2 hr
#50 - On the Evolutionary Origins of Storytelling, Art, and Science Increments
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- Philosophy
Fifty godd*** episodes! 'Tis been a ride full of debate, drinks, questionable arguments, Ben becoming both a dualist and a social media addict, and Vaden stalwartly not changing his mind about a single thing.
To celebrate, we dive into a thesis which connects many strands of what we've discussed over the years: Brian Boyd's work on art and fiction. Boyd provides an evolutionary account of why we're heavily invested in both creating and consuming fictional narratives. If this was simply a fun habit without any real advantage, such a propensity would have been selected against long ago because creating fiction requires an enormous amount of time. This raises the question: What is the advantage of fiction? Why is producing it adaptive?
Brian Boyd is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Auckland. His most well-known for his scholarship on Vladimir Nabokov, and is currently writing a biography on Karl Popper. You can understand why Vaden got so excited about him.
Note:
We spend a lot of time giving background context for Boyd's theory - if you want to skip all that and get right to the theory itself, we've added chapter markers to take you there.
Added after publishing : Looks like chapter markers aren't working correctly on some players, discussion of theory begins at 00:40:43
We discuss
Reflections on our 50th episode!
Non-evolutionary theories of art and fiction, and why they fail
Boyd's thesis that art results from playing with pattern and information
Fiction as a kind of art which results from playing with social information
How these theories explain why art is adaptive
The link between art and creativity
How Boyd's theory improves on the two other major evolutionary theories of art
References
On the Origin of Stories
Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks. Essay from the book Stalking Nabokov
Steven Pinker's thesis on art
Geoffrey Miller's thesis
Quotes
We crave information. But because we have a much more open-ended curiosity than other animals, we have a special appetite for pattern. We crave the high yield of novel kinds of pattern. So we not only chase and tussle, we not only play physically, but we also play cognitively, with patterns of the kinds of information that matter most to us: sound, sight, and, in our ultrasocial species, social information. We play with the rhythm and pitch and shape of sounds in music and song; with colors and shapes in drawing and painting and mudpies or sandcastles; and with patterns of social information in pretend play and story. In the social world, we see patterns of identity (who are they?), personality (what are they like?), society (whom are they related to? whom do they team up with? how do they rank?). In the world of events, we see patterns of cause and effect. In the world of social events, we see patterns of intention, action, and outcome. (Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks - Boyd)
To sum up: I’ve explored the hypothesis that art—or at least many forms of art—exploit visual aesthetics for no direct adaptive reason. Making and looking at art does not, and probably never did, result in more surviving offspring. There are, to be sure, adaptive explanations why certain visual patterns give human beings aesthetic, intellectual and sexual pleasure: they are cues to understandable, safe, productive, nutritious or fertile things in the world. And since we are a toolmaking, technological species, one of the things that we can do with our ingenuity, aside from trapping animals, detoxifying plants, conspiring against our enemies and so on, is to create purified, concentrated, supernormal, artificial sources of these visual pleasures, just for the sheer enjoyment experienced by both maker and viewer. (Pinker)
In the 1950s, when Desmond Morris supplied chimpanzees in his care with paint, brushes, and paper, they threw themselves into painting provided they received no external reward. Those who were offered food woul
Fifty godd*** episodes! 'Tis been a ride full of debate, drinks, questionable arguments, Ben becoming both a dualist and a social media addict, and Vaden stalwartly not changing his mind about a single thing.
To celebrate, we dive into a thesis which connects many strands of what we've discussed over the years: Brian Boyd's work on art and fiction. Boyd provides an evolutionary account of why we're heavily invested in both creating and consuming fictional narratives. If this was simply a fun habit without any real advantage, such a propensity would have been selected against long ago because creating fiction requires an enormous amount of time. This raises the question: What is the advantage of fiction? Why is producing it adaptive?
Brian Boyd is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Auckland. His most well-known for his scholarship on Vladimir Nabokov, and is currently writing a biography on Karl Popper. You can understand why Vaden got so excited about him.
Note:
We spend a lot of time giving background context for Boyd's theory - if you want to skip all that and get right to the theory itself, we've added chapter markers to take you there.
Added after publishing : Looks like chapter markers aren't working correctly on some players, discussion of theory begins at 00:40:43
We discuss
Reflections on our 50th episode!
Non-evolutionary theories of art and fiction, and why they fail
Boyd's thesis that art results from playing with pattern and information
Fiction as a kind of art which results from playing with social information
How these theories explain why art is adaptive
The link between art and creativity
How Boyd's theory improves on the two other major evolutionary theories of art
References
On the Origin of Stories
Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks. Essay from the book Stalking Nabokov
Steven Pinker's thesis on art
Geoffrey Miller's thesis
Quotes
We crave information. But because we have a much more open-ended curiosity than other animals, we have a special appetite for pattern. We crave the high yield of novel kinds of pattern. So we not only chase and tussle, we not only play physically, but we also play cognitively, with patterns of the kinds of information that matter most to us: sound, sight, and, in our ultrasocial species, social information. We play with the rhythm and pitch and shape of sounds in music and song; with colors and shapes in drawing and painting and mudpies or sandcastles; and with patterns of social information in pretend play and story. In the social world, we see patterns of identity (who are they?), personality (what are they like?), society (whom are they related to? whom do they team up with? how do they rank?). In the world of events, we see patterns of cause and effect. In the world of social events, we see patterns of intention, action, and outcome. (Stacks of Stories, Stories of Stacks - Boyd)
To sum up: I’ve explored the hypothesis that art—or at least many forms of art—exploit visual aesthetics for no direct adaptive reason. Making and looking at art does not, and probably never did, result in more surviving offspring. There are, to be sure, adaptive explanations why certain visual patterns give human beings aesthetic, intellectual and sexual pleasure: they are cues to understandable, safe, productive, nutritious or fertile things in the world. And since we are a toolmaking, technological species, one of the things that we can do with our ingenuity, aside from trapping animals, detoxifying plants, conspiring against our enemies and so on, is to create purified, concentrated, supernormal, artificial sources of these visual pleasures, just for the sheer enjoyment experienced by both maker and viewer. (Pinker)
In the 1950s, when Desmond Morris supplied chimpanzees in his care with paint, brushes, and paper, they threw themselves into painting provided they received no external reward. Those who were offered food woul
2 hr