The EVOLUTION of ART and the SELF

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• The EVOLUTION of ART and the SELF
• TVUUC FORUM, Part 2
• 14 November, 2004

Neil Greenberg Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee
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The survival and prosperity of individuals and
species depends on their ability to meet needs
imposed by changes in themselves and their
environments
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• Maslows need hierarchy
• Physiology (homeostasis, health)
• Safety (security, order, protection)
• Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love)
• Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment)
• Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)

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Threads of Evidence Needs met

• When needs are not met, organisms do not thrive
  or survive
• Meeting NEEDS is the basic business of life.
• Among our coping mechanisms is the physiological
  stress response . . .
• including evoked behavioral patterns.

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"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos"
From Caprichos by Goya 1799
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WE ARE AT WAR WITH OURSELVES!
The place of REASON has been elevated out of
context because it is our most distinctive HUMAN
characteristic. It is coordinated by the highest
cerebral attainments and has a central role in
restraining or selecting between instinctive or
automatized patterns organized at "lower" levels
of the brain.
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WE ARE AT WAR WITH OURSELVES!
. . . it is impotent and helpless without a
reliable sense of reality attained only by
experience "The senses cannot think. The
understanding cannot see" (Kant) "The heart has
reasons of which reason knows not (Pascal).
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BRIDGE THE GAP!

• RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other !
• This is TRUE RELIGION!
• RELIGION re-ligare , to
  re-ligate, to stitch together

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BRIDGE THE GAP!

• RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other !
• This is TRUE RELIGION!
• RELIGION re-ligare , to
  re-ligate, to stitch together

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BRIDGE THE GAP!

• RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other !
• This is TRUE RELIGION!
• RELIGION re-ligare , to
  re-ligate, to stitch together

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ART meetsNEEDS

• Social
• Reinforce or represent social status attract
  mates
• Strengthen social bonds, arouse sympathy
• Communication
• "Painting is only a bridge linking the painter's
  mind with that of the viewer
• Delacroix
• Artists are the antennae of the race
  Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound
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ART meetsNEEDS

• Personal
• Developmental
• We cultivate skills and the awareness of our
  competence
• Therapeutic
• We give form to and integrate conflicting
  feelings
• Relieves stress
• Spiritual
• Truth and beauty give the sense of transcending
  death restores our connections with things
  around us

Sigmund Freud
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ART meetsDEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS

• Developmental (exercises and trains our abilities
  to perceive and discriminate shapes, distances .
  . . Art dishabituates the routine habitual way of
  seeing things, providing a sense of new
  possibilities when old solutions are no longer
  effective )
• Discovery (enlarging our spheres of experience,
  coordinating eye, mind, actions)

The Music Lesson by Leighton
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• If you bring forth that which is within you,
• that which you have brought forth will save you.
• If you do not bring forth that which is within
  you,
• that which you do not bring forth will destroy
  you.
• The Gospel of Thomas
• (Parable 70)

ART meetsSPIRITUAL NEEDS
Last page of Nag Hammadi ms
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ART meetsSPIRITUAL NEEDS

• Internal communication (reuniting heart and
  mind)
• The heart has reasons of which reason knows not
  --Blaise Pascal
• (The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the
  rational mind is a faithful servant. We have
  created a society that honors the servant and has
  forgotten the gift --Einstein)

Blaise Pascal
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Needs, wants, motives, appetites, joy

• We are MOTIVATED to meet our NEEDS
• Our MOTIVES become APPETITES energized by their
  real or apparent URGENCY
• Satisfying appetites can be JOYFUL

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Satisfying appetites can be JOYFUL

• Or at least, satisfying
• There are two modes of knowing. . . through
  argument and experience.
• Argument brings conclusions and compels us to
  concede them,
• but does not cause certainty nor remove the
  doubts
• in order that the mind may remain at rest in
  truth,
• unless this is provided by experience

Roger Bacon (1268)
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needs of artists

• "the years of searching in the dark for a truth
  that one feels but cannot express the intense
  desire and the alterations of confidence and
  misgiving, until one breaks through to clarify
  and understanding, are only known to him who has
  himself experienced them
• --Einstein

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Beyond biological self-actualization

• Those who hunger for illumination, those who
  see, remain on the fringe. They are derided,
  they are treated as mad. But these few rare
  souls resist and are vigilant. They have an
  obscure need for spiritual life, for knowledge,
  for progress.
• (Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944)

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• "The senses cannot think.
• The understanding cannot see."
• Immanual Kant
• Critique of Pure Reason

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What is the urgent need that is shared by those
of art and science?

• We need confidence in our beliefs
• We call it truth and it is an amalgam of two
  functions, otherwise critical in their own right
• CORRESPONDENCE (with reality)
• COHERENCE (within a web of causes and
  consequences)
• ART, by exploring the boundaries of experience,
  exercises and integrates these qualities,
  enlarging and improving their intercommunication.

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What we know of nature is necessarily limited

• Reality is out there . . . truth is in here
• Our umwelt world of senses is limited to what
  our sense organs can detect and we have evolved
  to detect only that which is essential to
  survival to the meeting of our needs.
• One such need is for stories an understanding
  of the causes and consequences of phenomena
• A predictable world is much less stressful

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DEEP Ethology

• Evolution

• There is a considerable fitness advantage in
  having confidence in the outcomes of
  actions
• This confidence involves expert self-knowledge,
  particularly when exploring new needs and the
  boundaries of competence and understanding
• Communication within an individual to provide
  self-knowledge precedes communication between
  individuals

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GNOTHI se AUTON

• To be an effective, competitive organism, we
  would be wise to follow the advice of the Oracle
  at Delphi
• Gnothi se auton
• (Know thyself)
• Is this the primal function
• of art?

the ancient ruins of the sanctuary of
Apollo at Delphi. is spread out over the southern
slopes of Mount Parnassos, beneath the Phaidriad
rocks.
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DEEP Ethology

• Physiology

• The central nervous system is the
  proximate cause of behavior
• Sensory input and the percepts they generate,
  interact with each other and past experience
  to orchestrate specific behavioral actions
• The orchestration of cerebral structures
  underlying motivational, affective and cognitive
  functions is profoundly affected by the endocrine
  systems such as stress

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• TRUTH in the BRAIN
• CORRESPONDENCE and COHERENCE INTEGRATED
• Establishing CONFIDENCE in the CAUSES and
  CONSEQUENCES of phenomena in the world and in our
  relationship to them are BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATIONS.
• TRUTH represents high CONFIDENCE in our beliefs,
  including a SENSE of SELF.
• We test percepts by means of their
  CORRESPONDENCE with the real world and their
  COHERENCE with all our other beliefs
• Localized in the RIGHT and cerebral LEFT
  hemispheres, respectively.

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LEFT HEMISPHERE Coherence creates a stable
and internally consistent belief system works
hard to save appearances (Ramachandran
1998) Probabilistic reasoning (Osherson et al
1998) Abstract object recognition (Marsolek
1999)
RIGHT HEMISPHERE Correspondence tests reality
and if damaged, confabulation runs
rampant (Ramachandran 1998) Deductive
reasoning (Osherson et al 1998) Specific object
recognition (Marsolek 1999)
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Searching for truth . . .

• se hace camino al andar

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By searching for truth . . . We find our selves!

• We make the road by walking

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• "Our life is an appenticeship to the truth that
  around every circle another can be drawn that
  there is no end in nature, but every end is a
  beginning, and under every deep a lower deep
  opens"
• --Ralph Waldo Emerson