Stephen T-B

GeoTheo needs to find encouragement wherever he can; it helps him fill up the holes which appear suddenly in the cocoon of belief with which he surrounds himself in order that he shouldn't have to see the raw rigours of the real world.
I suggest that our appreciation of beauty is prosaic; that it originates in our ability to discern those things which are welcome because they assure us of one or any of these: security, shelter, warmth and food.
As our thought-processes have grown more complex, so has our appreciation of beauty, and to the extent that we have forgotten why some things strike us as beautiful – a sensational sun-set for instance (which often signifies fair weather on the morrow) and some as ugly - a huge black spider, for instance.

scigirl

So are you saying that art, and subjects of art (i.e. all of nature and the universe) exist just for humans to enjoy? Because we enjoy a sunset, than the sunset exists for us? I don't follow. I think the sunset's existence itself is irrelevant to our opinions of it.

You are new here, so I'll cut you some slack. Welcome to infidels, and I encourage you to check out the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=43" target="_blank">Welcome Forum</a>, not only to introduce yourself, but also to learn about who we are. (forgive my ignorance, but where is Bemidji? The one in Minnesota? Oh, and I love your hobbies.)

Please don't assume you know who we are and what we do. Rather, learn about us.
Sure - but rather than this meaning that religions are true, perhaps this simply means that our ability to appreciate a sunset and our ability to believe in supernatural beings stem from a similar thought process that evolution gave us for some reason.

I think you are misunderstanding sexual selection. We evolved the ability to be physically attracted to each other. Why do nearly all men in all cultures prefer young women as a sign of beauty? Makes sense - those are the ones that can give them offspring. Understand this is all subconsious. People don't look at Britney Spears and consiously think, "Darn, she could have 20 of my offspring if we started having sex now, since she is just starting her reproductive age." They think, "She's hot." But the reasons we think certain traits are beautiful can be explained in part by sexual evolution.

No this does not explain all our artistic sense, but it could be in part the origin.

Why?

To me, a creationist has a very limited repertoire of satisfactory answers for explaining human behavior.

"Humans appreciate art because Goddidid. We are violent because goddidit. We are x, y, z, because goddidit."

The evolutionary explanation may be more complex, or above our heads, or evasive at the moment, but at least it has the potential of actually getting us somewhere.

scigirl

RufusAtticus

It's not supposed to explain the "origin" of artistic ability, because the origin of artistic ability is from random genetic mutations that produced the artistic phenotype. Sexual selection explains the prevalance of artistic ability in human society.

Nope, heredity explains why it runs in families.

How so? Discussion among evolutionsts about the evolution of artistic ability implies that humans aren't related to the rest of the animal kingdom? That sounds like a illogical conclusion.

~~RvFvS~~

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Duvenoy

This thread is very interesting, but the question was: “When did our ancestors first begin to appreciate beauty.”

For an animal becoming sentient, I think, appreciation of something other than the business of staying alive implies leisure time. The time to make not just a one-whack hand axe, but to knap the cutting edge into a more efficient and more pleasing to the eye, edge. The old axe would do the job almost as well, but the new one was, well, nicer even though it took a lot more time and work to produce. From there it follows that the flakes from knapping the axe could themselves be knapped into tools for flaying and flensing. This implies a knowledge of the best stone, hard and a bit brittle, for working. Which, in turn, demands a discerning view of the surrounding world as well as having learned the basics of the art of stone knapping.

There is no doubt that these people were master hunter/gatherer/scavengers. They could not have survived otherwise. I think that the joy of seeing a spectacular sunset came rather early in our history. Ergaster/erectus surely, even habilis. Maybe earlier. I think earlier, but I have no references nor even a good reason to think it.

I wonder if Australopithecus, that small, upright, crude-tool-using creature of our very distant past felt a twinge of awe at unusual beauty in the sky?

We’ll never know for sure.

doov

Doubting Didymus

The evolutionary explanation is not 'over our heads' or 'elusive at the moment'. The evolutionary explanation is very very simple. True explanations generally are.

Premise One: The tendency to find beauty in practical things such as a beautiful mate, a ripe fruit, or in a more sophisticated thing like a sunset (giving the appreciator the ability to predict weather) will convey a survival advantage.

If your concern is how these tendencies first originated, the explanation is random mutation. Before you throw your arms in the air and cry "random! random!" from the steepletops, I will explain the concept.

Sub Premise one: Minor random mutations are capable of causing any small change in any part of our physical or emotional makeup in both positive and negative directions.

Sub premise two: Natural selection ensures that only good mutations make it to the next generation.

