The consideration of evolutionary conservatism toward a theory of the human brain.

Abstract

ion, and that it carries the seriousness usually accompanying a survival activity. In the first particular, it is characteristic of the pure disciplines that they attach great value to originality and disdain the replication of previous works. This disproportionate premium attached to the first performance of a useful act is characteristic of explorations and of relatively few other realms of activity. These disciplines, embodying interestingly unpredictable homomorphisms, form a model for the inaccessible higher faculty. Where that faculty transforms states of the brain, the pure disciplines transform their materials, paint and canvas, words or musical sounds. The intricate, unexpected, and even perverse forms of such modern artistic exercises support the contention that these disciplines are aiming, not merely at competent manipulations of their media, but at exploration of something far more complex and important. The intensity engendered by pure explorations is exemplified in Edward Gibbon's famous description of men's readiness to die over a theological diphthong [36, p. 690]. A last connection between the pure and the survival disciplines is suggested by the formal similarity between aesthetic and practical criteria of success. They have in common the notions of closure [11] and economy. A system is closed, roughly speaking, if its operations generate nothing new (i.e., outside the system). Since unexpected novelty can be dangerous, a closed system is, biologically, a safer system. One way to achieve closure is by exploring the natural extensions ofone's system and then expanding the system to include them, if this can be done economically. A farmer may explore the source ofa river running through his land or the regulari-