Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts

Colin Martindale, Paul Locher, Vladimir Petrov, Arnold Berleant, Vladimir M Petrov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351844536
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this book, well-known scholars describe new and exciting approaches to aesthetics, creativity and psychology of the arts, approaching these topics from a point of view that is biological or related to biology and answering new questions with new methods and theories. All known societies produce and enjoy arts such as literature, music and visual decoration or depiction. Judging from prehistoric archaeological evidence, this arose very early in human development. Furthermore, Darwin was explicit in attributing aesthetic sensitivity to lower animals. These considerations lead us to wonder whether the arts might not be evolutionarily based. Although such an evolutionary basis is not obvious on the face of it, the idea has recently elicited considerable attention. The book begins with a consideration of ten theories on the evolutionary function of specific arts such as music and literature. The theory of evolution was first drawn up in biology, but evolution is not confined to biology: genuinely evolutionary theories of sociocultural change can be formulated. That they need to be formulated is shown in several chapters that discuss regular trends in literature and scientific writings. Psychologists have recently rediscovered the obvious fact that thought and perception occur in the brain, so cognitive science moves ever closer to neuroscience. Several chapters give overviews of neurocognitive and neural network approaches to creativity and aesthetic appreciation. The book concludes with two exciting describing brain-scan research on what happens in the brain during creativity and presenting a close examination of the relationship between genetically transmitted mental disorder and creativity.

CHAPTER 1

What Art Is and What Art Does: An Overview of Contemporary Evolutionary Hypotheses

Ellen Dissanayake

Although art theorists today have enlarged their purview of what should be included in a concept of art, contemporary psychologists of art frequently base their studies on outdated ideas and assumptions arising from the fine-art tradition of Western Europe (and possibly some “high” cultures of Asia). It is ironic that psychologists, as scientists, seek universal general explanatory principles and yet rely on a restricted sample of objects, whereas academic art theorists (at least today) accept as art a broad variety of manifestations in modern Western and non-Western societies, yet deny that there are any general principles underlying their psychological nature or function.

Both contemporary art theory and, to a large extent, traditional psychology of art have ignored evolutionary psychology based on the writings of Charles Darwin (1871). Yet at least five observations suggest that the arts have been adaptive during human evolution and are an inherent part of human nature. That is to say (a) the arts are present in every culture that is or has been known; (b) in most traditional societies, individuals and groups devote an excessive amount of time, energy, and material resources to the arts, far more than would be expected for a superfluous activity; (c) the arts attract attention and invite participation and indeed provide enjoyment and pleasure; (d) very young children are predisposed to make and enjoy the arts; and (e) the arts are usually concerned with biologically important subject matter.

Although the arts are products of cultures and vary from place to place, we now know that from birth and during their early years, humans are biologically predisposed to be cultural beings, evident both in innate abilities (to interact with others, imitate, play, and speak) and emotional needs (for attachment to familiars, mutual interaction, and positive regard by their associates). Similarly, capacities to engage in the arts are biologically predisposed, and I suggest that a “behavior of art” can be considered a biological adaptation.

In the past decade or so, evolutionary psychologists have proposed hypotheses about the nature and adaptive function of art. In Part A of this chapter, I shall summarize nine of these, and in Part B, describe my own hypothesis and how it fits into the general adaptationist discourse about what art is and what it does. Space unfortunately does not permit examination of subtle aspects of the nine other views (or indeed my own), and their proponents may feel themselves unfairly, because too summarily, presented. My intention in Part A is to provide a general overview, with references that can lead interested readers to the works mentioned.

It should be pointed out that virtually all evolutionary psychologists agree that the ultimate function of any adaptive behavior is to positively affect inclusive fitness; that is, the individual’s survival and reproductive success. Contributions to fitness may not be obvious, and most individuals rarely, if ever, consciously reflect on the ultimate motivation behind their “proximate” actions and responses or the reasons they give for behaving and responding as they do.

