Evolutionaire Esthetica

College 9

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Today

1. Introduction• Principles• Methods

2. Evolutionary Aesthetics

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Three modes of adaptation

• Direct Preference of certain mates

• Indirect Help siblings (inclusive)

• Mutations Help (or hinder) reproduction

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Principles

• Adaptations are the primary product of evolution by selection. Those characteristics that pass through the selective sieve generation after generation for hunderds, thousands, and even millions of years are those that helped to solve the problems of survival and reproduction. (Buss, 1999, p 39).

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Why are we not perfect?

• No optimal design• Time lag

Fat food

• Costs Snakes are outdoors, but so is food

• Some after birth Walking, breasts, calluses

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Personal Projects

• I try to make my cat use the litter box

• I’m growing long fingernails• I’m working hard to get a degree• I want to change society• I’m working on my relationship• I’m trying to maximize the replication

of my genes

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Psychological Adaptation

• Solving recurrent problems Survival or reproduction

• Information about which problem Smell of food

• Decision rules and evaluation of options

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Psychological Adaptation

• Output directed at adaptive problem• Problem-specific

Food versus mate selection

• Flexibility• Two examples

Fear Empathy

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Prewired 1

Seen one of these recently?

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Prewired 2

• Empathy Inclusive fitness (Hamilton) Reciprocal altruism (Trivers)

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Methods

• Compare species Sperm competition Degree of promiscuity

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Methods

• Compare males and females Paternity uncertainty

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Methods

• Individuals within species Ticking clock & abortion rate

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Methods

• Same individuals, different context The clumsy Siriono hunter

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Methods

• Experiment Threats and ingroup cohesion

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Methods

• Observation Mate guarding and fertile wives

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Methods

• Archeology Nature of the adaptive problems

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Methods

• Hunter-gatherer societies Children of successful hunters

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Methods

• Self-report• Gender differences in sexual fantasies

Male: switching, more than one woman Female: mystery, romance, emotional

expression

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Methods

• Life-history data and public records Who marries old rich men?

Anna Nicole Smith and husband

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Methods

• Human products Food Pornography Art

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Eye of the beholder

• Evolution through selection• Mechanisms of the brain• Emotion

Aesthetic pleasure

• Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder (Symons 1995)

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The eye of the beholder

• Omnipresent All human societies Present and distant past

• Direct and intuitively

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Resembling play

• Self-rewarding• Metaphorical• Rules of announcement• Useless but practical

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Resembling Ritual

• Primitive societies Art and rituals

• Greek tragedy• Music and liturgy• Visual art and churches

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Resembling Ritual

• Functional Social interaction and cohesion Channeling powerful emotions

• Form Metaphoric Different context Accentuate, exaggerate, repetition

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Prewired: Making special

• Dissanyake: Universal tendency• “Useless”, but much effort and

energy• Different context• Superior to ordinary experience

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Prewired: Making special

• Selective value Bird songs: super advertising Loudness of music Evolution of art

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Prewired: Exaggeration

• Ramachandran: Sea Gull Art

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Human body

• Reproductive qualities Symmetry

• Nepotism for children• Number of friends• Social success• Use in media

Effect on male fidelity

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Landscape

A CB D

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Social scenarios

• Storytelling: Omnipresent• Solution for problems• Changes in the canon (Fokkema)• Practice

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Other

• Animals Food and safety

• Acoustic behavior Death & alarm calls Diversity

• Parts of the day & the weather

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Other

• Status: cars• Skills: dance• Food: nutritious

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Foregrounding

• Making special• Text

From popular romance to Woolf Philistine approach to poetry

• Film Adaptations of Shakespeare E la nave va Nixon

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Reading

• Buss, D.M. (1999). Evolutionary psychology. The new science of the mind. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

• Dissanayake, E. (1988). What is art for? Seattle: University of Washington Press.

• Voland, WE. & K. Grammer (2003). Evolutionary Aesthetics. Berlin: Springer.