Arts
Courtesy of theartinstinct.com
After the blissful mind rot of spring break, I jolted my brain back into shape with a great, informative read this week that will please both the art snobs and bio nerds among us: "The Art Instinct" (Bloomsbury 2009) provides ample cocktail party conversation fodder for the right-brained and left-brained alike.
In his new book, Denis Dutton, co-founder and editor of the go-to humanities web site Arts & Letters Daily, takes an innovative approach to aesthetics, demonstrating that the human desire for beauty is an innate trait that has evolved in us over thousands of generations.
Laying the groundwork for his theory in terms of Darwinian principles and basic aesthetic philosophy from Hume and Kant, Dutton forges on to explain that "the art instinct" is a by-product of adaptations that are crucial for human survival.
In doing so, Dutton undertakes the seemingly impossible task of proving that artistic taste -- that set of convictions, which seems to many of us to be the very definition of subjectivity -- is as pre-programmed as any other element of our genetic code.
Dutton's book abounds with examples from other researchers who have studied the arts around the world.