Sub Conclusion: Small random mutations coupled with natural selection can cause minor positive changes in a populations emotional makeup.

Premise two: We now have a population with a tendancy to find beauty in practical things, but this tendancy would not actually involve a judgement on the part of the individual as to whether an object is practical. Rather, the tendancy would work by finding beauty in certain properties incidentally associated with beauty, such as symmetry (helping the idividual to select a heathy mate) and bright colour (helping in things like food selection). This means that appreciating beauty would aid the survival of humans without them realising conciously that beauty attracts them to good things.

Premise Three: A complicated and powerful brain, which is another huge selection advantage, Is capable of doing things that have nothing to do with its original purpose, like draw pictures (although this too has survival benifits, such as an aid to learning in children).

Conclusion: Artistic prowess can arise through wholly natural processes.

Okay, so its is a little bit complicated after all, so I will spell the argument out clearer.

1: Practical appreciation of beauty is a survival advantage.

Sub C: Minor mutations with selecton can create small emotional changes such as the appreciation of beauty.

2: This tendancy would be subconcious and therefore not limited to only practical objects.

3: A complicated brain is able to put the beauty emotion to uses that do not relate to survival.

Conclusion: Evolution Explains Artists

Tautology Factor: 0

Additional note: This explanation fully allows for art to be grander and more spectacular than survival requires and does not reduce arts importance.

ohwilleke

My guess is that the dual use theory has a lot going for it.

A very large part of the "higher brain" of humans is devoted to vision, hearing, spatial relations, etc., and to coordinating that with our bodies. We have more real estate in our brains devoted to sensory processing than we do to conscious reasoning.

There are lots of very good evolutionary reasons for us to have a good sense of sight, a good sense of hearing (not as good as some animals), good spatial relations and sense of balance, etc. (although humans have very poor senses of smell compared to almost every other animal).

There are also very good evolutionary reasons for "peak performance" rather than average performance governing survival. Its your ability to see the tiger coming in the dark in the forest when your on night watch, and not the ability to see it in broad daylight across an open field in a pack, that makes you more likely to survive than the next guy. Thus, evolutionarily well adapted creatures will, as a matter of course, under utilize their sensory abilities most of the time.

Thus, evolution should product creatures with excess sensory capacity sitting around waiting for the rare moments when it is needed to survive. Arts and music allow people to hone that unused sensory capacity, and to the extent that these activities do develop better use of your senses, may even provide artists and musicians with extra survival value.

Also, the social aspect isn't irrelevant. In small groups, keeping moral up in the face of harsh conditions or boredom is important to survival. You have to give people a reason not to go off on their own so that you have them when you need them. Allowing people to use their fuller potentials through music and art, can do that.

Camaban

When you think about it, this reinforces one more theory of mine (and plenty others)

There is practically nothing in the mental makeup of a healthy person that isn't either geared to survival of the self, or survival of the species (that persons genes, in particular)

Can anyone here think of something that isn't geared towards either of those two things?

Doubting Didymus

I can agree with this only with the following qualifier:

Rather than the mental makeup being entirely for survival, it makes more sense to think in terms of the genetic makeup.

It is the genes that are passed on to the next generation, and thus, only the genes that are good for survival (or neutral) will be passed on.

However, this does not really mean that there can not be anything in our mental (or physical) makeup that is not good for survival. After all, men have nipples, and we all have appendixes and vestigial tails. I cant think of any mental examples at the moment, but it is entirely possible that such 'mental appendices' exist.

Also, as I have said in earlier posts, the human brain is like a desktop computer in that it can have many uses that do not relate to its original purpose (survival).

Vorkosigan

I suppose this could be true, if you take the broadest possible definition of those two terms.

Vorkosigan

GeoTheo

Tautology factor 100%
We appreciate beauty because it helped us survive and that's why we survived, because We appreciated beauty.
How to jump over the empire state building made simple:
step one: look up
step two: flex legs 45 degrees at the knees
step three: swing arms
step four: spring!

Basically you just outlined the basic mechanism of evolution and applied it to mankinds appreciation of beauty. It was not simple it was simplistic.
basically you said this: Assuming evolution is true mankinds appreciation of beauty evolved the same way everything else in the universe evolved. We know this because everything else in the universe evolved this way. If it were not this way either man would not have survived or else we would not appreciate beauty.
I could not come up with more of a tautology if I tried.
It would be unfair to assume that you don't appreciate beauty, but you don't seem to have much of a grasp for it. How does beauty affect you?
Should I assume that beauty consists of all foods that don't have a foul smell and all members of the opposite sex that don't have a lopsided head?
giong by your arguement I should.