Evolutionary aesthetics

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Result of a ranking in which women's faces should be judged according to their beauty. The higher the score, the more attractive the face. These were then sorted by rating and images with similar ratings were superimposed on the computer using morphing .

The evolutionary aesthetics is concerned with the evolutionary origin and evolution of aesthetic sensibility. The evolutionary aesthetic draws on approaches from evolutionary epistemology .

In detail, the term “evolutionary aesthetics” - like the term “aesthetics” itself - is used differently, especially for the investigation

  • the question of why people find something beautiful or ugly or why they are attracted to certain stimuli
  • the origins of art and artistic activity
  • the emergence of certain universal modes of perception, for example that the colors red and yellow, especially in combination with black, are perceived as signal colors all over the world .

Evolution theory of aesthetic feeling

According to the theory of evolutionary psychology , human aesthetic perception is also the result of evolutionary adaptation . It is assumed that there is a genetic basis for certain aesthetic preferences that have developed in the course of the evolution of humans and their ancestors , as well as an evolutionarily justifiable advantage through aesthetic preferences. Even today, humans still respond to certain key stimuli that in earlier millions of years were conducive to the survival, reproduction and transmission of human genes. The same as for key stimuli should therefore also apply to aesthetic sensations.

Adjustment of preferences to natural living conditions

Evolutionary aesthetics assumes that the aesthetic perception has adapted to the natural living conditions. For example, it can be shown that people in all cultures find river landscapes and semi-open park landscapes particularly attractive. According to evolutionary psychologists, this is a legacy of life in the savannah, where landscapes were advantageous for early humans, the prospect of food and water, but also a certain protection. The evolutionary biologist Carsten Niemitz, on the other hand, sees the attractiveness of water landscapes as an indication that water bodies were a central habitat of the early ancestors of man.

Sexual selection

A second form of adaptation that plays a role in the evolution of the perception of beauty is sexual selection , as described by Charles Darwin . It can be used to justify those aesthetic preferences that play a role when choosing a partner, such as physical attractiveness. A variety of aesthetic preferences can be explained with the model of sexual selection.

Certain features of the face are also almost always rated as attractive. According to results from Rhodes (2006) are

attractive in female and male faces.

Tests on the computer have shown that an average female face is perceived as particularly attractive in terms of facial proportions. Facial proportions that correspond exactly to the average of the population, so it was interpreted, indicate a high degree of health. Later it turned out, however, that there were faces that were judged to be even more attractive by the test persons, namely those in which certain proportions - such as the height of the cheekbones or the distance between the chin and mouth - deviated markedly from the average.

Symmetry is a preferred trait in the face and body because it has emerged as an indicator of health through sexual selection. Studies have shown that women show a preference for men who can dance well. A study carried out in Jamaica found that the bodies of the men whom women liked to watch dance were more symmetrical.

In female faces, feminine features (e.g. smaller chin, higher cheekbones, fuller lips) are perceived as attractive, with femininity according to Rhodes even being a stronger factor than average. Masculine facial features (e.g. strong lower jaw) are also related to attractiveness, although the research results are partly contradicting and, according to Rhodes, the connection is less pronounced than with femininity in female faces. Very feminine features in female or very masculine features in male faces represent a high level of sex hormones ( estrogen or testosterone ) in the blood of the individual. Some studies have shown that the faces of men with high testosterone levels are perceived by women as more attractive, while other research has found that men with high testosterone levels are rated by women as more masculine and dominant, but not more attractive. Faces of women with high levels of estrogen are perceived as more feminine, more attractive and healthier, according to a study from 2006. Sex hormones have an immunosuppressive effect (the reason for this lies in the chemical structure; testosterone and estrogen are relatives of the well-known immunosuppressive drugs cortisone and prednisone ). This is why very feminine or very masculine facial features according to Rhodes can be a sign of an intact immune system , because only healthy women and men can afford very feminine or very masculine facial features. According to Rhodes, however, no meaningful studies are available on the connection between averaging, symmetry and sexual dimorphism with health.

