A century and a half after the publication of Origin of Species, evolutionary thinking has expanded beyond the field of biology to include virtually all human-related subjects—anthropology, archeology, psychology, economics, religion, morality, politics, culture, and art. Now a distinguished scholar offers the first comprehensive account of the evolutionary origins of art and storytelling. Brian Boyd explains why we tell stories, how our minds are shaped to understand them, and what difference an evolutionary understanding of human nature makes to stories we love.
Art is a specifically human adaptation, Boyd argues. It offers tangible advantages for human survival, and it derives from play, itself an adaptation widespread among more intelligent animals. More particularly, our fondness for storytelling has sharpened social cognition, encouraged cooperation, and fostered creativity.
After considering art as adaptation, Boyd examines Homer’s Odyssey and Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who! demonstrating how an evolutionary lens can offer new understanding and appreciation of specific works. What triggers our emotional engagement with these works? What patterns facilitate our responses? The need to hold an audience’s attention, Boyd underscores, is the fundamental problem facing all storytellers. Enduring artists arrive at solutions that appeal to cognitive universals: an insight out of step with contemporary criticism, which obscures both the individual and universal. Published for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, Boyd’s study embraces a Darwinian view of human nature and art, and offers a credo for a new humanism.
Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, Drama and Writing Studies, University of Auckland, is the world’s foremost authority on the works of Nabokov.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Animal, Human, Art, Story
Book I: Evolution, Art, and Fiction Part 1 Evolution and Nature
Evolution and Human Nature?
Evolution, Adaptation, and Adapted Minds
The Evolution of Intelligence
The Evolution of Cooperation
Part 2 Evolution and Art
Art as Adaptation?
Art as Cognitive Play
Art and Attention
From Tradition to Innovation
Part 3 Evolution and Fiction
Art, Narrative, Fiction
Understanding and Recalling Events
Narrative: Representing Events
Fiction: Inventing Events
Fiction as Adaptation
Book II: From Zeus to Seuss: Origins of Stories Part 4 Phylogeny: The Odyssey
Earning Attention (1): Natural Patterns: Character and Plot
Earning Attention (2): Open-Ended Patterns: Ironies of Structure
The Evolution of Intelligence (1): In the Here and Now
The Evolution of Intelligence (2): Beyond the Here and Now
The Evolution of Cooperation (1): Expanding the Circle
The Evolution of Cooperation (2): Punishment
Part 5 Ontogeny: Horton Hears a Who!
Problems and Solutions: Working at Play
Levels of Explanation: Universal, Local, and Individual
Levels of Explanation: Individuality Again
Levels of Explanation: Particular
Meanings
Conclusion
Retrospect and Prospects: Evolution, Literature, Criticism
This is a very important book--important in its own right, but also important as a marker for significant change in the academic study of the humanities. Basically, Boyd sees art as an adaptation, one that brings advantages in our struggle for survival and procreative success. He studies the ways in which stories focus attention (as play does) and foster collaboration and unity. This heightened form of play yields a heightened form of sociality, creates 'creativity,' refines and extends our cognitive skills, helps us to understand one another's thoughts, intentions and motives, see our world from multiple perspectives, explore possibilities and not just actualities, command attention, enjoy status and foster reciprocal altruism (among other things).
Most interesting, I believe, is the fact that Boyd's position validates thousands of years of humanistic thought, from Aristotle to Horace, Sidney, Johnson, the Kant of the Critique of Pure Reason (though not perhaps the Kant of the Critique of Judgment) and the successful practice of the storyteller's art by a host of writers whose work has been not only substantive but widely popular. In short, Boyd's study of human nature, human behavior, human development and human artistic expression squares with what many of us have long believed and it does so with the leverage of contemporary, evolutionary science.
Michael Wood
Rich, intelligent and incredibly wide-ranging--from Zeus to Seuss, as one chapter title says--this book is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to think about the nature of fiction. Do we imagine that situating art within a theory of evolution must be reductive? Then we must consider, as Boyd suggests we do, the difference between solving a problem and picturing a chance of solving a problem--and imagine what it would be mean not to be able to do the second. Michael Wood, Princeton University
Steven Pinker
This is an insightful, erudite, and thoroughly original work. Aside from illuminating the human love of fiction, it proves that consilience between the humanities and sciences can enrich both fields of knowledge. Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor, Harvard University, and author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Richard B. Schwartz
This is a very important book--important in its own right, but also important as a marker for significant change in the academic study of the humanities. Basically, Boyd sees art as an adaptation, one that brings advantages in our struggle for survival and procreative success. He studies the ways in which stories focus attention (as play does) and foster collaboration and unity. This heightened form of play yields a heightened form of sociality, creates 'creativity,' refines and extends our cognitive skills, helps us to understand one another's thoughts, intentions and motives, see our world from multiple perspectives, explore possibilities and not just actualities, command attention, enjoy status and foster reciprocal altruism (among other things).
Most interesting, I believe, is the fact that Boyd's position validates thousands of years of humanistic thought, from Aristotle to Horace, Sidney, Johnson, the Kant of the Critique of Pure Reason (though not perhaps the Kant of the Critique of Judgment) and the successful practice of the storyteller's art by a host of writers whose work has been not only substantive but widely popular. In short, Boyd's study of human nature, human behavior, human development and human artistic expression squares with what many of us have long believed and it does so with the leverage of contemporary, evolutionary science. Richard B. Schwartz, University of Missouri, Columbia
David Bordwell
Integrating a vast array of findings in the social and biological sciences and in the history of the arts, Boyd makes a compelling case for art as an adaptive human behavior. I can think of no similar work in contemporary literary theory; I have to go back to Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism for a work of comparable imaginative sweep and analytical precision. A monumental achievement. David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin-Madison