ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
traits, one must evince that the trait promotes such differential success in a particular
environment. For all of its merits, that was not done in this paper.
It is not strictly true that traits originate as adaptations (Lock, 2015: 1). Traits emerge
through various processes (e.g., mutations, genetic drift) and then are subject to natural selection. Adaptations are traits that have been modified or produced by natural or
sexual selection over generational time. Thus, to show that art, which is claimed to
have originated about 1.7 million years ago, is an adaptation – it actually promotes
long term descendant-leaving success in a variety of environments – one needs to focus on its cross-cultural utilization and to show (and not assume) an association with
differential reproductive success. Further, an argument rooted in social interactions
would putatively need to explain this timeframe in relation to much earlier proposed
timeframes for the evolution of human pair-bonding and human cooperative breeding,
again to explain the phylogenetic trajectory of the evolutionary process.
Unfortunately, while art may be assumed inevitably beautiful and truthful, we cannot
ignore the fact that the association of art with truth or beauty is not a cultural universal, nor should we ignore the association of art with war and injury and death (not
beauty) and with propaganda and mythology and fantasy (not truth). Darwin himself,
in the brief discussions of art included in The Descent of Man, never referred to art in
terms of truth and beauty nor did he claim it was an adaptation. He used “art” to refer
implicitly to skill. He mentions, for example, the “art of making fire” (p. 132) and “the
art of shooting with bows and arrows” (p. 224).
The answer to the question of evolutionary function may or may not foster the integration of the scientific and humanistic disciplines, but the direction of influence is clear.
As facts are stubborn and reductive explanation is the enterprise of science, the onus
of accepting this influence falls categorically on those practicing the humanities.
Whatever the function of art, art production and appreciation are like any other behavior in their amenability to evolutionary explanation, just as humans are like any other
any other animal in this respect. But like the practice of science, itself, communicating
these ideas is a project for the willing. Scientific understanding, coupled with a desire
to educate, will allow us to achieve both the letter and the spirit of consilience.
References
Coe, K. 2013. Can science lead us to a definition of art. Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi
dell’estetico, 6(2): ML