Abstract
This essay reviews one of the most recent books in a trend of new publications proffering evolutionary theorising about aesthetics and the arts—themes within an increasing literature on aspects of human life and human nature in terms of evolutionary theory. Stephen Davies’ The Artful Species links some of our aesthetic sensibilities with our evolved human nature and critically surveys the interdisciplinary debate regarding the evolutionary status of the arts. Davies’ engaging and accessible writing succeeds in demonstrating the maturity and scope of the field and his critique is timely and unparalleled. A laudable effort, however it may have benefited from espousing a co-evolutionary model more explicitly. Moreover there may be reason to question the usefulness of the standard set of distinctions (‘adaptation’, ‘spandrel’, ‘technology’) that Davies appeals to.
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Notes
Following Davies I use ‘ka’ throughout to denote ‘thousand years ago’ and ‘ma’ for ‘million years ago’.
Adrian Currie initially suggested this to me.
All page references throughout cite The Artful Species except where noted.
Davies argues convincingly that some theorists have adopted too liberal—and others too restrictive—notions of the aesthetic for use in this field and consequently he implements a more moderate account: that aesthetic sensibilities target concepts like beauty and the sublime (aesthetic judgements are not merely any perceptually based judgement), yet they are free of much of the extra Kantian baggage traditionally associated with aesthetic experience by some philosophers.
Much of the following discussion will apply equally to various sexual paradigms but the primary context, from an (hominin) evolutionary perspective, is heterosexual attraction.
Davies defends the view that such evaluation can be genuinely aesthetic, see pp. 18–20.
Ethnomusicologists have long celebrated hunting bows as musical instruments in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies such as the San (sometimes called ‘Bushmen’) and !Kung people, see for example Camp and Nettl (1955).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful for various suggestions from Stephen Davies, Kim Sterelny and Stuart Brock re earlier versions of the manuscript. I have also benefited from helpful discussions with Briar Prastiti, Adrian Currie and Kim Shaw-Williams.
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Killin, A. The arts and human nature: evolutionary aesthetics and the evolutionary status of art behaviours. Biol Philos 28, 703–718 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9371-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9371-5