Bio-aesthetic Theory
A reader reports he came across the following argument, and solicited my opinion of it:
” It seems clear to me that beauty must have a total explanation in evolutionary theory. A beautiful forest scene? Simply a sign of a bio prosperous environment likely to contained resources needed for human survival. Human beauty itself? A combination of objectively attractive traits that indicate genetic health or reproducibility, mixed with ones subjective tastes (which are likely controlled by some form of genetic selection for any individual person, looking for someone with proper genetic compatibility). People who claim they find certain buildings aesthetically pleasing are simply confusing their appreciation of the role of the building with how they feel about its design”
This may be a crackpot argument. But frankly, I am not sure what the argument is trying to say.
I do not know what he means by “beauty”; nor what “total explanation” means in this context; nor is it clear what, if anything, evolution theory has to do with anything. It does not seem to be a related concept.
However, assuming he means those words in their ordinary sense, his comment has seven obvious flaws. Let me count the ways.
The first obvious flaw with this theory is telling us where something comes from does not tell us what it is.
If I said to you “It seems clear to me that beauty must have a total explanation in polynomial theory.” or “It seems clear to me that beauty must have a total explanation in retributive justice theory.” or “It seems clear to me that beauty must have a total explanation in economic theory” then it would be clear that I am a crackpot, because beauty has nothing to do with polynomials, or retributive justice, or economics. They are unrelated fields.
The theory is also stated too briefly to be clear: if by “evolution” the crackpot is speaking of Darwin’s theory rather than Hegel’s or Marx’s or Nietzsche’s, that deals with the origin of species, not the origin of beauty.
Darwin takes for granted, as an unproven assumption, that natural variation between parent and child will from time to time give rise to new inherited characteristics. But why assume the ability to see beauty is an inherited characteristic?
Experience says the opposite: left to themselves, children will gravitate to jungle-drum music of no complexity nor harmony; only the educate taste can appreciate the classics. One must learn Latin to read Virgil in the original, and appreciate the beauty found there. How can this possibly be an inherited characteristic?
The crackpot seems to be making the argument that the faculty of seeing beauty, if it arises out of nowhere for no reason, once it has arisen, will be an aid to fertility and longevity to such a degree that this trait will be passed on in such great numbers to successive generations that those who lack the faculty will eventually vanish from the population.
Which does not explain why only humans have this perceptive faculty and no one else, nor why all humans races have it. And, as I said above, it does not explain what it is this perceptive faculty perceives.
Please note what the crackpot is not saying.
He is not saying the faculty of reason arose by Darwinian evolution due to the utility of abstract thinking during the struggle to survive, and the ability to see beauty is a side effect of the ability to think in symbols hence to abstract forms or designs from a given thing and admire them in isolation, as when admiration for the harmony of pure number leads to love of music, or admiration of the human form in the abstract leads to classical statues.
He does not say what beauty is at all, nor does he say why the faculty to see beauty aids in fertility and longevity.
Instead, the crackpot gives two examples of unrelated matters, such as whether a forest has resources useful for survival, or whether a mate is healthy for reproduction, and then dismisses a counterexample that confounds his theory, by saying seeing beauty in building design is confusion.
Confusion between what and what? By this theory, seeing beauty in buildings is not a survival trait, but an error, which Darwinian natural selection should and would breed out of the species.
So he offers as a “total explanation” of beauty, an explanation that only covers cases of health-seeking and resource-seeking, and dismisses all other cases of men appreciating beauty either in nature or in the arts: which would seem to me the overwhelming majority of the cases. This is hardly an explanation at all, and certainly not a “total explanation” — if by that we mean an explanation that explains every case.
By its own terms, the explanation does not explain what it sets out to explain. Beauty is a Darwinian-created perception of survival utility in the case of woodlands and women; except in the case of architecture, where it is not.
Suppose I point at something: a fair maiden, a juicy hamburger, a shining star, a striped tiger, an ocean wave, a sunset, the ruins of Greek temple. Suppose I ask, “is that beautiful?”
If you know what beauty is, you can answer my question with a yea or nay, and tell me why this thing is beautiful and that thing is not.
