The human personality—including those aspects of it that are imaginative, expressive, and creative—cries out for a Darwinian explanation. If we're going to treat aspects of the personality, including the aesthetic expression, as adaptations, we've got to do it in terms of three factors.
We see them in the cross-cultural realities of music, the universality of storytelling, as well as things like food tastes, erotic interests, pet-keeping, sports interests, our fascination with puzzle solving, gossip
ask ourselves why the arts are universal. The notion that art is purely socially constructed
has to make way for something more complex.
Human life is lived in a middle position between our genetic determinants on the one hand and culture on the other
It's out of that that human freedom emerges
are the ultimate expressions of freedom
It’s a great question, What is art?
Will anyone be interested in seeing them in a hundred years?
clipped from: www.edge.org