Difficulties and criticism

As with other models of evolutionary psychology , a central difficulty is that many theses can at best be plausible, but hardly reconstructed.

Another difficulty is to distinguish evolutionarily conditioned aesthetic preferences from cultural ones. An evolutionary background would mean that the respective aesthetic preferences are universals , so they can be observed in people of all cultures. However, this can only be proven in individual cases. Gábor Paál describes this type of preference as "elementary aesthetic".

In addition, evolutionary aesthetics cannot explain how fundamental changes in aesthetic preferences occurred within relatively short periods of time, for example that in the 18th century mountains, which had previously been avoided, were now sought out for their aesthetic qualities - a change for which culturalist approaches are able to offer plausible explanations.

The attempt to explain concrete ideals of beauty in an evolutionary way usually involves equating beauty with biological " attractiveness " or the sense of beauty with "pleasure". Paál points out, however, that the biological response to an attractive stimulus is mostly unconscious, while an aesthetic judgment is a comparative, weighing-up, i.e. intellectual decision. In the meantime, there is increasing evidence from neuroscience that other processes are active in the brain when feeling pleasure than when consciously judging whether an object is beautiful or not. It also shows that in processes that have to do with biological attractiveness, areas of the limbic system are more active, whereas aesthetic judgments are mainly made in the cerebral cortex.

Art theory of evolutionary aesthetics

Evolutionary psychologists try to fathom the cognitive prerequisites for the creation of art and the function of early works of art. One starting point is to explain the apparently quite simultaneous appearance of different forms of artistic activity. These include the oldest pictorial works of art and sculptures that were found in the Lone Valley on the Swabian Alb and are around 35,000 to 40,000 years old. The oldest known musical instruments - the flutes from Geißenklösterle - date from around the same time . Early stone and cave paintings are also counted among the early forms of art. It is unclear why early art forms first appeared in this Paleolithic era and what their precise function was. Some anthropologists assume that religious or cultic motives played a role, but in most cases this cannot be proven.

What is special about these early forms of art is that they are handcrafted right from the start: No “experimental phases” can be observed in the development of early art, in the sense that older sculptures would still have technical defects. From Steven Mithen's point of view, this shows that the manual skills were already there before the first works of art were created. The ability to create an object based on visual imagination was a prerequisite for the production of hand axes for centuries . In contrast to workpieces such as hand axes, the works that are regarded as art are characterized by further characteristics: They refer to something distant (e.g. represent animals in the wild) and they obviously have some kind of symbolic meaning. This symbolic meaning is made clear by the fact that many representations are much more detailed than would be necessary for practical purposes and that many representations are not true-to-life depictions of objects, but are stylistically modified or depictions of unnatural beings such as the one Lion man from Hohlenstein-Stadel or the paintings in the French cave Chauvet , which show a hybrid of human and bison.

The ability to think symbolically is seen as one of the prerequisites for art , which apparently only Homo sapiens developed. Some early historians trace the origins of symbolic thinking back to the fact that Homo sapiens was able to combine various cognitive abilities.

Theories about what social function early works of art really had, harbor the same methodological difficulties as the above-mentioned theories about the roots of the sense of beauty: There are no sources that could provide information about the original "motifs" of the Stone Age people.

