THE ARTS AFTER DARWIN: DOES ART HAVE AN ORIGIN AND ADAPTIVE FUNCTION?
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Ellen Dissanayake: THE ARTS AFTER DARWIN: DOES ART HAVE AN ORIGIN AND ADAPTIVE FUNCTION? In Zijlmans, K.. & van Damme, W. (2008). World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, pp. 241-263. Amsterdam: Valiz.
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Abstract
Like medieval cosmology, which placed the earth and man at the center of the universe, the long philosophical tradition of Western art history and aesthetics considered Western man and his accomplishments to be the measure of all things. This chauvinism was due in part to necessary ignorance: our scholarly forebears could not have known about the cognitive complexity of the languages and kinship systems of the people they considered to be ‘savages’. Nor could they have been acquainted with other of these people’s intellectual and artistic achievements—the richly-carved masawa (or ceremonial seagoing canoes) of the Trobriand Islanders, the soaring facades of the haus tambaran of the Sepik River area of northern New Guinea, or the impressive bisj poles of the Asmat of coastal Irian Jaya, to mention only a few. The founders of Western art theory were necessarily also unaware of the astonishing galleries of Paleolithic cave paintings in France, Spain, and elsewhere. Although many twenty-first-century scholars in the arts and humanities now wish to redress this neglect and incorporate the works and worldviews of non-Western humans into their studies, they remain encumbered by another legacy of their 2500-year-old intellectual heritage. I refer to the Western humanities’ ignorance of and resistance to the implications of Darwinism—the news that humans have evolved over millennia from simpler forms. Yet it is only by accepting this momentous fact of nature that today’s scholars can truly broaden the humanities to include humanity—the lives, minds, and works of people in all societies and historical periods, including prehistory. Such broadening requires that one understand the human species’ evolutionary history and its evolved psychology—in particular, that engagement with the arts is an integral and necessary (adaptive) part of a common human nature. ...
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