ASEBL Journal – Volume 11 Issue 2, Spring 2015
looking at indicators of human presence and perspective generally”. A rather loose
assumption, as I said. Does this reference to sexual selection, understood in such a
broad sense, make possible a true advancement in our understanding of New Zealandism that would have not been possible remaining within the boundaries of the
theory of art? I am doubtful. Following Lock’s assumption, sexual selection is like a
canopy that can pick out everything humans find interesting (just because indicators
of human presence), rather than only things that are specifically aesthetic or artconnected.
Lock’s paper is rich in interesting suggestions about the role and significance of the
evolutionary looking glass for the humanities and, more specifically, for philosophical
aesthetics and theory of art. The cross-disciplinary approach is personally what I find
the most interesting and stimulating aspect in the research field of EA. However, I
also think that today, in order to further develop the research in EA, we need a clearer,
more rigorous epistemological, theoretical and methodological framework, something
more than (even interesting) suggestions or the vague reference to Wilson’s consilience. We need to “build”, in cooperation with biologists, ethologists and researchers
in evolutionary sciences, a shared research program for EA, also paying attention to
the ways we can derive testable predictions from our theories and interpretations (Dissanayake’s theory of artification is a first, enlightening step towards a true crossdisciplinary EA).
In 2006, in the frame of a huge research project directed by Harvard University, Boix
Monsilla (2006a, b) provided three epistemic criteria for evaluating cross-disciplinary
research programs (Croft 2011). These criteria are: a. consistency, i.e. the crossdisciplinary work (in our case, EA) should be consistent with what researchers in each
of the different disciplines involved (in this case, mainly evolutionary biology and
philosophical aesthetics) know and find tenable; b. balance, requiring a reasonable
compromise between the insights and state of the art of each discipline involved (hyper-simplification of either one or the other is to be avoided); c. effectiveness, i.e. the
cross-disciplinary research work should produce theoretical or practical advancements
that would have not been possible remaining within the boundaries of a single discipline.
As I said, Lock seems to integrate, here, a rather simplified notion of “art” and “aesthetic” with a too broad (and eventually not very fruitful) version of sexual selection
hypothesis, so that the resulting cross-disciplinary product seems to be not balanced
enough (it does not meet Boix Monsilla’s second epistemic criterion; see Davies 2012,
for a highly valuable and definitely embraceable assessment of the state of the art in
contemporary EA). Moreover, I wonder if his direct application of evolutionary notions and EA arguments (from Dissanayake and Dutton) to the specific case-study of
New Zealandism produces true theoretical advancements that would have not been
possible remaining within the boundaries of the theory of art (Boix Monzilla’s third
criterion; Croft 2011).
References
Boix Mansilla, V., (2006a), Interdisciplinary work at the frontier: An empirical investigation of expert
interdisciplinary epistemologies, “Issues in Integrative Studies”, 24, 1–31.
50