See also

literature

Specialist literature
  • P. Baukus: Biology of Aesthetic Perception. In: R. Riedl, M. Delpos (Hrsg.): The evolutionary epistemology in the mirror of the sciences. WUV, Vienna 1996, pp. 239-261.
  • Colin Martindale, Paul Locher, Vladimir M. Petrov (Eds.): Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Approaches to Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Baywood, Amityville 2007.
  • Ellen Dissanayake: What Is Art For? University of Washington Press, Seattle 1988.
  • Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt : The Biological Foundation of Aesthetics. In: I. Rentschler, B. Herzberger, D. Epstein (eds.): Beauty and the Brain Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 1988, pp. 29-68.
  • Karl Eibl: Animal Poeta. Building blocks of biological culture and literary theory. Mentis 2004.
  • Karl Grammer , B. Fink, AP Møller, Randy Thornhill: Darwinian Aesthetics: Sexual Selection and the Biology of Beauty. In: Biological Review. 78/3 (2003), pp. 385-407.
  • Cathrin Gutwald, Raimar Zons (ed.): The power of beauty. Fink, Munich 2007.
  • BL van Lierop: Evolutionary Aesthetics. In: British Journal of Aesthetics. 44/4 (2004), pp. 444f.
  • Winfried Menninghaus: The promise of beauty. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • Geoffrey Miller : Sexual selection for cultural displays. In: R. Dunbar, C. Knight, C. Power (Eds.): The Evolution of Culture - An Interdisciplinary View. Edinburgh UP, Edinburgh 1999, pp. 71-91.
  • Geoffrey Miller , Jorunn Wissmann: The sexual evolution. Choice of partner and the emergence of the mind. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, 2001, ISBN 3-8274-1097-5 .
  • Steven Mithen : The prehistory of the mind. A search for the origins of art, religion and science. London 1996.
  • Gábor Paál : Where does the sense of beauty come from? Basics of an evolutionary aesthetic. In: Helmut A. Müller (Ed.): Evolution: Where from and where. Answers from religion, the natural sciences and the humanities. Göttingen 2008, pp. 165–179.
  • E. Ralevski: Aesthetics and art from an evolutionary perspective. In: Evolution and Cognition. 6 (2000), pp. 84-103.
  • G. Rhodes, LA Zebrowitz (Ed.): Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives. Ablex, Westport, CT 2001.
  • Klaus Richter: The origin of the beautiful. Basics of evolutionary aesthetics. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-8053-2539-8 .
  • P. Sitte: Bioesthetics, biology between knowledge and experience. In: P. Sitte (Hrsg.): Century Science Biology. The big issues. Munich 1999, pp. 407-425.
  • V. Swami, A. Furnham: The Psychology of Physical Attraction. Taylor & Francis, 2007.
  • V. Swami, A. Furnham (Ed.): Body Beautiful: Evolutionary and Socio-cultural Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
  • Donald Symons: Beauty is in the Adaptations of the Beholder: The Evolutionary Psychology of Human Female Attractiveness. In: PRAbramson, SD Pinkerton (eds.): Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995, pp. 80-118.
  • Randy Thornhill: Darwinian Aesthetics. In: Charles Crawford, Dennis L. Krebs (Eds.): Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ 1998, pp. 543-572.
  • Eckart Voland , Karl Grammer (Ed.): Evolutionary Aesthetics. Springer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-540-43670-7 . ( Content , reviews by A. Tomlin , K. Eibl )
Popular literature
  • Desmond Morris : The painting monkey. On the biology of art. 1968.
  • N. Etcoff: Survival of the prettiest. The science of beauty. Doubleday, New York 1999.
    • German: Only the most beautiful survive. The aesthetics of man. Hugendubel, Munich 2001.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gabor Paal: Where does the sense of beauty come from? Basics of an evolutionary aesthetic. In: Helmut A. Müller (Ed.): Evolution: Where from and where. Answers from religion, the natural sciences and the humanities. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, p. 172 ff.
  2. ↑ Denis Dutton: Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology . In: Jerrold Levinson (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-927945-4 , pp. 693-705.
  3. ↑ Gordon H. Orians: An Evolutionary Perspective on Aesthetics. In: Bulletin of Psychology & the Arts: Evolution, Creativity, and Aesthetics.
  4. ↑ JH Heerwagen, GH Orians: Humans, Habitats and aesthetics. In: Stephen R. Kellert, EO Wilson (Ed.): The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, DC 1993.
