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Evolution and Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2017

Anthony O'Hear
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Extract

I want to begin with four quotations, fairly typical of their type, and germane to our topic because they encapsulate what many artists and art lovers feel about art and music. These feelings are often inchoate, to be sure, and in the cold light of analytical day they may look extravagant and exaggerated. But they do capture something of the experience people often have of art and beauty, and for that reason alone must be given some phenomenological plausibility at least.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 56 , December 2005 , pp. 155 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2005

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References

1 The first quotation is from Wagner, Richard, ‘Religion und Kunst’ in his Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 1888, vol. x., p. 211Google Scholar; the second is from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1871, section 17; the third from Murdoch, Iris, The Fire and the Sun, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 76–7Google Scholar; and the fourth from Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, section 5.

2 Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, 1859Google Scholar, First para, of Chapter 4, Penguin Edition, Harmondsworth, 1882, p. 131.

3 Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, 1871Google Scholar, quoted from the second edition, 1874, vol. I, p. 141.

4 see Fisher, R. A., The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 On Wallace and aesthetics, see Cronin, Helena, The Ant and the Peacock, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 186–91.Google Scholar

6 In Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement, 1780Google Scholar, sections 1–60.

7 Hume, David, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, 1757Google Scholar, para 11.

8 Atkins, P. W., ‘The Lion, the Rose and the Ultimate Oyster’, Modem Painters, 2/4, Winter 1989, pp. 50–5.Google Scholar

9 Wilson, E. O., Biophilia, Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 61Google Scholar

10 Steven Pinker, c.f., How the Mind Works, Penguin London, 1998, pp. 485–7.Google Scholar

11 c.f. Biophilia, pp. 109–11.

12 c.f. Dutton, Denis, ‘Art and Evolutionary Psychology’ in Levinson, Jerrold (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, Oxford University Press, 2002Google Scholar, in which there is a full discussion of Komar and Melamid, and of much else relevant to our present theme.

13 Ruskin, John, Modern Painters, vol. vGoogle Scholar, part ix, ch. 5, 1860, as in the Cook and Wedderburn edition, London, 1903–12, Vol. vii, p. 319.

14 Pinker, , in How the Mind Works, pp. 522–4Google Scholar, Miller, in The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, Doubleday, New York, 2000.Google Scholar

15 c.f. Michael Ruse, in ‘Evolution and Religion’, paper presented at The Royal Institute of Philosophy's schools’ conference, Warwick, 1995.

16 Ruskin, , Modern Painters, vol. ii, part iii, ch. 1, 1846Google Scholar, as in Cook and Wedderburn, vol. iv, p. 36.

17 Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man, vol. 1, p. 142.Google Scholar