Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature (28 page)

According to Boyd, the adaptive value of the arts is indistinguishable from the adaptive value of play, just as, presumably, the arts themselves are essentially a form of play, a way of exploring the world without the stark seriousness of reality itself. By contrast, science—although often best undertaken with a playful, exploratory mindset—necessarily collides with the empirical truths of physical and biological nature, stern task mistresses indeed. Although scientists are free to hypothesize to their hearts’ content, eventually they must be constrained by the empirical truths of the actual world. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously pointed out, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. They are similarly entitled to their own arts, but not their own science.

If Newton or Einstein hadn’t lived, we almost certainly would nonetheless have basic physics as well as relativity. If Lavoisier hadn’t discovered oxygen, it is certain that someone else would have, just as somebody would have figured out that the heart pumped blood even if William Harvey had never been born. The double-helix structure of DNA was there for the unraveling; had it not been accomplished by Watson and Crick, others would have
done so.
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And it doesn’t diminish the stature of Darwin himself to be reminded—as noted early in the preceding chapter—that Alfred Russel Wallace glimpsed the same basic truth of nature, independently. But if Shakespeare or Bach had not been born, we can rest assured (or rather, bereft) that we wouldn’t have Hamlet or the Goldberg Variations. This is not to argue that the arts are more valuable than the sciences; rather, because they result from the playful, free flow of imagination, unconstrained as science is by reality, the arts aren’t just unique, but—at the risk of outraging language purists—in a sense, “more unique.”

Even so, the arts are also anchored in reality, just less tightly bound. And although people doubtless learn about the world via music and the visual arts as well, Boyd argues that fiction and storytelling constitute the richest arena for playful learning via art:

Because it entices us again and again to immerse ourselves in story, it helps us over time to rehearse and refine our apprehension of events. Fiction, I propose, does not
establish
but does
improve
our capacity to interpret events. It preselects information of relevance, prefocuses attention on what is strategically important, and thereby simplifies the cognitive task of comprehension. At the same time it keeps strategic information flowing at a much more rapid pace than normal in real life, and allows a comparatively disengaged attitude to the events unfolding. It trains us to make inferences quickly, to shift mentally to new characters, times, and perspectives. Fiction aids our rapid understanding of real-life social situations, activating and maintaining this capacity at high intensity and low cost.

Later, Boyd proposes that the most important function of fiction is that “By appealing to our fascination with agents and actions, fiction trains us to reflect freely beyond the immediate and to revolve things in our minds within a vast and vividly populated world of the possible.” In an earlier book,
Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature
, coauthored with my daughter, Nellie, I suggested that one of the most damning critiques of any work of literature is that it isn’t believable, which means that it must deal with the world of the evolutionarily possible. To be vivid and enduring, literature must represent images
of human behavior that are consistent with the evolutionary constraints and inclinations that biology knows to exist, and that people intuit as being “realistic.” And indeed, literature consistently depicts such patterns as male–male competition, female initiated mate selection, kin- and reciprocity-based altruism, parent–offspring conflict, and so forth.

But it is one thing to posit that literature—even when pre-Darwinian, or when written without regard to the insights of evolutionary biology—will nonetheless reflect certain biological truths about human nature. That is, it is one thing to predict
what
literature will depict, but quite another to understand, as we are now attempting,
why
it exists at all.

Returning to hypotheses for the existence of art more generally, Boyd makes the novel suggestion that, in concert with its playful functionality, artistic creativity has been selected for much for the same reason as sex has: as a way of increasing variation—whether genetic (sex) or ideational (art). In this regard, it is interesting that the adaptive significance of sex, too, like that of art, has long perplexed biologists. Like art, sexual reproduction seems wasteful (at least, compared with the alternative of asexual breeding, which, among several benefits, has the added payoff of ensuring that an asexually reproducing individual has 100% of its genetic material reflected in each of its offspring, compared to a mere 50% for parents who employ sex). And it may be more than coincidental that the currently favored hypothesis for the existence of sex is that despite its 50% genetic tariff, it pays for itself by producing genetic variability among one’s offspring.

As a result, when the environment changes—which it inevitably does—or when new pathogens or parasites arrive, parents who breed sexually have a greater chance of achieving success via at least some of their genetically diverse offspring. By the same token, maybe “artistic license” benefits its producers and consumers, and pays for its seeming profligacy, by expanding the boundaries of the imaginable. If so, then when the social environment changes—and it, too, like the physical and biological environment, inevitably does—people who have experienced the potential diversity afforded by imaginative art may enjoy an advantage comparable to organisms that cushion their biological risk via sexually generated genetic diversity.

Encountering a dragon in a story can be thrilling; meeting one in a back alley would be terrifying. But if we really did encounter a genuine dragon, we might well respond more effectively if we had already encountered various scenarios in our imaginations, via the stories we heard. And of course, for dragons one can substitute human competitors, or collaborators, or collaborators turned competitors and vice versa, romantic partners, rivals, and so forth—the entire gamut of potential life experiences that are reflected (with various degrees of accuracy) in art generally and stories in particular.

Aspiring chess masters study famous matches, often memorizing classic openings, end games, and so forth. The game of life is no less complicated than chess, which makes it possible that much of the appeal of narrative art derives from an appeal similar to that of eating nourishing food: consuming certain things, like studying certain game plans, is good for us.

Returning to our earlier metaphor of the hedgehog and the fox, people who partake of artistic possibilities are foxy, armed with a diverse array of resources, whereas without the arts, one is left with a hedgehog-like mastery of one big thing—reality as it currently presents itself—but with a limited array of alternative moves.

