Adaptive Function of Literature and The Arts
The most hotly debated issue in evolutionary literary study concerns the adaptive functions of literature and other arts—whether there are any adaptive functions, and if so, what they might be. Proposed functions include transmitting information, including about kin relations, and by providing the audience with a model and rehearsal for how to behave in similar situations that may arise in the future. Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works, 1997) suggests that aesthetic responsiveness is merely a side effect of cognitive powers that evolved to fulfill more practical functions, but Pinker also suggests that narratives can provide information for adaptively relevant problems. Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind, 2000) argues that artistic productions in the ancestral environment served as forms of sexual display in order to demonstrate fitness and attract mates, similarly to the function of the peacock’s tail. Brian Boyd (On the Origin of Stories, 2009) argues that the arts are forms of cognitive “play” that enhance pattern recognition. In company with Ellen Dissanayake (Art and Intimacy, 2000), Boyd also argues that the arts provide means of creating shared social identity and help create and maintain human bonding. Dissanayake, Joseph Carroll (Literary Darwinism 2004), and Denis Dutton (The Art Instinct, 2009) all argue that the arts help organize the human mind by giving emotionally and aesthetically modulated models of reality. By participating in the simulated life of other people one gains a greater understanding of the motivations of oneself and other people. The idea that the arts function as means of psychological organization subsumes the ideas that the arts provide adaptively relevant information, enable us to consider alternative behavioral scenarios, enhance pattern recognition, and serve as means for creating shared social identity. And of course, the arts can be used for sexual display. In that respect, the arts are like most other human products—clothing, jewelry, shelter, means of transportation, etc. The hypothesis that the arts help organize the mind is not incompatible with the hypothesis of sexual display, but it subordinates sexual display to a more primary adaptive function.
Read more about this topic: Darwinian Literary Studies
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