Evolution, Aesthetics, and Art: An Overview

Abstract

It has become common to explore connections between human evolution and aesthetic and artistic behaviors against the background of a certain framework. We ask if these behaviors are (or were) adaptive. That is, did they give those who adopted them a comparative reproductive advantage over those who did not? Or instead, are they by-products (aka spandrels)? That is, are they adventitious but non-adaptive consequences of adaptations whose biological value lies elsewhere? Or finally, are they mainly cultural, depending on our evolved nature only at a remove and in the most general way? That is, are they technologies that are preserved not mainly by biological inheritance but via deliberate cultural transmission on account of their value to groups and individuals?