It does not answer my question, it is not logically related at all, if a crackpot answers, “The maiden is healthy, hence useful for offspring; the hamburger is nutritious, hence useful to avoid starvation; a star is a small light in the heavens, useless for illumination, unable either to threaten or aid survival chances; a tiger is dangerous; an ocean wave is dangerous and useless, since one cannot walk on it, cannot drink it, and it might drown you; a sunset is a sign of increasing danger, since the loss of light presages the increase of possible threats; a temple ruins are unable either to threaten or aid survival chances.”
It does not answer my question, it is not logically related at all, if a crackpot does not tell me what is beautiful and that is not, but instead tells me what is useful or not, nutritious or not, dangerous or not.
The second obvious flaw is that the theory is false even granting its absurd assumption. That is, even if telling us where beauty comes from did tell us what beauty is, then we should find the useful is beautiful and the useless is ugly. The common experience of mankind holds this not to be the case.
The common experience of mankind sees rainbows, stars, seawaves and tigers as beautiful, not to mention well-proportioned buildings, ruined or whole.
Even if one object happens to be both beautiful and useful, such as a well made sword, the beauty of it and the utility of it are still two different dimensions of the object, and unrelated to each other. The beauty of the sword would be captured in a picture of it, for example, but that picture would be no use whatsoever during a duel.
No one has ever found even the slightest use for the rainbow. Likewise, a visit to the dentist is useful: but no one goes to the dentist as he would go to a symphony, to admire the beauty of a root canal.
If we compare professional athletes with professional actresses and models, we find only very little overlap. Most female athletes are in tiptop peak health, but very few of them could win a beauty contest. Indeed, I myself can only think of one (Alica Schmidt of Germany).
If the faculty of seeing beauty were one and the same as the faculty of seeing utility or mating prospects, the statue of a Greek love-goddess would be repellant, because marble cannot reproduce. The statue looks like a healthy maiden, but she is stone.
Again, beauty is not perceiving useful woodland resources. A swamp has more life forms than a garden, but a swamp is ugly. A coal mine is full of resources, but few things are less beautiful than a dark and dusty pit driven into the earth.
A tasty hamburger might make my mouth water and a salad made of health-food ingredients might be more healthy for me but no one immortalizes such things in portrait, sculpture or song. More to the point, the healthier food would make my mouth would water less. Cigars and alcohol are markedly less healthy still, but men have written songs praising them.
Beauty is not utility, not survival value. I have never met anyone who regarded the sight of stars as not beautiful. Not a single one had any worldly use for the sight, except, perhaps, boyscouts doing orienteering at night.
Indeed, several things listed here, which nearly everyone will agree are remarkably beautiful, are indifferent to human survival or endanger it: stars, sea waves, tigers, sunsets, temples.
Perhaps the temple ruins are useful for staying out of the rain, but might be more dangerous due to potential collapse. Even when in good repair, the temple serves no worldly purpose. A fast food restaurant would be equally useful as a rain shelter, but would also have a greasy hamburger to munch. Is the Acropolis of Athens less beautiful than the local McDonalds?
The brutal, blocky, undecorated structures of a modern factory, steel mill, or office high-rise are the most efficient buildings in human history, while also being the ugliest. Indeed, decoration itself, by definition, is beauty that serves no useful purpose: it is pretty for the sake of being pretty.
So the theory that the beautiful is the useful and the useful is the beautiful has too many common examples where the opposite is true. Nothing is less useful to the survival of man than a sonnet.
The third obvious flaw in the theory is that it fails to explain what it fails to explain.
In the case of the beautiful building, saying that there is a “confusion” between the “appreciation of the role of the building with how they feel about its design” not only does not explain what beauty is, it claims that beauty is NOT appreciation of utility, because here we are distinguishing between the two.
How you feel about the design of the Parthenon, for example, cannot be one and the same as your appreciation of the building’s role, if you are confusing the one for the other. Confusion means two separate things are mistakenly seen as one and the same thing. One cannot argue that beauty is utility, while saying beauty should not be confused with utility.
The claim seems to be that Darwinian natural selected was supposed to instill a faculty in man to allow him to appreciate beauty, to find healthy mates and fertile hunting grounds, for this is what the faculty is for: but that sinful sons of Adam misuse the faculty and use it to write sonnets and symphonies instead, and admire stars, rainbows, striped tigers, storms at sea.
