Matt Ridley schreibt in „The Mating Mind„:
The idea that art emerged through sexual selection was fairly common a century ago, and seems to have fallen out of favor through neglect rather than disproof. Darwin viewed human ornamentation and clothing as natural outcomes of sexual selection. In The Descent of Man he cited the popularity across tribal peoples of nail colors, eyelid colors, hair dyes, hair cutting and braiding, head shaving, teeth staining, tooth removal, tattooing, scarification, skull deformations, and piercings of the nose, ears, and lips. Darwin observed that „self-adornment, vanity, and the admiration of others, seem to be the commonest motives“ for selfornamentation. He also noted that in most cultures men ornament themselves more than women, as sexual selection theory would predict. Anticipating the handicap principle, Darwin also stressed the pain costs of aesthetic mutilations such as scarification, and the time costs of acquiring rare pigments for body decoration. Finally, he argued against a cultural explanation of ornamentation, observing that „It is extremely improbable that these practices which are followed by so many distinct nations are due to tradition from any common source.“ Darwin believed the instinct for self-ornamentation to have evolved through sexual selection as a universal part of human nature, more often expressed by males than by females (..)
The idea that art emerged through sexual selection was fairly common a century ago, and seems to have fallen out of favor through neglect rather than disproof. Darwin viewed human ornamentation and clothing as natural outcomes of sexual selection. In The Descent of Man he cited the popularity across tribal peoples of nail colors, eyelid colors, hair dyes, hair cutting and braiding, head shaving, teeth staining, tooth removal, tattooing, scarification, skull deformations, and piercings of the nose, ears, and lips. Darwin observed that „self-adornment, vanity, and the admiration of others, seem to be the commonest motives“ for selfornamentation. He also noted that in most cultures men ornament themselves more than women, as sexual selection theoryPowerful reactions like aesthetic rapture are the footprint of powerful selection forces. Like our sexual preferences for certain faces and bodies, our aesthetic preferences may look capricious at first, but reveal a deeper logic on closer examination. If art evolved through sexual selection, our aesthetic preferences could be viewed as part of our mate choice system. They are not the same preferences we use to assess another individual’s body, because, like most other animals, we already have rich sexual preferences about body form. Rather, they are the preferences we use in assessing someone’s extended phenotype: the set of objects they made, acquired, and displayed around their bodies. To explain our aesthetic preferences, we should be able to use the same sexual selection theories that biologists use to explain mating preferences. As we saw in previous chapters, these boil down to three options: preferences that escalate through runaway effects, preferences that come from sensory biases, and preferences evolved to favor fitness indicators. (…)
Beauty conveys truth, but not the way we thought. Aesthetic significance does not deliver truth about the human condition in general: it delivers truth about the condition of a particular human, the artist. The aesthetic features of art make sense mainly as displays of the artist’s skill and creativity, not as vehicles of transcendental enlightenment, religious inspiration, social commentary, psycho-analytic revelation, or political revolution. Plato and Hegel derogated art for failing to deliver the same sort of truth that they thought philosophy could produce. They misunderstood the point of art. It is unfair to expect a medium that evolved to display biological fitness to be well adapted for communicating abstract philosophical truths. (…)
When we talk about the evolution of art, perhaps we are really talking about the evolution of a human tendency to make material objects into advertisements of our fitness. When we talk about aesthetics, perhaps we are really talking about human preferences that evolved to favor features of human-made objects that reliably indicate the artisan’s fitness. This view suggests that aesthetics overlaps with social psychology. We possess a natural ability to see through the work of art to the artist’s skill and intention. Seeing a beautiful work of art naturally leads us to respect the artist. We may not fall in love with the artist immediately. But if we meet them, we may well want to find out whether their actual phenotypes live up to their extended phenotypes.
Ich finde es eine interessante Betrachtung von Kunst. Es passt zum Sexappeal, dass viele Künstler haben und gibt eine gute Erklärung dafür, warum wir Kunst an sich mögen. Es würde erklären, warum mehr Männer als Frauen auf der produzierenden Seite tätig sind, aber viele Frauen Kunstausstellungen und Theater etc mögen.
Wenn das Gehirn, wie es Geoffrey Miller ausführt, eine der besten Möglichkeiten ist, gute Gene darzustellen, weil ein gut funktionierendes Gehirn mit schlechtern Genen nicht funktioniert, dann macht es in der Tat Sinn, die Fähigkeiten des Gehirns über Kunst darzustellen. Es würde erklären, warum wie Musik mit einem gewissen komplizierten System mögen (Fugen etc), warum Rapper mit schnellen, spontanen Reimen Erfolg haben etc.
Alles Evolution 