quilts and clothing, set beautiful tables, and made themselves beautiful with cosmetics, hair dye, and carefully chosen clothes. Some have even found the time and energy to produce great art in the Western "elite" art sense, e.g. Mary Cassett, Georgia O'Keefe, Maya Lin. Feature 3) indicates that it is the women who should most appreciate art, but men are also art lovers.
Feature 4) does not hold in the usual sense of the peacock's tail. Miller gives one example of male ornamentation (p. 276) in which African Wodaabe women choose men for sexual encounters who, besides exhibiting certain desired physical attributes, are the best decorated. However, figures on the reproductive success of selected men versus unselected men are not given, and the Wodaabe standard of beauty does not apply universally. Perhaps what the Wodaabe women are judging are fitness indicators (physical attributes of the men) which have been enhanced with face paint and costumes. Perhaps, artful behavior is part of what is selected. Skill, agility, gracefulness, the quality of a singing voice, and the effort - or - apparent ease of accomplishing a difficult task could well be judged by potential mates. As Miller suggests (pp. 281-282), demonstrating one's fitness through the wasteful extravagance of art making could be a factor in the evolution of artful behavior. The question of gender specificity still nags, however. Nevertheless, sexual selection needs to be carefully considered as a potent force in the evolution of art as an adaptive behavior - doing so will greatly enhance our understanding of our nature.
Other other modes of selection are probably at work. Dissanayake argues that art, along with religion (as ceremonial ritual) has been a means of attempting to impose control on nature and, as such it has strengthened cooperation within groups which has benefited individuals within the groups in various ways (Dissanayake, 1988,1992, 2000). Elaborate ritual and belief systems provide individual security, and promote cooperation and cohesion in an insecure world. We, among animals, are alone in knowing our eventual fate. We anticipate dangers that might lie before us. We are social animals who need to live in-groups, but who also think for ourselves. Thus, we need ways to promote cooperation with others in the group. Dissanayake (2000) provides numerous examples of how the arts serve evolved human needs for belonging, meaning, and a sense of competence.
She also argues that artful behavior (the propensity to elaborate) has originated, not from sexual selection, but from offspring caretaking, specifically, from caretaker-infant interactions (Dissanayake, 2000). Infants are predisposed to respond to and interact in emotionally charged ways with caretakers. Normal talk is elaborated into baby talk; normal facial expressions are magnified, movements and phrases are rhythmic and pronounced. Her complex argument involves this interaction as a necessary prerequisite for normal development of not just individuals, but individuals in-groups. The emotional attachments necessary for cooperative behavior as social animals are dependent on the rhythms and modes of caretaker-infant interaction. Furthermore, this interaction, which elaborates normal behavior and injects it with emotional quality, provides the groundwork for art making and appreciating.
My research, which led to an explanation for how art can evoke emotion, also suggests another adaptive function for art. Because emotion is evoked below the level of conscious thought - yet emotion can direct thought and action - art provides a means of manipulating people without their realizing that they are being manipulated (see Aiken, 1998a). This quality of art allows leaders to control the group and focus the group while individuals within the group think that what they are doing is the right thing to do. The payoff for the leader is enhanced access to food, shelter, and mates, which is what an evolutionist would expect from an evolved, adaptive behavior. Other people in the group benefit also from the safety and security of a strong, cooperating group. (Groups can be anything from traditional tribes to nations to armies to sports teams to labor unions. Art, in these instances, is generally not the art of museums, recital hall, or printed page, but is the visual display of ritual, pomp and circumstance, rhythm, stirring oratory, waving flags, parades.) Thus, art can be, but not always is, a powerful means of controlling human behavior with big payoffs in terms of survival and/or reproductive opportunities.
Consequently, taking an evolutionary perspective when considering the nature of art can lead to new avenues of research and theory and can offer another look at answers to old questions. Those of us who have taken this viewpoint when thinking about art are excited by the potential it offers. We, of course, think that this is the correct viewpoint to take. At the very least, it offers opportunities to investigate human nature, in general, in ways never before possible.
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Acknowledgment
Grateful thanks to Ellen Dissanayake for a review of a draft of this paper.