ART & ORGANISM
DEEP ETHOLOGY
EVOLUTION
analogy and homology
.
The shared past of a trait, no matter how superficially dissimilar,
or the current similarities of a trait, even when there is no shared evolutionary past,
can tell us much about the developmental processes, environments to which they have accommodated over their deep history, and as yet unsuspected physiological substrate.
RESONANCE between ideas implies that they have a shared history, and this some fundmentally similar elements (anatomical or physiological), but NOT NECESSARILY. (In evolutionary biology, the wings of a bird and the arms of various other vertebrates may be very dissimilar in function, but have shared evolutionary background–evident (for eaxmple) in bones, musculature, neural connections– they are HOMOLOGOUS. BUT wings of a bird and a dragonfly are very similar functionally, but dissimilar in background–they are at best, ANALAGOUS.
- EVOLUTION (like DEVELOPMENT) is about CHANGE
- TRAITS
- Hierarchy
- Genes and memes
- POLYGENETIC traits and PLEIOTROPIC genes
- Diversity and genetic polymorphism
- COMPETITION and COOPERATION
- Converging or Alternative mechanisms
- On the Origin of Cooperation
- COMPETITION and COOPERATION in CULTURE
- ADAPTATION and FITNESS
- NATURAL SELECTION
- BRICOLAGE
- THE PROBLEM OF ALTRUISM
- CHARACTER DISPLACEMENT[1]
- RITUALIZATION[2].
- WORDS and BIAS
- PALEOLITHIC ART
- RESOURCES
in A&O we position our inquiry by treating the CREATION of art, its EXPRESSION (sometimes termed “realization”), and its RECEPTION by a viewer, as TRAITS with causes and consequences subject to change in evolutionary and developmental time.
The INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY of BEHAVIOR involves the coordinated activities of four broad areas (as biologists study them): DEVELOPMENT, ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, and PHYSIOLOGY and how they are brought to bear on BEHAVIOR (“DEEP ETHOLOGY”)