Abstract
Evolutionary psychology explains the why of appreciation of beauty and neuroaesthetics explains the how of appreciating beauty. Evolutionary psychologists focus on two major reasons for why we admire the beauty of nature: sexual selection and natural selection/adaptation. Human physical beauty is based on sexual selection and what we find beautiful in nature is based on natural selection. Men find an hour-glass figure to be a fitness indicator that they find beautiful in women (a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.70 seems to be ideal); and a V-shaped body is a fitness indicator that women find beautiful in men. Women and men who have these qualities are perceived as likely to produce strong babies who will survive and later reproduce. The Savanna Hypothesis argues that it was adaptive to evolve to find attractive: (a) open spaces with short grass and groups of trees; (b) water nearby; (c) a panoramic view; (d) animals and birds present; and (e) greenery with flowers and fruits. Through natural and sexual selection, combined with the rise of human culture, we have learned to find beauty in myriad forms of art and craft. Through natural and sexual selection and natural cooperation, the human virtues developed and have taken on moral beauty.
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Notes
- 1.
Check out Chatterjee’s TED talk, “How Your Brain Decides What Is Beautiful,” at https://www.ted.com/speakers/anjan_chatterjee
- 2.
Although I wonder if having the mole actually emphasizes the beautiful symmetry of their faces (a small flaw can alert us the perfection of the rest of the scene?). Note: In Persian poetry, for example, Rumi or Hafez, the mole is celebrated as a beauty mark. Although finding symmetry beautiful seems almost universal among philosophers (cf. Scarry, 1999), physicists (cf. Wilczek, 2015), and evolutionists (Buss, 2015), Prum is an exception. Is he right? I’m not sure. Feel free to email me, diessner@lcsc.edu, if you have strong evidence one way or the other.
- 3.
I have nothing but respect and admiration for the Kaplans; but I find it a little sad that the word “beauty” did not find its way into the index of their book. Perhaps they, like artists and art critics, and university departments of humanities, suffered from the cultural suppression of beauty in the twentieth century (Danto, 2003; Scarry, 1999; Sircello, 1975). However , if you read their book more carefully than I did, and find where they refer to beauty, please let me know: diessner@lcsc.edu
- 4.
Although I hold out the possibility that we do have an instinct for beauty. As Iris Murdoch wrote, “beauty is the only spiritual thing which we love by instinct” (p. 85; it’s likely that Murdoch meant this metaphorically and not biologically … or did she?).
- 5.
If you haven’t had a chance to read Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind you have a treat in store for you; it’s wonderful page-turner.
- 6.
The New York Times proclaimed The Evolution of Beauty to be one of the Ten Best Books of 2017; it also managed to be one of three finalists for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. The book, however, has garnered much criticism from evolutionary biologists, and may misrepresent the relationship between natural and sexual selection, among other possible errors (cf. Borgia & Ball, 2018). If Prum is breaking the paradigm concerning complete reliance on natural selection, then one would expect those thinking in the old paradigm to be defensive. On the other hand, if Prum has made mistakes, you would expect evolutionists to point this out.
- 7.
I thank Ines Schindler for pointing out two forms of cooperation; one is a natural principle (that which influences genes to cooperate or cells to cooperate, etc.), and the other is cooperation as an intentional action. Genes do not make decisions to cooperate, but human can.
- 8.
After I read about Ruskin’s view of Burne-Jones’ cycle of Psyche drawings I got the hots to see them. After multiple emails of request I was given permission to go to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and have a personal audience with them. I was ushered into the research room, and politely waited. A curator brought me a pair of white gloves and reminded me I could not have a pen in the room. This curator seemed to think I was a wild west cowboy and barely a sentient being. But maybe he felt that way about all Americans. Or maybe about everyone. Regardless of the “chill” in the room, I had a terrific time studying the drawings and being able to hold them in my own hands. Thrilling really.
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Psyche and Eros Interlude Two
Psyche and Eros Interlude Two
Eros never got a chance to make Psyche fall in love with the most degraded man on earth … because in the meantime …
The Oracle Speaks to the King
Psyche’s father, the king, had consigned her two older sisters to political marriages with elderly, decrepit, yet rich and powerful men. But, alas, because of the awe in which Psyche was held by the populace, she had no suitor. The king then went to the oracle of Apollo and asked what would become of Psyche, and Apollo told him that he needed to prepare a funereal wedding on a mountain for her, that Psyche would marry a non-human being, who was cruel and fierce [Can Love be cruel? Hell yes.], that plagues the world and soars aloft on wings (Fig. 3.3).
Psyche’s father consulting the oracle after Raphael, sixteenth century; by Bernardo Daddi (Italian engraver, 1512–, Worked in Rome from 1532 to 1550) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psyche%27s_father_consulting_the_oracle,_from_%27The_Fable_of_Psyche%27_MET_DP824471.jpg
The Funereal Wedding Is Prepared
The king and queen realize that they must obey Apollo’s prophecy and instructions and prepare Psyche for her wedding funeral. The king and queen are sad and cry, but Psyche, with some compassion, urges them not to cry, and assertively begins to prepare herself for her funereal wedding march. The whole populace turns out to escort Psyche to the top of a crag on a high mountain. Once there, they post the wedding torches, and all leave her to her fate. However, just as she is about to leap off the mountain to die on the rocks below …. (Fig. 3.4).
Psyche’s Kin Bid Her Farewell on a Mountain Top (1908, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) by Maurice Denis (1870–1943; French painter, one of the leading artists and theoreticians of pictorial Symbolism and one of the founders of the Nabis, a secret artistic brotherhood)
The Story of Cupid and Psyche: The [Funereal] Procession to the Hill (Right Half)
By Sir Edward Burne-Jones. See the drawing here: http://ruskin.ashmolean.org/collection/8979/object/13542.
Burne-Jones did a large series of drawings of the Psyche Myth. John Ruskin was the first Art Appreciation Professor at Oxford and perhaps the first professor to ever teach a class on art appreciation in any university. Ruskin considered Burne-Jones’ Psyche Cycle the best drawings in existence.Footnote 8
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Diessner, R. (2019). Beauty Becomes: Evolving Beauty. In: Understanding the Beauty Appreciation Trait. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32333-2_3
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