Despite this shared axiom, controversies among evolutionary psychologists are lively, and the relatively new field of evolutionary approaches to the arts awaits a unifying set of principles about its subject. The disparate approaches and theories in part reflect the complexity and confusion of notions about human “art,” which is not even a word or concept in the majority of human societies. The subject of art, both within and outside of evolutionary psychology, is reminiscent of the famous elephant described by several blind men. What one concludes about the trunk may not pertain to what another has to say about the tail, ear, or foot. Any one view is not obviously relevant to any other, which makes discussion difficult and even unprofitable; and some hypotheses are based at least in part on unexamined presuppositions about art that may or may not be shared by other investigators. Some have to do with art as an artifact (a work, an object); a quality or feature (such as beauty); a cue to something else (such as creativity or skill); or as an activity or behavior. Some studies presuppose more than one meaning, inadvertently sliding from one aspect of art to another. The variety of suggestions about art’s adaptive function then arise from (a) differences in what the writer takes to be “art” or (b) different ideas about the ways in which fitness is positively affected; that is, its proximate manifestations. In the nine hypotheses described in the next section, what art is or what art does will in some cases seem partial, tangled, or obscure, and often difficult to compare with another hypothesis.

A. NINE HYPOTHESES ABOUT WHAT ART DOES

Any suggestion of the function (the adaptive consequences) of art—what art does—presumes a notion of what art is. Many hypotheses about art’s function simply presuppose that art is one thing, thereby excluding other things. For example, “art” typically refers to paintings, sculptures, and other visual art, thereby disregarding not only music and literature but dance and performance (which are perceived visually). Those who treat art as adaptive may also specifically equate it with beauty, or creativity and imagination. Yet there are beautiful things (sunsets, flowers) that are not art, and creativity or imagination may be expressed in such nonart activities as teaching or problem solving (to call such activities “art” because they make use of creative thought is only synecdoche). Skill seems to be inherent in art (as its etymology attests, where “art” means correct understanding of technical principles, such as the art of fly-fishing or of surgery). Yet I claim that art need not be skillful. A hypothesis about the adaptive value of “beauty” or “creativity” or “skill,” I argue (see Part B), is not the same as a comprehensive hypothesis about the adaptive value of the larger category, “art,” or even of an individual art.

(1) Typical of what might be called a neurocognitive approach to function are fascinating and erudite books by Solso (1994) and Zeki (1999), whose titles or jacket copy explicitly refer to visual art and the brain. These studies do not take an overt adaptationist perspective but suggest that “by knowing more about the workings of the brain in general and of the visual brain in particular, one might be able to develop the outlines of a theory of aesthetics that is biologically based” (Zeki, 1999, p. 1); or “Art is part of us and we are part of art. Mind and art are one” (Solso, 1994, p. xv). For Zeki, the function of art is to search for the constant, lasting, essential, or enduring features of objects, surfaces, faces, or situations and thus to acquire a deeper knowledge of them. Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999), in a similar vein, consider art’s purpose to be to enhance, transcend, or even distort or caricature reality and thereby help a viewer to solve perceptual or cognitive problems. The examples on which these studies are based are preponderantly masterpieces of Western fine art.

(2) Among a plethora of functions proposed by evolutionary psychologists is that offered by practitioners of soi-disant “evolutionary aesthetics” (formerly “Darwinian aesthetics”), which considers art as an adaptive behavior that promotes selective attention and positive emotional responses to components of the environment that lead to “good” (adaptive) decisions and problem solving (Orians, 2001), and are thus considered “beautiful.” The earliest studies were of evolved preferences that direct choices of desirable—safe, productive—landscapes (see review in Ruso, Renninger, & Atzwanger, 2003), but subsequent studies have included preferences for sexually relevant features such as waist-hip ratio (of females), body odor (of men), or symmetrical facial features (in both sexes), all of which signal health, fertility, and good mating opportunity (see, e.g., Voland & Grammar, 2003). Just as neuro- and cognitive scientists assume that their work on perceptual preferences is relevant to understanding art, so do writers on evolutionary aesthetics; for example, “Darwinian aesthetics is the method to determine the cues in great art that make it great (i.e., determine the actual information that human aesthetic mechanisms process during aesthetic valuation of art)” (Thornhill, 1998, p. 568). Whereas neurocognitive approaches tend to be restricted to Western visual masterworks, evolutionary aesthetics errs in the other direction, using the terms art, aesthetic value, and beauty quite broadly, including almost any feature that is preferred and therefore promotes a “high likelihood of survival and reproductive success” (Thornhill, 1998, p. 544). Both views are similar in assigning a problem-solving function to the arts, whether through perceptual mechanisms or adaptive cognitive modules in the brain.

