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Evolutionary Aesthetics is the attempt to understand the aesthetic judgement of human beings and their spontaneous distinction between "beauty" and "ugliness" as a biologically adapted ability to make important decisions in life. The hypothesis is - both in the area of "natural beauty" and in sexuality, with regard to landscape preferences, but also in the area of "artificial beauty" (i.e. in art and design) - that beauty opens up fitness opportunities, while ugliness holds fitness risks. In this book, this adaptive view of aesthetics is developed theoretically, presented on the basis of numerous examples, and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology are illuminated.
List of contents
I The Problem.- Darwinian Aesthetics Informs Traditional Aesthetics.- II From Is to Beauty - From Perception to Cognition.- The Beauties and the Beautiful - Some Considerations from the Perspective of Neuronal Aesthetics.- The Role of Evolved Perceptual Biases in Art and Design.- From Sign and Schema to Iconic Representation. Evolutionary Aesthetics of Pictorial Art.- III The Fitness of Beauty - Aesthetics and Adaptation.- Beauty and Sex Appeal: Sexual Selection of Aesthetic Preferences.- Beyond Nature Versus Culture: A Multiple Fitness Analysis of Variations in Grooming.- Aesthetic Preferences in the World of Artifacts - Adaptations for the Evaluation of Honest Signals?.- Handaxes: The First Aesthetic Artefacts.- IV Modular Aesthetics.- Human Habitat Preferences: A Generative Territory for Evolutionary Aesthetics Research.- Bodies in Motion: A Window to the Soul.- Perfumes.- Do Women Have Evolved Adaptation for Extra-Pair Copulation?.
About the author
Prof. Dr. Eckart Voland, geboren 1949 in Hann, Münden (Niedersachsen), studierte Biologie und Sozialwissenschaften an der Universität Göttingen und promovierte 1978 mit einer Arbeit zum Sozialverhalten von Primaten. Seit 1995 ist er Professor für Philosophie der Biowissenschaften am Zentrum für Philosophie und Grundlagen der Wissenschaft der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. Dort forscht und lehrt er vorrangig auf den Gebieten der Human-Soziobiologie und der Biophilosophie, insbesondere der evolutionären Ethik, Ästhetik und Religionswissenschaft. Er ist Autor zahlreicher Bücher und im Beirat mehrerer internationaler Fachzeitschriften.
Karl Grammer, geboren 1950, Studium der Zoologie, Anthropologie und Physik an der Universität München, ab 1978 an der Forschungsstelle Humanethologie der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1982 Promotion, 1985 wissenschaftlicher Assistent, seit 1991 Leiter des Ludwig-Boltzmann-Instituts für Stadtethologie in Wien.
Summary
Evolutionary aesthetics is the attempt to understand the aesthetic judgement of human beings and their spontaneous distinction between "beauty" and "ugliness" as a biologically adapted ability to make important decisions in life. The hypothesis is - both in the area of "natural beauty" and in sexuality, with regard to landscape preferences, but also in the area of "artificial beauty" (i.e. in art and design) - that beauty opens up fitness opportunities, while ugliness holds fitness risks. In this book, this adaptive view of aesthetics is developed theoretically, presented on the basis of numerous examples, and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology are illuminated.
