Many thanks to Morris Wolfe for tipping me off to this very funny and insightful review of Brian Boyd' s On The Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Michael Bérubé. I'm planning to read the Boyd book because it sounds like it's in a different league from Dennis Dutton's The Art Instinct (by different I mean not ludicrous) and the suggestion that fiction is necessary for human survival is a topic dear to my heart. But I already like Bérubé's sardonic take better than either of them.
excerpt:
“[Richard] Dawkins points out that he could with equal validity, though with less impact, have called his famous first book not The Selfish Gene but The Cooperative Gene.”
Well, that’s nice to know after all these years, now that three decades of popular-science enthusiasts have convinced themselves that Nature herself speaks in the language of Ayn Rand. One hopes the word will get around.
This scientifically accurate evolutionary chart says differently.
(Lorna -1, Sally - 0)
OMG. Uncle.
Evolution would have gone even faster if dude on the bottom right had taken his fingers out from between the rocks before bashing them together.
Email from Rob Cruickshank.
(we are so totally sciency on this site)
Yay gif! I like how Ayn Rand is the only woman in the great chain of being. The artist's other work is also pretty fantabulous. Also her captions.
Were there specific points in Dutton's The Art Instinct that you found ludicrous? or is it simply the premise that there exists an evolutionary explanation for artistic/aesthetic appreciation? Have you any other reading suggestions on topic?
Love your blog and trains of thought, with such fun images to boot!
It's the specifics of Dutton's theory that really bug me (more on this later) but I do have a general skepticism for evolutionary theories. No time right now to go into this in detail, but I'll be back. That said...
Merlin Donald (cognitive scientist)! He has an evolutionary theory about art too, but I like it a lot better.
Donald, Merlin, “Art and Cognitive Evolution” in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, Turner, Mark, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp.3-20
Donald, Merlin, “Imitation and Mimesis,” in Perspectives on Imitation, From Neuroscience to Social Science, Vol 2, Susan Hurley and Nick Chater, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005) pp. 283-300
Awesome! Thanks!! This past year I (finally) read The Naked Ape, and it got me to thinking about who/what we are physically and our desire to be more, most often through cognitive means. Dutton's book then leapt out at me, and what I found most useful was his attempt to erase creative categories (i.e. Inuit art) in order to consider all art on a more open and level playing field. (Are level playing fields always more general playing fields?) Anyway, thanks. Now I've got more to go on. After, of course, On the Origin of Species, whose spine I just cracked.
The trick with applying science to art, in my opinion, is to distinguish between empiricism and essentialism/universalism. This attempt to erase creative categories is something that Steve Pinker started. If you haven't already, anoymous, you might really like to read The Blank Slate. Published in 2003, The Blank Slate starts out with an argument for why it is necessary to be able to talk about genetics. By taking so much time to carefully frame his argument against the idea that the human mind is born as a "blank slate" Pinker shows respect for the very real and serious dangers of biological determinism. He suggests that instead of focusing on the many differences between cultures, we could as easily focus on the many similarities and makes some impressive lists of cultural configurations that are shared by almost everyone. It's refreshing to be thinking about possibilities for cross-cultural communication rather than the impasse of difference of otherness.
Dutton is heavily influenced by Pinker and what I like about it is that he is arguing that art is of fundmental importance to human beings, not a frill or a decadent luxury for the upper classes to amuse themselves with once all our basic needs have been met. And in order to make this argument, he needs to expand the definition of art beyond the Western art historical tradition, which I also like.
BUT, he starts arguing that people in general prefer a certain kind of pastoral landscape in art. And he uses Komar and Melamid as evidence as if they were doing science, when in fact I believe they were taking the piss. And he also uses as evidence the fact that there are a lot of calendars produced with pastoral landscape scenes. Having thus "established" that people prefer this kind of art, he then goes on to explain it using evolutionary theory, suggesting that it goes back to the Pleistocene when our ancestors were struggling for survival in the savanna, which has the features of pastoral landscapes depicted in art. That's pure speculation, in my opinion, passed off as a kind of sciencey authority. This is the problem with evolutionary theory, everyone can use it to support whatever it is they want to argue. And so it makes me a bit cringey.
