This article by sociobiologist E.O. Wilson is absolutely fascinating. It is one of my first real experiences with the field of sociobiology, and this article, which attempts to rectify both contextual and evolutionary physiological evidence with modern scientific instrumentation in order to speculate on the origins of the arts, comments saliently on the evolutionary nature of the modern human’s taste in what is beautiful. It also examines how biological and evolutionary influence hold power over our sense of aesthetic judgment today, which is interesting food for thought from both a philosophical and physiological perspective. This has interesting implications for what beauty in an abstract sense is, or how/if it can be manipulated by experience, environmental factors, or evolutionary heritage. I find this quote from the article particularly appropriate: 

Our poor ability to smell and taste is reflected in the small size of our chemosensory vocabularies, forcing us for the most part to fall back on similes and other forms of metaphor. A wine has a delicate bouquet, we say, its taste is full and somewhat fruity. A scent is like that of a rose, or pine, or rain newly fallen on the earth.

We are forced to stumble through our chemically challenged lives in a chemosensory biosphere, relying on sound and vision that evolved primarily for life in the trees. 

Brilliant. 

22 April 1 Permalink