ART & ORGANISM
EVOLUTION of ART
EVOLUTION
REVIEW: IDEAS FROM DEEP ETHOLOGY RELEVANT TO ART:
EVOLUTIONARY BACKGROUND
Traits are generally presumed to be adaptations (coping mechanisms) that exist because of their contribution to (or relationship with) fitness, a measure of biological success and productivity. The manifest traits are also presumed to be the results of the activities of genes –which are, in turn, more-or-less affected in their activity by their environments (internal as well as external) –evolution is often viewed simply as “change in gene frequencies (manifested as change in traits) across generations”
FITNESS
The contemporary view of fitness involves the occurrence of traits that allow animals to cope with more-or-less ecological variability (spatial or temporal variation) and produce offspring. Three ways productivity of offspring contribute to fitness Jerram Brown (1980) in Krebs & Davies 3rd ed of An Introduction to Behaviourial Ecology, p. 266. are
1. Direct fitness for the component of fitness gained through personal reproduction (i.e. production of offspring),
2. Indirect fitness for the component of fitness gained from aiding the survival of non-descendent kin, such as siblings It involves: 1. cost, 2. benefit, 3. coefficient of relationship (r) “the probability that a gene in one individual is an identical copy, by descent, of a gene in another individual” (formula in Krebs & Davies 3, Intro Behav Ecol p.267.), and
3. Inclusive fitness: If we assess the fitness gain through both routes then we will have a measure of an individual’s inclusive fitness (Hamilton 1964)”
ADAPTATION
An adaptation is an anatomical, physiological, or behavioral trait (or the process that leads to it) that contributes to fitness If communicable to future generations it is subject to natural selection.
Adaptations are manifested by “organisms or groups of organisms maintain
homeostasis in and among themselves in the face of both
short-term environmental fluctuations and long-term changes
in the composition and structure of their environments”
(Rappaport, 1971).
The several senses of the term refer to some kind of compensation for change in order to maintain the status quo (“if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”). (The amount of fluctuation in an organism’s environment that is tolerated before an adaptation can provide an advantage is sometimes termed “adaptive scope.”)
To invoke the insights natural selection and evolution to help us understand art –that is, to regard art as a trait subject to natural selection— we first confirm that the idea of art is amenable to evolutionary thinking:
(1) is this trait expressed variably in offspring, (2) does the possession of this trait contribute to differential survival off offspring, (3) does differential survival contribute to better fit and therefore fitness in a given environment, and (4) does gradual change in the trait contribute to progressively better fit.
The processes of art –the behavioral patterns that frequently result in what we call works of “art” necessarily have their roots in biology and have come to have their present form through evolutionary time presumably (certainly at least in part) because they serve our individual or inclusive fitness.
A central element of evolutionary thinking is that a trait –however it might have come about– would not survive in subsequent generations if its expression did not confer some advantage on the animal possessing — at least at the time that it emerged. This advantage must somehow contribute to a richer representation of the animal in future generations. Usually that means more offspring, but it could also mean offspring that are relatively more successful –particularly in competition with the offspring of other individuals.
The advantage a trait confers need not be immense, just one that aids in the competition for limited resources. But once it appears, it is subject to subsequent changes that can affect its adaptive function. Adaptations involve how well that trait serves an organism in a particular context –the environment in which it must survive and prosper. However, the environment in which a trait evolved may no longer exist or may be rare. This is fundamental evolutionary psychology.
The essence of evolutionary change is the PRESERVATION OF USEFUL TRAITS – that is, traits that help organisms cope with and adapt to challenges to their meeting biological needs. Traits are referred to as adaptations when their current or past contribution to biological fitness is clear. Many biologists that all traits are (or have been) adaptive.
HOW IS ART ADAPTIVE? What needs might it serve to either individuals or groups? or how is it necessarily related to some other trait that confers such a service.
Needs Served Building on a recent list of the functions that art might serve that would lead to its fixation as human disposition compiled by Ellen Dissanayake (Dissanayake, Ellen 1968. What is Art For? Univ Washington Press, Seattle. 249 pp.
