Abstract
In this paper, I assess the current state of evolutionary aesthetics by reviewing four recent books by scholars in art history, literary studies, and psychology. Each book is humanistic in a broad sense. While they all address evolutionary themes and share a commitment to understanding aesthetic experience via methodological pluralism, they differ substantially in perspective and tone. That of Cupchik, a psychologist, expansively discusses the aesthetics of emotion. That of Rampley, an art historian, is the most polemical, with a strong critique of the encroachment of biology into questions of cultural history. Those of Hogan and Aldama, both literary scholars, deal primarily with literature and are the most personal and ultimately the most thought-provoking. The collective humanistic perspective is a departure from more neuroscience-intensive recent volumes, and it highlights the importance of themes like the emergence of aesthetics from the interaction between nature and culture—potentially in different ways at different times throughout the phylogenetic history of our species. Keywords: evolutionary aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, evolution, aesthetic cognition, art appreciation, literary studies, emotion, two cultures Books under Review Aldama, Frederick Luis, and Patrick Colm Hogan. 2014. Conversations on Cognitive Cultural Studies: Literature, Language, and Aesthetics . Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. x, 203 pages. Hardcover $62.95. Softcover $27.95. Cupchik, Gerald C. 2016. The Aesthetics of Emotion: Up the Down Staircase of the Mind-Body . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. xxv, 387 pages. Hardcover $125.00. Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2016. Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ix, 286 pages. Hardcover $110.00. Rampley, Matthew. 2017. The Seductions of Darwin: Art, Evolution, Neuroscience. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ix, 189 pages. Softcover $34.95.
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