(3) Geoffrey Miller (2000, 2001) is the best known of several scholars who are concerned with art as creativity and/or virtuosity that contributes to mating opportunity. “Human art capacities evolved in the same way [as aesthetic ornamentation in other species], with aesthetic judgment evolving in the service of mate choice” (Miller, 2001, p. 20). The peacock’s long, glossy, beautifully marked tail feathers are literally “a drag” that “tie him down” and make him vulnerable to predators. Like human art, the peacock’s fabulous tail would seem to be useless and even detrimental, since valuable energy is required to maintain such an appendage as well as to erect and suitably quiver it. Yet admiring peahens choose to mate with individuals who present them with the most magnificent, symmetrical display. In a similar manner, human body ornamentation, literary language, song, dance, and other artful performance are proposed to have evolved over generations through sexual selection by females. Like the peacock’s tail, the arts are advertisements of fitness, “honest, costly signals,” because the strength, vigor, intelligence, skill, and creativity required for their display cannot be “faked” by less well-endowed males. Miller’s hypothesis (see also Feist, 2001; Voland, 2003) fits well with evolutionary aesthetics, as described above, since it is concerned with preferences for signals (the arts) of adaptive benefits (here are good genes).

(4) A similar reliance on costly signaling theory to propose a function for the arts is not stated but implied in a hypothesis that considers the extremes of religious behavior to have evolved as honest signals of commitment (Irons, 2001). Although religion seems to facilitate intragroup cooperation, there are potential difficulties with assessing a member’s trustworthiness and commitment (the “free rider” problem), which are solved by requiring behaviors that are “hard to fake.” Although Irons and other scholars who address religious behaviors (e.g., Sosis, 2003) describe such difficult, costly practices as penitence, sacrifice, or self-mutilation and do not mention the arts, art-filled ceremonial behavior is also costly and is intrinsic to most if not all religions and fits into this category (see Part B).

(5) A function for art that has been attributed for more than a century to play and make-believe in both animals and children (e.g., Groos, 1898, 1901) has been given new life within evolutionary psychology. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides (2001) claim that the capacity to engage in fictional, imagined worlds provides risk-free practice for later life when similar circumstances might arise. Like advocates of evolutionary aesthetics (see above), they use the words “aesthetic” and “beauty” to refer to advantageous features or activities that humans evolved to pay attention to or choose. And just as neurocognitivists specifically address visual art (see above), Tooby and Cosmides are concerned here with fictional narrative and propose a similar adaptive function: “[the bundled representations in narratives] have a powerfully [sic] organizing effect on our neurocognitive adaptations, even though the representations are not literally true” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001, p. 21). Fictions make adaptive information available to cognitive systems that are involved with foresight, planning, and empathy.

Because by far the most work using evolutionary approaches to the arts is on literature (see Carroll, 2004 and this volume), I shall not discuss other hypotheses about literary art specifically here. I will say, however, that like the neurocognitivists (see above), most adaptationist studies of literature deal with modern Western (written) examples (for notable exceptions, see Easterlin [2002], Gottschall [2003], Scalise Sugiyama [2001]), although there are notable differences between oral and written communication. Darwinian literary studies have tended to be concerned with subject matter more than, or even to the exclusion of, form, tone, and other artful devices that are important components of oratory or recitation, surely the earliest forms of literary language.