Thanks again! I'll add Pinker to the list as well.
You're right about the pitfalls of applying science to art. I have always thought about it as a mediation of sorts between a system that requires measurement and things/processes that tend to disregard said necessity. Generally art is only measured when going to the framer, or governments get involved. I've never heard of essentialism. More to look into, I suppose.
I agree with your assessment of Dutton's failures. Komar and Melamid most certainly were taking the piss. Oh how quasi-science can be such a delight, but only when the "quasi" is recognized. In terms of "our love of landscape", I have come to the conclusion that most people just like to recognize things when looking at art. This has far more to do with experience than with evolution, and with not feeling stupid for not understanding something.
"Oh how quasi-science can be such a delight, but only when the 'quasi' is recognized."
well said, Roberto!
I suspect that art, language, symbolic thought and social behavior are a set of intertwined developments that distinguish homo sapiens from other hominids, e.g. Neanderthals.
The same mental facilities that allow us to create art allow us to create the mythology and propaganda that lead to social structures on a massive scale?
Yay! Everybody's favourite topic: What makes humans different from animals. Check out this great Ted lecture by Robert Sapolsky. What a dude!
Yup, I love him now too. Thanks for that link.
Though he probably negates some of Mark's conjectures, it sounded to me like he was pointing out that the social structures, empathetic behaviours, recognition of the 'other', were common to many animals but more extreme in humans.
yeah. I like that "it's a matter of degree" approach. But, like everybody, he's got one pet human trait that he values above all others and it's also the one that we supposedly don't share with any other animals. And its a good one: Humans have the capacity to believe two contradictory things at once. I'm not sure it's truly unique to people (cats seem to able to believe that strings are strings and strings are mousie tails all at the same time) but it's a fucking great trait.
http://pics.livejournal.com/ievil_spock_47i/pic/000wr838
I always enjoy reading your blog, and have made a New Year's resolution to do so more often! I am a bit late to this discussion, and could not post the above link as an actual image, but I think you'll enjoy it in view of the Dutton/Pinker discussion above.
I am with you regarding Merlin Donald. "Origins of the Modern Mind" and "A Mind So Rare" are both brilliant books, and the product of mature, considered scholarship. Dutton's book I think falls in the category of pop "science" and was written with best seller status in mind, not scholarity. I found it fun and maddening at the same time. Komar and Melamid get the last laugh.
Another train of thought, related to the "what distinguishes homo sapiens" debate:
A momentarily mistaken reading of something you wrote above ("he's got one pet human trait that he values") got me thinking about the recent Dolphins as Non-Human Persons debate.
I though you might be talking about humans as pets...as in, if we follow the dolphin argument to its logical but not sensible extreme, we may have to say that if dolphins are persons because they are intelligent, then unintelligent/genetically/ developmentally impaired humans shouldn't be counted as persons. Problematic, isn't it?
From a.k.'s link:
OK. So I am not a huge fan of Pinker. I worry that he has no sense of humour...he sure doesn't seem to get Komar and Melamid's joke.
For a good critique of "The Blank Sate", check out Louis Menand in the New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/11/25/021125crbo_books?printable=true
Here's a section of the article, discussing what's wrong with Pinker's reductive analysis of the aesthetic experience:
"An obsession with the mean point of the bell curve has sometimes led scientists to forget that the "average person" is a mathematical construct, corresponding to no actual human being. It represents, in many cases, a kind of lowest common denominator. Yet scientists like Pinker treat it as a universal species norm. The classic case of this kind of apotheosis of the average is the kind of study, reported in the Science Times, in which the ideal female face is constructed by blending all the features identified by people as most beautiful. The result is a homogenized, anodyne image with no aesthetic or erotic charge at all, far less alluring than many of the "outlying" variants used to derive it. Pinker's evolutionary theory of beauty has the same effect. "An eye for beauty," he says, "locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility—just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate." Elsewhere, he explains that "the study of evolutionary aesthetics is also documenting the features that make a face or body beautiful. The prized lineaments are those that signal health, vigor, and fertility." But if this were all the eye required the girl in the Pepsodent commercial would be the most desirable woman on earth. And the only person who thinks that is the guy in the Pepsodent commercial. People don't go for faces that deviate from the "ideal" because they can't have the ideal. They go for them because the deviation is what makes them attractive.
