{"id":20506,"date":"2013-04-04T03:49:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T03:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20506"},"modified":"2013-04-04T04:23:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T04:23:03","slug":"e-o-wilson-on-the-evolutionary-origin-of-creativity-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20506","title":{"rendered":"E.O. Wilson on the Evolutionary Origin of Creativity and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

E.O. Wilson<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last summer, eminent sociobiologist E.O. Wilson<\/a><\/strong> published an article in Harvard Magazine<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

On the Origins of the Arts<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

….By using this power in addition to examine human history, we can gain insights into the origin and nature of aesthetic judgment. For example, neurobiological monitoring, in particular measurements of the damping of alpha waves during perceptions of abstract designs, have shown that the brain is most aroused by patterns in which there is about a 20 percent redundancy of elements or, put roughly, the amount of complexity found in a simple maze, or two turns of a logarithmic spiral, or an asymmetric cross. It may be coincidence (although I think not) that about\u00a0the same degree of complexity is shared by a great deal of the art in friezes, grillwork, colophons, logographs, and flag designs. It crops up again in the glyphs of the ancient Middle East and\u00a0Mesoamerica, as well in the pictographs and letters of modern Asian languages. The same level of complexity characterizes part of what is considered attractive in primitive art and modern abstract art and design. The source of the principle may be that this amount of complexity is the most that the brain can process in a single glance, in the same way that seven is the highest number of objects that can be counted at a single glance. When a picture is more complex, the eye grasps its content by the eye\u2019s saccade or consciously reflective travel from\u00a0one sector to the next. A quality of great art is its ability to guide attention from one of its parts to another in a manner that pleases, informs, and provokes<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is fascinating. \u00a0My first question would be how we could determine if the pattern of degree of complexity is the result of cognitive structural limits (a cap on our thinking) or if it represents a sufficient visual sensory catalyst in terms of numbers of elements to cause an excitory response (neurons firing, release of dopamine, acetylcholine etc. ) and a subsequent feedback loop. Great art, or just sometimes interesting designs exhibiting novelty<\/a><\/strong> can hold us with a mysterious, absorbing fascination<\/p>\n

Later, Wilson writes:<\/p>\n

….If ever there was a reason for bringing the humanities and science closer together, it is the need to understand the true nature of the human sensory world, as contrasted with that seen by the rest of life. But there is another, even more important reason to move toward consilience among the great branches of learning. Substantial evidence now exists that human social behavior arose genetically by multilevel evolution. If this interpretation is correct, and a growing number of evolutionary biologists and anthropologists believe it is, we can expect a continuing conflict between components of behavior favored by individual selection and those favored by group selection. Selection at the individual level tends to create competitiveness and selfish behavior among group members\u2014in status, mating, and the securing of resources. In opposition, selection between groups tends to create selfless behavior, expressed in<\/strong>
\n greater generosity and altruism, which in turn promote stronger cohesion and strength of the group as a whole\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Very interesting.<\/p>\n

First, while I am in no way qualified to argue evolution with E.O. Wilson, I am dimly aware that some biological scientists might be apt to take issue with Wilson’s primacy of multilevel evolution. As a matter of common sense, it seems likely to me that biological systems might have a point where they experience emergent evolutionary effects – the system itself has to be able to adapt to the larger environmental context – how do we know what level of “multilevel” will be the significant driver of natural selection and under what conditions? Or does one level have a rough sort of “hegemony” over the evolutionary process with the rest as “tweaking” influences? Or is there more randomness here than process?<\/p>\n

That part is way beyond my ken and readers are welcome to weigh in here.<\/p>\n

The second part, given Wilson’s assumptions are more graspable. Creativity often is a matter of individual insights becoming elaborated and exploited, but also has strong collaborative and social aspects. That kind of cooperation may not even be purposeful or ends-driven by both parties, it may simply be behaviors that incidentally \u00a0help create an environment or social space where creative innovation becomes more likely to flourish – such as the advent of writing and the spread of literacy giving birth to a literary cultural explosion of ideas and invention – and battles over credit and more tangible rewards.<\/p>\n

Need to ponder this some more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

E.O. Wilson\u00a0 Last summer, eminent sociobiologist E.O. Wilson published an article in Harvard Magazine: On the Origins of the Arts\u00a0 ….By using this power in addition to examine human history, we can gain insights into the origin and nature of aesthetic judgment. For example, neurobiological monitoring, in particular measurements of the damping of alpha waves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,728,46,384,791,24,835,654,21,843,215,694,29,334,524,78,809,336,47,739,771,626,218,578,32,381,30,563,26,605,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-adaptability","category-analytic","category-art","category-change","category-cognition","category-contemplative","category-cooperation","category-creativity","category-critical-thinking","category-culture","category-dreams","category-eowilson","category-europe","category-evolution","category-ideas","category-imaginal","category-intellectuals","category-intelligence","category-nature","category-nuance-subtlety","category-patterns","category-philosophy","category-prehistoric","category-science","category-society","category-sociobiology","category-stigmergy","category-stochastic","category-tactics","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20664,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20506\/revisions\/20664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}