Visit the A&O web page on the DIVERSITY of NEEDS served by ART
Needs can be hierarchically arrayed according to their centrality to the “mission” of a successful organism: to be healthy, safe, socially acceptable, reproductively successful, fully actualized. In humans (the group for whom a “need hierarchy” was first conceptualized by Abraham Maslow), the first and last For Maslow, being fully actualized meant spiritually developed (he called it “self-actualization”) of these needs are intensely individual, while those intermediate needs are social.
But this is controversial:
Utilitarianism is implicit in the evolutionary treatment because if no advantage (or disadvantage) is realized from an act of art, it cannot be regarded as an adaptation subject to evolutionary forces. (point also made by James W. McAllister (Philosophy, Leiden) in his paper, “The Utilitarian Value of Human Aesthetic Judgement,” at the 1993 Amsterdam meeting of the European Sociobiological Society section on “Sociobiology and the Arts,” (abstract, p. 17)
Intentions are common criteria for art. Many aestheticians feel that to qualify as art, there must be evidence that a craftsman has intentionally gone “beyond what was strictly necessary for utility. . . ” (Sandars 1985:34) Sandars, N. 1985. Prehistoric art in Europe, 2nd ed. Penguin, London..
For example, Kathryn Coe (Ariz State Univ.) (in: 1992. Art: The replicable unit — An inquiry into the possible origin of art as a social behavior. J. Social and Evolutionary Systems 15(2):217-234.) Feels that art must be defined in an explicit, empirical way and purged of appeals to affect, technique, or symbolism is essential to a cross-cultural analyses. She ventures and defends her definition: “Color and or form used by humans in order to modify an object, body, or message solely to attract attention to that object, body, or message. The proximate or immediate effect of art is to [deliberately] make objects more noticeable” (1992:219), and then tried to use it to identify an evolutionary origin for the phenomenon. (She regards modification of the appearance of the human body, first seen during the transition between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods, as the first solid evidence for art. Intentional modification of the human body: by 70,000 BP two Shanidar showed evidence of intentional head binding by upper Paleolithic there is evidence of intentional teeth filing in Minatogawa man from Okinawa (c. 18,000 BP); by late upper Paleolithic, cranial and dental modification seemed more common and elaborate... )
Coe’s definition requires intentionality. Speaking of the appearance of an Acheulean handaxe of Homo erectus (200,000 BP), if the craftsman did not go beyond pure functionality it was not art: “Aesthetic ‘attractiveness’ thus may be an unintentional consequence of use, and hence not art” (p. 223). [but what can we ever know of the artist’s intentions … even artists are sometimes unaware of their sources of their inspiration or motives for actions that may produce something that only other individuals may find an effective work of art?]
Notes: Mind and the social contract. After incoming sensations generate a characteristic transient pattern of cortical activity it may reappear in contexts of other knowledge and seems to represent the meaning of a particular sensation. What we learn of the world is attributable to constant updates achieved this way. Changing your mind. “Mammalian brains contain a mechanism that can loosen the grip of previously acquired perspectives on the world and lay the groundwork for securing crucial new knowledge” (Walter J. Freeman (Berkeley) in Societies of Brains 1995, Earlbaum, reported by Bruce Bower 1996, “Bridging the Brain Gap” in SN, 2 Nov 1996 pp. 280-281)
Existential connection: Bruce Bowers believes Freeman would endorse Sartre’s argument that “each of us constructs self through his or her own actions and that we know that self as it is revealed in our actions” (P.280). (Recalling St. Thomas who believed that to attain our goals we must accommodate ourselves to the world) The psychologist James Gibson had a similar view that it is through our actions that we perceive meaning in the stimuli that surround us. Freeman believes that brains are isolated self-organizing systems that are closed to meaning.
But sociality requires that the gap between isolated islands of mind should be closed and Freeman believes that is what happens when the island minds have a reorganizing experience such as that experienced by voles when chemicals are released as part of the mating / birthing / child-rearing experience that stimulate parental behavior. “Substances such as these may wipe away connections formed among neurons by experiences early in life and usher in a temporary period of cerebral malleability. In humans, the “meltdown of long-standing neuronal connections and their attendant attitudes and beliefs is frequently experienced as a frightening loss of identity and self control.. . ” Witness, Pavlov and subsequent findings about “brainwashing,” and the induction of brain states that are conducive to incorporating collective values.