Denis Dutton is a philosophy professor and the editor of Arts & Letters Daily. In his book The Art Instinct, he suggests that humans are hard-wired to seek beauty.
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In yesterday's Washington Post, I reviewed The Art Instinct, a new book by Denis Dutton that uses evolutionary psychology to explain the odd human obsession with making art:
The list of cultural universals -- those features that recur in every human society, from remote rainforest tribes to modern…
There's a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton's new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he's reviewed in the Times, and he's featured in this week's Bloggingheads Science Saturday:
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In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan chats with philosopher Denis Dutton about his book, "The Art Instinct," which argues that our artistic values are due, in significant part, to biological adaptations dating back to the Pleistocene.
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I find the book is confused because he conflates all forms of "artistic achievement" at least in part because he is a professor of literature and there are problems with making that part of an evo-psych argument.
Brave attempt though.
I think Nabokov would have loved this book. However with beauty being relative to culture and other non-scientific factors this argument would be a tough sell to a scientist.