But if the faculty arose from Darwinian selection, it cannot be “for” anything. There is no tool without a toolmaker. Darwinian selection is non-intentional and non-directional. So it cannot be misused because it has no use, not an intentional use.
The claim seems to be that Darwinian natural selected instills in us a faculty for perceiving utility; we misinterpret utility and call it beauty; and when the faculty is confused we find things like buildings ugly when they are useful, or beautiful when useless — but if Darwin instils the faculty, it cannot at the same time instill the confusion, and if it instills the confusion, it cannot instill the faculty. The two are opposite.
To be a real explanation, the explanation would have to explain where and how this confusion arises. The explanation should at least offer an explanation as to why the theory applies to woodlands and healthy maidens, but not to stars, rainbows, seawaves, tigers, temple ruins, statues, sonnets, symphonies.
The fourth obvious flaw is that the perception of beauty has both an objective and a subjective component. The subjective component is influenced by upbringing and culture and education. One might perhaps make the claim that admiration for music is an inherited trait, as all human cultures, even those with no contact with each other, make and play musical instruments. But an admiration for opera must be learned. A learned trait is not an inheritable trait, and so cannot be the by-product of Darwinian natural selection. At most, the faculty for learning to perceive beauty might be an inherited trait.
A fifth obvious flaw is that if art does not exist in nature, and so art appreciation cannot be selected by natural selection.
Suppose our ape-man ancestors lurking on the Serengeti of North Africa encountered music. Some tribes had an ear for music, and this somehow aided their fertility and longevity; and some tribes had no ear for music, and this somehow diminished their fertility and longevity.
So why would all tribes of men in the modern era have music, make musical instruments, and regard music as beautiful, whereas not all tribes of men share other characteristics, like eye color? What is allegedly so useful for survival about an ear for harmony?
In other words, the theory does not only fail to account for beauty appreciation by saying it is produced by Darwinian selection, beauty appreciation could not possibly be produced by Darwinian selection for any beauty that is manmade: Unless we assume a manmade selection in addition to Darwinian selection, i.e. roving gangs of ape-men plucking crude lyres as they roam the primeval jungle slaying in rage any tone-deaf tribes they encountered with truncheons made from the thighbones of antelopes.
A sixth flaw arises if we propose to correct the flaws given above by saying that Darwinian natural selection instilled in us a faculty for perceiving forms or designs, and what we call beauty is the contemplation of forms and designs in the abstract, as when the numerical harmonies in music provide an audible grasp of number ratios, or when stars remind us of high and holy things untouched by worldly corruption.
In other words, if beauty is not the perception of health and survival utility, then perhaps it is an abstraction of health and survival utility, leading to such things as an appreciation of the Fibonacci sequence, or the Golden Mean, or other mathematical ratios found in nature.
This, at least, would be a theory as to what beauty is: namely, beauty is the contemplation of the abstract number ratios found in nature — But let us not forget what our original question is. If I point at a fair maiden, a juicy hamburger, a shining star, a striped tiger, an ocean wave, a sunset, the ruins of Greek temple, and I ask “It is beautiful?” In order to answer yea or nay, one would have to say what the abstract natural ratios are that make beautiful things beautiful, not merely from where they come.
The final obvious flaw in the explanation is that this is not an explanation of beauty. It is attempt to explain away beauty.
The explanation does not look at beauty and say what all beautiful things have in common. The explanation does not define beauty. The explanation does not identify the soul of beauty. The explanation does not tell us how to distinguish true beauty from false glamor, nor how to distinguish sublime beauty from mere decoration or mere show.
What the explanation does instead is sneer at the poet who praises his lover’s beauty, the sunlight of her gold hair, her lips that shame the red, red rose, by saying, “That is merely biology and brain chemicals!”
The explanation does not explain what beauty is, nor does it try to. Instead, the explanation is saying beauty does not exist except as an illusion, the trick of Darwinian programming by deceptive selfish genes, using the unwary human host to replicate themselves.
As if one were to prove that sunlight does not exist on the grounds that the eye does exist. Even if Darwinism could explain how and why perceive beauty were useful, it would not tell us what it is that we are perceiving.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