The connection between art and reality is complex and intriguing, paralleling in some ways the connection between culture and biology. Thus, a strong case can be made that when it comes to preferences for visual art, humanity’s long Pleistocene sojourn has left a discernible evolutionary imprint: Cross-culturally, people prefer scenes that include open grassland or prairie, as well as trees and/or rocky outcroppings.
²
This combination has given rise to “prospect/refuge theory,” since the former offers the prospect of long-distance vision—all the better to spot enemies or prey, my dear—while the latter suggests opportunities to take refuge if need be.
³
Add water, shake gently, and the result—if not quite a Garden of Eden—strongly resembles the environment in which our species spent most of its early evolutionary childhood. Although prospect/refuge theory offers a possible explanation for why we prefer certain images, stories, etc., over others, it nonetheless fails to illuminate why we
create
these things. Perhaps they simply provide pleasure, because of the potential—albeit illusory—of satisfying a need that is nonetheless genuine.

To some extent, of course, the pleasure derived from art is no different from that evoked by “the real thing,” such that one of the joys of, say, viewing a pleasant country scene may be the extent to which it re-creates the pleasure of actually experiencing the real thing. The likelihood, for example, is that both events induce a similar secretion of satisfaction-inducing neurosecretions. This might seem to be an evolutionary problem, insofar as it can be maladaptive to focus on a simulacrum rather than the genuine article (consider the downsides of drug addiction, or pornography). But it may also be an unavoidable consequence of having adaptively strong proclivities and predispositions; perhaps you can’t have adaptive preferences for certain situations and thus a neuronal sensitivity to stimuli that reflect those situations, without the other a vulnerability to being fooled. Perhaps, then, in the case of art, we should substitute “willingness” or “benevolent capacity” for “vulnerability.”

“Art necessarily is illusion,” writes psychologist Roger N. Shepard.

In the immense history of life on earth, art is but a very recent development. Since its emergence with
Homo sapiens
, there has been insufficient time … for the evolution of extensive neural machinery adapted specifically to the interpretation of pictures. The implication is inescapable: Pictures most appeal to us, to the extent that they do, because they engage neural machinery that had previously evolved for other purposes.
⁴

Turning now from the visual to the narrative arts, another practical teaching payoff may derive from its role as a vehicle for sharing social information, which is to say, a classy form of gossip. Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar has made the intriguing suggestion that one of the keys to sociality—especially among primates (which includes
Homo sapiens
)—is social grooming, which includes the iconic inclination of monkeys and apes to sit around and pick ectoparasites off their best friends. Dunbar points out that as proto-hominid group size increased, it became increasingly difficult to maintain cohesion via direct physical contact, at which
time verbal communication—gossip—may well have replaced grooming.
⁵

Insofar as he is correct, it isn’t a huge step from gossip as grooming to stories as gossip. Indeed, much of the pleasure and delight modern readers derive from fiction may be very similar to what is gained from reading autobiographies, biographies, history, memoirs, and so forth, and which in turn differ only slightly from the payoff that comes from watching soap operas, reading confessional magazines, or sharing the latest news on friends, family, neighbors, and celebrities.

Gossip needn’t have the negative connotation it is typically accorded. It doesn’t have to be frivolous. After all, it has long been in our interest—highly social species that we are—to keep tabs on who’s doing what, who’s up and who’s down, what’s the latest dish on so-and-so or such-and-such. And stories provide a fine way of doing this, while also adding a dose of social glue.

In addition, fiction isn’t altogether untrue. Mark Twain once quipped that the difference between fiction and nonfiction is that the former must be “more real.” To be valued, a story must convey accurate truths about human nature: how people respond—and hence, how they can be expected to respond—under particular circumstances. Stories always incorporate insights into the behavior, and often the underlying mental processes, of other people. As such, they may well be useful in conveying information about what psychologists call Theory of Mind, which refers to the capacity of human beings to put themselves inside the heads of someone else, so as to anticipate their perceptions and behavior more accurately. There is much debate among specialists as to whether animals other than
Homo sapiens
possess an accurate Theory of Mind, but no doubt people do, just as there is no doubt that such information can be biologically as well as socially adaptive.

Whether functional as play or gossip, as a primer in Theory of Mind, or as something entirely different, stories are always about people, or animals, or—rarely—things. Never are they purely concerned with abstract concepts. This seemingly obvious conclusion hides a potentially important truth: the importance of stories as providing useful inroads into the lives of other people, animals, or things. For a lively example, consider this selection from
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
, written by Lewis Carroll and published in
1893; it was the last novel written by the creator of the Alice books.
ⁱⁱⁱ
At one point, a little girl named Sylvie implores the Professor to tell her and her brother Bruno a story:

Bruno adopted the idea with enthusiasm. “Please do,” he cried eagerly, “Sumfin about tigers—and bumble bees—and robin red-breasts, oo knows!”

“Why should you always have live things in stories?” said the Professor. “Why don’t you have events, or circumstances?”

“Oh, please invent a story like that!” cried Bruno.

The Professor began fluently enough. “Once a coincidence was taking a walk with a little accident, and they met an explanation—a very old explanation—so old that it was quite doubled up, and looked more like a conundrum—” He broke off suddenly.

“Please go on!” both children exclaimed.

The Professor made a candid confession. “It’s a very difficult sort to invent, I find. Suppose Bruno tells one first.”

Bruno was only too happy to adopt the suggestion.