So it is with most of the things we care about—food, friends, recreation, art. Biology reverts to the mean; civilization does not. The mind is a fabulator. It is designed (by natural selection, if you like) to dream up ideas and experiences away from the mean.....Deviations make him [Pinker] suspicious, and modern art, in his book, is the prime suspect. Pinker believes not only that evolutionary psychology can explain why human beings create and consume art (it's mostly for reasons having to do with the drive for prestige). He believes that evolutionary psychology can explain what is wrong with art today—the decline of the high-art traditions, the loss of the critic's social status, and the "pretentious and unintelligible scholarship" of contemporary humanities departments."
Welcome a.k.! And thanks for these great posts. The graph is pretty funny! I agree about Pinker. His stuff on art is lamentable, although it's also kind of entertaining.
For more good stuff from a.k. see her very interesting blog Neurartic.
JUST WHAT I NEEDED.
I WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING ELSE.
WHAT WAS IT?
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE.
|
Many thanks to Morris Wolfe for tipping me off to this very funny and insightful review of Brian Boyd' s On The Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Michael Bérubé. I'm planning to read the Boyd book because it sounds like it's in a different league from Dennis Dutton's The Art Instinct (by different I mean not ludicrous) and the suggestion that fiction is necessary for human survival is a topic dear to my heart. But I already like Bérubé's sardonic take better than either of them.
excerpt:
- sally mckay 1-05-2010 1:03 pm
This scientifically accurate evolutionary chart says differently.
(Lorna -1, Sally - 0)
- L.M. 1-05-2010 3:56 pm
OMG. Uncle.
- sally mckay 1-05-2010 4:18 pm
Evolution would have gone even faster if dude on the bottom right had taken his fingers out from between the rocks before bashing them together.
- rob (guest) 1-05-2010 7:59 pm
Email from Rob Cruickshank.
(we are so totally sciency on this site)
- L.M. 1-05-2010 9:10 pm
Yay gif! I like how Ayn Rand is the only woman in the great chain of being. The artist's other work is also pretty fantabulous. Also her captions.
- sally mckay 1-06-2010 12:47 am
Were there specific points in Dutton's The Art Instinct that you found ludicrous? or is it simply the premise that there exists an evolutionary explanation for artistic/aesthetic appreciation? Have you any other reading suggestions on topic?
Love your blog and trains of thought, with such fun images to boot!
- Roberto (guest) 1-11-2010 1:31 am
It's the specifics of Dutton's theory that really bug me (more on this later) but I do have a general skepticism for evolutionary theories. No time right now to go into this in detail, but I'll be back. That said...
Merlin Donald (cognitive scientist)! He has an evolutionary theory about art too, but I like it a lot better.
Donald, Merlin, “Art and Cognitive Evolution” in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, Turner, Mark, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp.3-20
Donald, Merlin, “Imitation and Mimesis,” in Perspectives on Imitation, From Neuroscience to Social Science, Vol 2, Susan Hurley and Nick Chater, eds. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005) pp. 283-300
- sally mckay 1-11-2010 5:04 am
Awesome! Thanks!! This past year I (finally) read The Naked Ape, and it got me to thinking about who/what we are physically and our desire to be more, most often through cognitive means. Dutton's book then leapt out at me, and what I found most useful was his attempt to erase creative categories (i.e. Inuit art) in order to consider all art on a more open and level playing field. (Are level playing fields always more general playing fields?) Anyway, thanks. Now I've got more to go on. After, of course, On the Origin of Species, whose spine I just cracked.
