"Chapter 7 shows, with human beings, sexual selections explains some of the most creative and flamboyant aspects of the human personality, including the most gaudy,profligate, and "show off" characteristics of artistic expression"
All of which is based on Darwin's explanation of the peacock's tail -- that extravagant and dangerous waste of energy that proves which male peacocks are the healthiest and therefore carry the best genetic code. And what could be more extravagant than art? *works of art are frequently made of rare or expensive materials *works of art should be very time consuming to create (to demontstrate that the maker had leisure) *even if a work of art is quickly executed, the skills to make it should have been time consuming and difficult to acquire *the work of art may be more impressive if is remote from any possible use *a sense of waste, and therefore a handicap, is useful from the standpoint of signal theoroy *works of art should require special intelligence or creative effort The problem is that this theory is based on the unproven belief that "the small, mobile bands of human beings that came to flourish in the Pleistocene" practiced monogamy and that mates selected each other -- conditions which, coincidentally apply to 20th C. America, but not especially to the rest of the world now or ever. In many societies, parents select the mates for their children based on familial ties, polygamy is not uncommon, and it is extended families that raise the children. Also, Dutton's theory rests on the belief that natural selection is based on individual rather than group survival -- which certainly is the case for peacocks, but not for humans. (perhaps he hasn't considered that genocide is not a strictly modern or Western phenomenon) Apparently, Darwin argues along similar lines in "The Descent of Man" as he wrote that humans practiced selective breeding on themselves by their own mating choices -and here argued for evolution as the source of language and music: "We may conclude from a wide-spread analogy, that this power (song) would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, -- would have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph - and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is therefore probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions" So there you have it: Darwin spoke it -- it must be true. Then, Dutton goeson to explain how small a vocabulary really gets used in daily speech (4,000 words) and how only 850 of those are really necessary for the kind of communication that Cheerskep would call serviceable. The rest of 600,000 found in the O.E.D. function like the peacock's tail. That's a bit far-fetched -- but I do enjoy Dutton's discussion of Thorstein Veblen, and his argument that "conspicuous consumption" is peculiar to human nature, not just to modern, capitalist societies. (BTW - Saul has recently reminded us that contemporary capitalism is run by large corporations - but I would remind Saul that universities are included and no institutions are more wasteful of human resources on behalf of social status) Though, I am interested in Dutton's conclusion: "We find beautiful artifacts - carvings, poems, stories, arias - captivating because at a profound level we sense that they take us into the minds that made them" Because that's exactly why I get captivated by so many things. ____________________________________________________________ Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/c?cp=6jUc4J1BrQTuHRlb-sw2vQAAJz6c l_zTaptgNR5c8Mer1v9kAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEUgAAAAA=
