The Art Instinct_ Beauty, Pleasure, & Human Evolution - Denis Dutton [136]
CHAPTER 4: “BUT THEY DON’T HAVE OUR CONCEPT OF ART”
See Fry (1923); Boas (1955); Bunzel (1929); Goldwater (1962). The Maurice Bloch remark expresses ideas rarely heard from anthropologists of his generation and is often quoted by evolutionary psychologists. It is in Bloch (1977).
The Manchester debate, with arguments from Overing and others, is transcribed in Weiner (1994).
See Hart (1995); “distinct from Western aesthetic canons” is at p. 131, and the longer quotation at p. 144.
The Baule “equate even the finest sculptures with mundane things,” Vogel (1997), p. 80; on “intense, exalted looking” and danger, see pp. 83–86 and 110.
On the Yoruba ibeji, see Vogel (1991), pp. 88–90.
Vogel (1991); Novitz (1998), p. 27.
For the Pot People and the Basket Folk, see Danto (1988). The claim that interpretations “constitute art” is in Danto (1986), p. 45.
The Sudanese art theorist Mohamed A. Abusabib ends a detailed and insightful discussion of Danto on a note of exasperation about forever agonizing over whether primitive art is art: “Finally, one might wonder whether all these pains over the issue could have been avoided if before putting forward this question about primitive art, other similar questions such as ‘Is Primitive Music Music?’ or ‘Is Primitive Dance Dance?’ had been pondered” (1995), p. 41.
CHAPTER 5: ART AND NATURAL SELECTION
Pinker (1997), p. 20. For Wilson on Westermarck and incest avoidance, see Wilson (1998), pp. 173–80.
See Lloyd (2005) and Symons (1979). Gould’s Natural History essay is reprinted in Gould (1992).
On spandrels, see Gould and Lewontin (1979). Quotations are from Gould (1997). A penetrating critique of Gould has been produced by Carroll (2004), pp. 227–45.
Pinker’s “Sunday afternoon projects” wisecrack and the cheesecake mention are in Pinker (1997), p. 524–25.
Alcock’s critique of Lloyd is in an interview with the New York Times, May 17, 2005. Many interesting discussions of the Lloyd thesis can be found on the Web [w/s elisabeth lloyd orgasm bias]. Her personal Web site at Indiana University collects reviews of her book. While I may disagree with Lloyd, I must remark on the way that she has been viciously and unfairly abused for advancing a perfectly reputable scientific position in The Case of the Female Orgasm. There is no question in my mind that her book reveals implicit sexism not only in the history of science but also in the critical reception of evolutionary arguments, including hers. I expect no one will pan my book by saying that “he’d be no fun on a date.”
Further quotations from Pinker (1997), p. 524.
The fable of the moth and the lantern is from a splendid article on sexual selection, beauty, and by-products by Eckart Voland in his anthology, Voland and Grammer (2003).
CHAPTER 6: THE USES OF FICTION
See the first five sections of Kant (1987), [w/s denisdutton .com kant third critique]. For “decoupling,” see Cosmides and Tooby (2000), [w/s cosmides tooby evolutionary emotions] and Tooby and Cosmides (2001), [w/s tooby cosmides beauty build]. Yes, the name order of the authors reverses as shown here.
See Leslie (1987). Pascal Boyer’s marvelous gloss on Leslie, including the tea party description given here, is very useful; see Boyer (2001), p. 130.
The British statistics are cited by Daniel Nettle in his contribution to Gottschall and Wilson (2005), p. 56.
The chess analogy is in Pinker (1997), pp. 542–43. The parody description of Wagner’s Ring is Fodor (1998), available on the Web [w/s trouble darwinism fodor]. The subsequent quotation from Pinker is from his review of Gottschall and Wilson, Pinker (2006), p. 172.
See Havelock (1963), pp. 80–83. Quotations from Sugiyama are from Sugiyama (2005). Peter Swirski’s Of Literature and Knowledge (2008) argues a convincing case for the adaptive value of fictional narrative thinking by placing it on a continuum with philosophical and scientific thought experiments.
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