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INTRODUCTION

Thierry Lenain (1998) has written the most astute—sensitive but unsentimental—analysis of animal art in print. On “disruption” and the “pseudo-artistic play” of chimps, see Lenain (1998), pp. 169–72. For remarkable footage of a New Guinea bower bird’s handiwork, see [w/s attenborough bower bird]. While aware of their limitations, Brian Boyd (2009) still makes very effective use of animal analogies to explain aspects of human artistic behavior.

Whorf (1956); Kuhn (1962). Through her books and magazine columns, Margaret Mead (1949) was highly influential through the whole postwar period, as was the eloquent Clifford Geertz (1973). On the urban legend about the Eskimo words for snow, see Pinker (1994), pp. 64–65 or [w/s eskimo words snow].

CHAPTER 1: LANDSCOPE AND LONGING

Wypijewski (1997) presents background on the Nation information, including the paintings themselves, melamid].

The long quotation from Melamid is in Wypijewski (1997), p. 13; Danto quotations are from pp. 124–40, esp. 137. It was Ellen (1998) who first saw the connection between the Komar Melamid paintings and prehistoric landscape tastes—yet another Darwinian aesthetics owes to her.

See Appleton (1975); Ulrich (1993); Kaplan and Kaplan (1982); Orians and Heerwagen (1992); Kaplan (1992). Steve Sailer has a wonderful illustrated article on the Web, “From Bauhaus to Golf Course,” showing how golf course architecture appeals to Pleistocene tastes [w/s sailer golf courses].

For feelings of safety in landscape features, see Ruso et al. (2003); for age preferences, see Balling and Falk (1982). The Synek and Grammer study (undated) is on the Web only, [w/s synek grammer aesthetics]. Elizabeth Lyons (1983) discusses gender differences in landscape preferences.

The account of daily life for hunter-gatherers is in Orians and Heerwagen (1992), pp. 556–57.

Tooby and Cosmides (1990) describe the adaptive utility of emotions. This article is on the Web [w/s tooby past explains present].

Wilson (1998) has an extensive discussion of reactions to snakes that relates the ancient and adaptive to the recent and cultural, pp. 71–81.

CHAPTER 2: ART AND HUMAN NATURE

Pinker (1994), p. 430. Jeremy Coote has written a description of Dinka taste in cattle marking, in Coote and Shelton (1992). For the notion that children “grow” language, as well as a general account of Chomsky’s universal grammar, see Pinker (1992), p. 35 and Pinker and Bloom (1992).

Plato’s condemnation of the arts is found in books 3, 4, and 10 of the Republic. The Aristotle passages about imitations are from chapter 2 of the Poetics, Aristotle (1965). The quotation about the eternal discovery of culture is in the Politics, Aristotle (1984), at 312b25. The passage on magnitude is in chapter 3 of the Poetics.

Hume’s “Of the Standard of Taste” is widely available: [w/s denisdutton .com hume]. For Kant on personal taste, see sections 2–5 of The Critique of Judgment, Kant (1987). The sensus communis appears in section 40 [w/s denisdutton .com kant critique].

See Sibley (2001); Beardsley (1958); Sparshott (1982). The institutional theory of art is in Dickie (1974), although credit should be given to a very similar theory put forward by Diffey in 1969, collected in Diffey (1991). A general institutional viewpoint on art was also adumbrated by Danto (1964). The “need for art” remark is in Dickie (1974), p. 30.

See Pinker and Bloom (1992). The gloss on Hamilton is from Daly and Wilson (1997), in Buss (1999), p. 223. Pinker on Dawkins is at Pinker (1997), p. 44. Brown’s entire 1991 list is on the Web [w/s donald brown universals], but the actual book is invaluable for its surrounding discussion. Brown’s introduction is notable for its brilliant universalist redescription of events in Geertz’s famous account of a Balinese cockfight, originally in Geertz (1973), pp. 412–53. The introduction to Barkow, Tooby, and Cosmides, The Adapted Mind (1992), is a clear explanation of the needs for universals to discuss human