  5. ↑ Carsten Niemitz: The secret of the upright walk. Munich 2004, pp. 56–59.
  6. ↑ C. Darwin: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. Princeton University Press, 1981.
  7. ↑ An overview gives: Geoffrey F. Miller: The sexual evolution. Choice of partner and the emergence of the mind. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-8274-1097-5 .
  8. ^ A b G. Rhodes: The Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Beauty. (PDF; 312 kB) In: Annual Review of Psychology . 57, Jan 2006, pp. 199-226. doi : 10.1146 / annurev.psych.57.102904.190208 .
  9. ↑ H. Rehm: Beauty - but more than just average? In: Spectrum of Science. 7, 1994, p. 20.
  10. ^ IS Penton-Voak u. a .: Symmetry, sexual dimorphism in facial proportions and male facial attractiveness. ( Memento of the original from January 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 202 kB) In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 268, No. 1476, 2001, pp. 1617-1623. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2001.1703 . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.alittlelab.stir.ac.uk
  11. ↑ WM Brown et al. a .: Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men. In: Nature Vol. 438, 2005, pp. 1148-1150.
  12. ↑ Bernhard Fink et al. a .: Second to fourth digit ratio and face shape. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences . 272, No. 1676, October 2005, pp. 1995-2001. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2005.3179 . PMC 1559906 (free full text)
  13. ↑ Anthony F. Bogaert, Catherine C. Fawcett and Luanne K. Jamieson: Attractiveness, body size, masculine sex roles and 2D: 4D ratios in men . In: Personality and Individual Differences . 47, No. 4, September 2009, pp. 273-278. doi : 10.1016 / j.paid.2009.03.011 .
  14. ↑ Camille Ferdenzi et al. a .: Digit ratio (2D: 4D) predicts facial, but not voice or body odor, attractiveness in men . In: Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences . 278, No. 1724, December 2011, pp. 3551-3557. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2011.0544 .
  15. ↑ Nick Neave et al. a .: Second to fourth digit ratio, testosterone, and perceived male dominance . In: Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences 270, No. 1529, October 2003, pp. 2167-2172. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2003.2502 .
  16. ↑ John P. Swaddle and Gillian W. Reierson: Testosterone increases perceived dominance but not attractiveness in human males . In: Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences . 269, No. 1507, November 2002, pp. 2285-2289 doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2002.2165 .
  17. ^ MJ Law Smith et al. a .: Facial appearance is a cue to estrogen levels in women. In: Proceeding of the Royal Society Biological Sciences . 273, No. 1583, January 2006, pp. 135-140. doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2005.3296 .
  18. ↑ Stephen Jay Gould: Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism . New York Review of Books 44 (11), 1997, pp. 47-52.
  19. ↑ Gábor Paál: What is beautiful? Aesthetics and Knowledge . Würzburg 2003, pp. 34-40.
  20. ^ Majorie H. Nicolson: Mountain gloom and mountain glory. The development of the aesthetics of the infinitive . Cornell University Press Seattle, 1959; Ruth Groh, Dieter Groh: Worldview and appropriation of nature. On the cultural history of nature . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  21. ^ Gábor Paál: In the footsteps of Aphrodite. Brain and mind. 2004, 66.
  22. ↑ Gábor Paál: What is beautiful? Aesthetics and Knowledge. Würzburg 2003, p. 11.
  23. ↑ Broad et al. In: Neuron. 8, 2001 .
  24. ↑ Paál, 2004, p. 67.
  25. ↑ Mithen 1996, p. 176 ff.
  26. ↑ Nicolas Conard, Maria Malina: Final excavations in the Geißenklösterle near Blaubeuren, Alb-Donau district. In: Arch. Ausgr. Bad-Württ. Theiss, Stuttgart 2001, pp. 17-21.
  27. ↑ Jean Clottes: Art in the morning light of mankind. In: Reinhard Breuer u. a .: Modern archeology . Spectrum of Science Special 12 (2), pp. 6–9.
  28. ^ The Tübingen prehistoric and early historian Jörg Petrasch, in the SWR2 broadcast on the origins of religion ( RTF ; 57 kB).
  29. ↑ Mithen 1996, p. 179.
  30. ↑ Mithen, 1996, p. 181.
  31. ↑ Steven Mithen: The prehistory of the mind. London 1996, p. 187.
  32. ↑ Steven Mithen: The singing Neanderthals. London 2005, p. 272 ​​ff.
  33. ↑ Steven Mithen describes this development in The Prehistory of the mind. London 1996.
  34. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www2.uni-jena.de