- anonymous (guest) 1-12-2010 2:24 am
The trick with applying science to art, in my opinion, is to distinguish between empiricism and essentialism/universalism. This attempt to erase creative categories is something that Steve Pinker started. If you haven't already, anoymous, you might really like to read The Blank Slate. Published in 2003, The Blank Slate starts out with an argument for why it is necessary to be able to talk about genetics. By taking so much time to carefully frame his argument against the idea that the human mind is born as a "blank slate" Pinker shows respect for the very real and serious dangers of biological determinism. He suggests that instead of focusing on the many differences between cultures, we could as easily focus on the many similarities and makes some impressive lists of cultural configurations that are shared by almost everyone. It's refreshing to be thinking about possibilities for cross-cultural communication rather than the impasse of difference of otherness.
Dutton is heavily influenced by Pinker and what I like about it is that he is arguing that art is of fundmental importance to human beings, not a frill or a decadent luxury for the upper classes to amuse themselves with once all our basic needs have been met. And in order to make this argument, he needs to expand the definition of art beyond the Western art historical tradition, which I also like.
BUT, he starts arguing that people in general prefer a certain kind of pastoral landscape in art. And he uses Komar and Melamid as evidence as if they were doing science, when in fact I believe they were taking the piss. And he also uses as evidence the fact that there are a lot of calendars produced with pastoral landscape scenes. Having thus "established" that people prefer this kind of art, he then goes on to explain it using evolutionary theory, suggesting that it goes back to the Pleistocene when our ancestors were struggling for survival in the savanna, which has the features of pastoral landscapes depicted in art. That's pure speculation, in my opinion, passed off as a kind of sciencey authority. This is the problem with evolutionary theory, everyone can use it to support whatever it is they want to argue. And so it makes me a bit cringey.
- sally mckay 1-12-2010 3:43 pm
Thanks again! I'll add Pinker to the list as well.
You're right about the pitfalls of applying science to art. I have always thought about it as a mediation of sorts between a system that requires measurement and things/processes that tend to disregard said necessity. Generally art is only measured when going to the framer, or governments get involved. I've never heard of essentialism. More to look into, I suppose.
I agree with your assessment of Dutton's failures. Komar and Melamid most certainly were taking the piss. Oh how quasi-science can be such a delight, but only when the "quasi" is recognized. In terms of "our love of landscape", I have come to the conclusion that most people just like to recognize things when looking at art. This has far more to do with experience than with evolution, and with not feeling stupid for not understanding something.
- Roberto (guest) 1-12-2010 11:53 pm
"Oh how quasi-science can be such a delight, but only when the 'quasi' is recognized."
well said, Roberto!
- sally mckay 1-13-2010 4:08 am
I suspect that art, language, symbolic thought and social behavior are a set of intertwined developments that distinguish homo sapiens from other hominids, e.g. Neanderthals. The same mental facilities that allow us to create art allow us to create the mythology and propaganda that lead to social structures on a massive scale?
- mark 1-16-2010 9:13 am
Yay! Everybody's favourite topic: What makes humans different from animals. Check out this great Ted lecture by Robert Sapolsky. What a dude!
- sally mckay 1-17-2010 5:39 pm
Yup, I love him now too. Thanks for that link.
- L.M. 1-17-2010 7:42 pm
Though he probably negates some of Mark's conjectures, it sounded to me like he was pointing out that the social structures, empathetic behaviours, recognition of the 'other', were common to many animals but more extreme in humans.
- L.M. 1-17-2010 7:45 pm
yeah. I like that "it's a matter of degree" approach. But, like everybody, he's got one pet human trait that he values above all others and it's also the one that we supposedly don't share with any other animals. And its a good one: Humans have the capacity to believe two contradictory things at once. I'm not sure it's truly unique to people (cats seem to able to believe that strings are strings and strings are mousie tails all at the same time) but it's a fucking great trait.
