Evolution, the Invisible Artist

Abstract

In recent times Darwin's original ideas have gathered strength, threatening less robust theories in many areas of human and animal behavior with extinction. In particular, they appear to reduce the perception of beauty of the opposite sex to just one more instance of adaptive behavior. This article argues, however, that there is an alternative reading of the Darwinian program that is both consistent with evolutionary theory and preserves the autonomy of aesthetic reasoning. This is that species evolve so as to attract the opposite sex by generating cognitive arousal, causing attention to be redirected to themselves. The methods for generating arousal are consistent with such aesthetic devices as prototypicality, harmony, and salience. A neural network model of face recognition is presented in which higher network activity results when these aesthetic goals are met. Data is then presented showing that arousal in this model when exposed to female faces is strongly correlated with male judgments of the same female faces. Furthermore, the proposed theory is consistent with the fact that women use a variety of makeup and adornment techniques to highlight their features. The article concludes by arguing that to be beautiful is a valid evolutionary goal in itself, because more beautiful organisms are more likely to attract the attention of the opposite sex and therefore mate.