December 18th, 2009 / 11:26 am
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Christopher Higgs
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A Credo for a New Humanism
Out now from Harvard University Press, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Brian Boyd.
Michael Bérubé reviews it for American Scientist:
On the Origin of Stories attempts an evolutionary explanation of the appearance of art—and, more specifically, of the utility of fiction. From its title (with its obvious echo of Darwin) to its readings of The Odyssey and Horton Hears a Who!, Boyd’s book argues that the evolution of the brain (itself a development of some significance to the world) has slowly and fitfully managed to produce a species of primate whose members habitually try to entertain and edify one another by making stuff up.
Tags: american scientist, harvard university press
this looks pretty tasty
reminds me of calvino’s “cybernetics and ghosts” a little?
that is such a good essay
this looks pretty tasty
reminds me of calvino’s “cybernetics and ghosts” a little?
that is such a good essay
Cannot wait to read this. If anyone’s interested in getting a taste of what Boyd is up to, there’s a great essay here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-art-of-literature-and-the-science-of-literature/
An excerpt:
Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern. Just as communication exists in many species, even in bacteria, and human language derives from but redirects animal communication along many unforeseen new routes, so play exists in many species, but the unique cognitive play of human art redirects it in new ways and to new functions.
Play exists even in the brightest invertebrates, like octopi, and in all mammals in which it has been investigated. Its self-rewarding nature means that animals with flexible behavior—behavior not genetically programmed—willingly engage in it again and again in circumstances of relative security, and thereby over time can master complex context-sensitive skills. The sheer pleasure of play motivates animals to repeat intense activities that strengthen and speed up neural connections. The exuberance of play enlarges the boundaries of ordinary behavior, in unusual and extreme movements, in ways that enable animals to cope better with the unexpected.
Humans uniquely inhabit “the cognitive niche.” We have an appetite for information, and especially for pattern, information that falls into meaningful arrays from which we can make rich inferences. We have uniquely long childhoods, and even beyond childhood we continue to play more than other species. Our predilection for the patterned cognitive play of art begins with what developmental psychologists call protoconversation, exchanges between infants and caregivers of rhythmic, responsive behavior, involving sound and movement, in playful patterns described as “more like a song than a sentence” and as “interactive multimedia performances.” Without being taught, children engage in music, dance, design, and, especially, pretend play.
Cannot wait to read this. If anyone’s interested in getting a taste of what Boyd is up to, there’s a great essay here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-art-of-literature-and-the-science-of-literature/
An excerpt:
Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern. Just as communication exists in many species, even in bacteria, and human language derives from but redirects animal communication along many unforeseen new routes, so play exists in many species, but the unique cognitive play of human art redirects it in new ways and to new functions.
Play exists even in the brightest invertebrates, like octopi, and in all mammals in which it has been investigated. Its self-rewarding nature means that animals with flexible behavior—behavior not genetically programmed—willingly engage in it again and again in circumstances of relative security, and thereby over time can master complex context-sensitive skills. The sheer pleasure of play motivates animals to repeat intense activities that strengthen and speed up neural connections. The exuberance of play enlarges the boundaries of ordinary behavior, in unusual and extreme movements, in ways that enable animals to cope better with the unexpected.
Humans uniquely inhabit “the cognitive niche.” We have an appetite for information, and especially for pattern, information that falls into meaningful arrays from which we can make rich inferences. We have uniquely long childhoods, and even beyond childhood we continue to play more than other species. Our predilection for the patterned cognitive play of art begins with what developmental psychologists call protoconversation, exchanges between infants and caregivers of rhythmic, responsive behavior, involving sound and movement, in playful patterns described as “more like a song than a sentence” and as “interactive multimedia performances.” Without being taught, children engage in music, dance, design, and, especially, pretend play.
A decent 18 minute intro to “how bacteria communicate”:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html
A decent 18 minute intro to “how bacteria communicate”:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html
Boyd’s book is quite good. His grasp of science is nimble, and he swings and leaps from finding to finding, implication to implication, field to field like an arboreal primate, if you’ll pardon the obvious metaphor. In addition, he is not incidentally Nabokov’s biographer and widely considered the world’s foremost Nabokov scholar, and so he has a nuanced perspective on art itself. His readings which comprise the latter half of the book are, as Berube underscores, less successful than the groundwork that he lays to set them up, and I’m still waiting for Boyd to drift together the continents of Nabokov and evolution, since he doesn’t do so here. In his readings, he focuses on the traditional Aristotelian elements of character and plot more than style, and in an article forthcoming in a new journal called The Evolutionary Review I talk about contemporary lit and this missing style, trying to make it something other than an afterthought. HTML Giant actually gets mentioned in the article, too.
Boyd’s book is quite good. His grasp of science is nimble, and he swings and leaps from finding to finding, implication to implication, field to field like an arboreal primate, if you’ll pardon the obvious metaphor. In addition, he is not incidentally Nabokov’s biographer and widely considered the world’s foremost Nabokov scholar, and so he has a nuanced perspective on art itself. His readings which comprise the latter half of the book are, as Berube underscores, less successful than the groundwork that he lays to set them up, and I’m still waiting for Boyd to drift together the continents of Nabokov and evolution, since he doesn’t do so here. In his readings, he focuses on the traditional Aristotelian elements of character and plot more than style, and in an article forthcoming in a new journal called The Evolutionary Review I talk about contemporary lit and this missing style, trying to make it something other than an afterthought. HTML Giant actually gets mentioned in the article, too.
chris, as someone who thinks art should have no function, what is your view of a discipline (evolutionary psychology) which interprets art with regard to the functional role it played in the adaptation of a species. do you believe in “the utility of ficiton” as the fundamental explanation to why fiction exists? or is it simply an interesting point of inquiry, which holds an equal basis for a radicular multiplicity of perspecitves?
chris, as someone who thinks art should have no function, what is your view of a discipline (evolutionary psychology) which interprets art with regard to the functional role it played in the adaptation of a species. do you believe in “the utility of ficiton” as the fundamental explanation to why fiction exists? or is it simply an interesting point of inquiry, which holds an equal basis for a radicular multiplicity of perspecitves?
I had never heard of this book before and now I want to buy it. Or pick it up at the library. Or convince a friend to buy it and then borrow it when they’re done.
Anyways it looks pretty neat.
I had never heard of this book before and now I want to buy it. Or pick it up at the library. Or convince a friend to buy it and then borrow it when they’re done.
Anyways it looks pretty neat.