- sally mckay 1-18-2010 12:09 am
http://pics.livejournal.com/ievil_spock_47i/pic/000wr838
- anonymous (guest) 1-23-2010 9:10 pm
I always enjoy reading your blog, and have made a New Year's resolution to do so more often! I am a bit late to this discussion, and could not post the above link as an actual image, but I think you'll enjoy it in view of the Dutton/Pinker discussion above.
I am with you regarding Merlin Donald. "Origins of the Modern Mind" and "A Mind So Rare" are both brilliant books, and the product of mature, considered scholarship. Dutton's book I think falls in the category of pop "science" and was written with best seller status in mind, not scholarity. I found it fun and maddening at the same time. Komar and Melamid get the last laugh.
Another train of thought, related to the "what distinguishes homo sapiens" debate:
A momentarily mistaken reading of something you wrote above ("he's got one pet human trait that he values") got me thinking about the recent Dolphins as Non-Human Persons debate.
I though you might be talking about humans as pets...as in, if we follow the dolphin argument to its logical but not sensible extreme, we may have to say that if dolphins are persons because they are intelligent, then unintelligent/genetically/ developmentally impaired humans shouldn't be counted as persons. Problematic, isn't it?
- a.k. (guest) 1-23-2010 10:02 pm
From a.k.'s link:
- L.M. 1-23-2010 11:12 pm
OK. So I am not a huge fan of Pinker. I worry that he has no sense of humour...he sure doesn't seem to get Komar and Melamid's joke.
For a good critique of "The Blank Sate", check out Louis Menand in the New Yorker.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/11/25/021125crbo_books?printable=true
Here's a section of the article, discussing what's wrong with Pinker's reductive analysis of the aesthetic experience:
"An obsession with the mean point of the bell curve has sometimes led scientists to forget that the "average person" is a mathematical construct, corresponding to no actual human being. It represents, in many cases, a kind of lowest common denominator. Yet scientists like Pinker treat it as a universal species norm. The classic case of this kind of apotheosis of the average is the kind of study, reported in the Science Times, in which the ideal female face is constructed by blending all the features identified by people as most beautiful. The result is a homogenized, anodyne image with no aesthetic or erotic charge at all, far less alluring than many of the "outlying" variants used to derive it. Pinker's evolutionary theory of beauty has the same effect. "An eye for beauty," he says, "locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility—just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate." Elsewhere, he explains that "the study of evolutionary aesthetics is also documenting the features that make a face or body beautiful. The prized lineaments are those that signal health, vigor, and fertility." But if this were all the eye required the girl in the Pepsodent commercial would be the most desirable woman on earth. And the only person who thinks that is the guy in the Pepsodent commercial. People don't go for faces that deviate from the "ideal" because they can't have the ideal. They go for them because the deviation is what makes them attractive.
So it is with most of the things we care about—food, friends, recreation, art. Biology reverts to the mean; civilization does not. The mind is a fabulator. It is designed (by natural selection, if you like) to dream up ideas and experiences away from the mean.....Deviations make him [Pinker] suspicious, and modern art, in his book, is the prime suspect. Pinker believes not only that evolutionary psychology can explain why human beings create and consume art (it's mostly for reasons having to do with the drive for prestige). He believes that evolutionary psychology can explain what is wrong with art today—the decline of the high-art traditions, the loss of the critic's social status, and the "pretentious and unintelligible scholarship" of contemporary humanities departments."
- a.k. (guest) 1-24-2010 2:44 pm
Welcome a.k.! And thanks for these great posts. The graph is pretty funny! I agree about Pinker. His stuff on art is lamentable, although it's also kind of entertaining.
- sally mckay 1-24-2010 3:20 pm
For more good stuff from a.k. see her very interesting blog Neurartic.
- sally mckay 1-24-2010 3:22 pm
JUST WHAT I NEEDED.
I WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING ELSE.
WHAT WAS IT?
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE.
- ROSEYPINK (guest) 1-24-2010 5:08 pm