(6) Several evolutionary theorists have proposed variants of the idea that the arts function to manipulate and control other people. For example, Aiken (1998a, 1998b) focuses on the capacity of art to evoke emotion, and thereby to affect and even coerce the thought and behavior of other individuals. Although she admits that “art has, in fact, many purposes” (Aiken 1998b, p. 227), it is clear that insofar as it directs attention to messages, it can be used for propaganda to the benefit of the art maker (or patron of the art maker; that is, the person who invests in the production of beauty [Voland, 2003, p. 257]). Power (1999) offers a version of art as manipulation and deception, proposing that visual art originated when ancestral females (participating as a group) painted their bodies with red ochre in order to attract males (who assumed they were menstruating and hence fertile and receptive to courtship and eventual insemination), thereby gaining gifts of meat, a valuable resource.

(7) In contradistinction to the preceding views, which are all accounts of how the arts have evolved as the result of competition (for resources necessary for survival, for prestige, for mates) or in order to manipulate and deceive others, several writers have emphasized that the arts additionally enhance cooperation and social cohesion and continuity—by augmenting the impact of ritual, thereby reinforcing religion’s power to cement group cohesion (Boyd, 2005); by indicating group membership with dress or badges (Aiken, 1998a); by means of behavioral coordination and neural entrainment through rhythmic movement and ritualized participation in temporally organized performances (Dissanayake, 2000); and by inculcating “descent amity” (Coe, 2003). Based on extensive fieldwork in Spain, Colombia, Ecuador, and the southwestern United States, Coe’s “ancestress hypothesis” describes how traditions are transmitted within kin groups, especially by mothers to children, by means of visual art (although performances of all kinds would also be relevant), encouraging cooperation among those identified as co-descendants of a common ancestor.

(8) Archaeologists, in particular, note that at some point in the past, humans developed the ability to create and use symbols, which conferred obvious fitness benefits. “Art” is frequently included by prehistorians in a list of other symbolic behaviors developed by early humans, along with language, notation and other information storage systems, and burial of the dead with grave goods, all of which reflect and contribute to higher thought and intelligence, thereby implying plausible adaptive value.

(9) Finally, an influential hypothesis of nonfunction for the arts should also be mentioned—the argument that art has no adaptive value in itself but is merely a byproduct of other adaptations. The canonical example of this view is the analogy with strawberry cheese-cake, which humans have evolved to like because during the Pleistocene, when sugar and fat were scarce, it was advantageous to consume high calories when they became available, rather than to continue ingesting tubers or leaves (Pinker, 1997, pp. 524–525). Like sugar, fat, alcohol, recreational drugs, masturbation, and pornography, the arts exploit cravings that in other contexts are or were adaptive. They allow us “[to press] our pleasure buttons” (Pinker, 1997, p. 525). In a subsequent book, Pinker (2002, pp. 404–406) proposes other sources for art as by-product: the hunger for status, the aesthetic pleasure of e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1 What Art Is and What Art Does: An Overview of Contemporary Evolutionary Hypotheses
• CHAPTER 2 An Evolutionary Model of Artistic and Musical Creativity
• CHAPTER 3 The Adaptive Function of Literature
• CHAPTER 4 Does Reading Literature Make People Happy?
• CHAPTER 5 Cognitive Poetics and Poetry Recital
• CHAPTER 6 The Alphabet and Creativity: Implications for East Asia
• CHAPTER 7 Creativity, Gender, History, and the Authors of Fantasy for Children
• CHAPTER 8 Trends in the Creative Content of Scientific Journals: Good, But Not as Good!
• CHAPTER 9 The Information Approach to Human Sciences, Especially Aesthetics
• CHAPTER 10 Art and Cognition: Cognitive Processes in Art Appreciation
• CHAPTER 11 Literary Creativity: A Neuropsychoanalytic View
• CHAPTER 12 A Neural-Network Theory of Beauty
• CHAPTER 13 Neural Correlates of Creative Cognition
• CHAPTER 14 Creativity, DNA, and Cerebral Blood Flow
• CHAPTER 15 Artistic Creativity and Affective Disorders: Are They Connected?
• Index