without him ever admitting he was broke. I also
think of writers who receive a lot of critical acclaim but not a lot of payment for their work.
In those cases, the art is sending a bit of a false
fitness signal. It’s not that the artist is trying
to fake anything, necessarily but that artistic
success is simply not as tightly correlated with
evolutionary fitness as we might think it is. Today, evolutionary fitness includes the means to
support oneself and a family and I just don’t see
the link between art and those things. I say this
as someone who cares about art and believes it
to be worth certain sacrifices.
success. Rather than having to try something
in order to find out that it’s a bad idea, we can
read about such scenarios, imagine various outcomes, and hopefully choose, for ourselves, the
ones that seem most favorable.
Through art, history, and all of our representations of life, we can pass down knowledge
from generation to generation, knowledge that,
otherwise, would have to be encoded through
instinct or learned from experience. And it’s
not just representation, per se; aspects of art
and culture that are or were at one time passed
down directly from person to person, such as
One way in which art-making could boost fit- dance and music before those things had notaness, however, is that societies reward artists for tions, are also culturally, rather than genetically,
their skills. “The admiration accorded to highly transmitted.
skilled men and women,” Dutton writes in his
2010 afterword, “along with consequent higher
But art also goes way beyond this concept of
status (entailing higher differential reproducinstruction and information. Stories do much
tive rates) would give any Pleistocene huntermore than tell people about the potential congatherer group a long-term survival advantage
sequences of their actions (skating on Farmer
over groups that did not publicly respect or
Giles’ pond is probably not a good idea; having
reward skills.” While this might have been true an affair might cause complicated problems;)
30,000 years ago, I doubt that the rewards
or transmit information. Beyond knowledge,
artists receive today—such as, say, MacArthur
beyond art objects, beyond stories, the art
Fellowships—make up for the fact that hour by instinct, for both artist and audience, is one tohour, day by day, or even piece by piece, making ward imagination. The ability to imagine helps
art really doesn’t pay. I don’t think that the fact us think and plan and is something, like our
that a few artists strike it rich provides enough
preference for savanna landscapes, that is unievolutionary oomph to make up for all the artversal and instinctive. “It appears as if humans
ists who don’t.
have evolved specialized cognitive machinery
that allows us to enter and participate in imagYet somehow, the art instinct, whether to
ined worlds,” Dutton quotes John Tooby and
enjoy art or to make it oneself, has been passed Leda Cosmides, co-directors of the Center For
down, genetically. Furthermore, art has been
Evolutionary Psychology at University of Calitransmitted not only through instincts but
fornia Santa Barbara, as writing on this subject.
through culture. There’s certainly a cultural seI think it’s the ability to imagine that gives us
lection for the artworks that will endure and be an evolutionary advantage.
imitated. Our cultural interest in art must help
us somehow.
Which came first, art or imagination? Or as
Dutton puts the question in his chapter about
Aside from the aforementioned doubts about “Art and Natural Selection,” is art a by-product
how art-making would give artists an evolution- of our big brains, as evolutionary biologist Steary boost, I agree with many of Dutton’s hyphen Jay Gould and cognitive scientist Steven
potheses about how the art instinct—including Pinker before him had suggested, or does the
the impulse to appreciate art—could be auspiart instinct itself, separate from other cognicious.
tive abilities, provide some specific advantage?
I don’t know whether art helps us think or
Reading and writing narratives helps us emwhether we make art because we’re thoughtful.
pathize with other people, which helps society
I can imagine it going either way.
to function. Considering fictional situations
and possible outcomes could aid our decisionmaking, which certainly affects our survival and
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