Why do humans have an ability to appreciate beauty? Does it confer some evolutionary advantage?
I think this question is too broad for a simple answer, but here are some of my thoughts on the subject.
What is beauty? For example, is thin beautiful? Well, now it may be, but in some cultures and times thin is undesirable. There have been some attempts to quantify beauty. I don’t remember where I read this, but I recall that in Miss America pagents, the average weight has changed over time, but the waist to hips ratio has remained at about 0.7.
The practice of foot binding in China was a desire to artificilly produce “beautifully” small feet. Do you think deformed feet are beautiful? I don’t, but they did. Thankfully this procedure has been discontinued.
Also, what humans consider beautiful is not what other organisms consider beautiful.
In general young and healthy is more beautiful than old and unhealthy. This does confer some advantage.
Virtually yours,
DrMatrix
I’m sure someone has come up with a better explanation, but my guess would be:
If you meet someone that walks well, is reasonably proportioned, has no skin blemishes, symmetrical features, etc… there is a better chance they are in good health and thus able to bear offspring better or provide for the offspring (in the case of the male.)
Wrinkles indicate age. When people are aged they have less strength (usually) and it’s more difficult for them to bear children.
Of course, that has led to the current state of human society where people sell ova of “supermodels” over the internet.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
P.S. I was talking about physical beauty of other members of the species. As far as “beauty” in general (e.g. a painting, a sunset) the explanation is beyond my feeble powers.
I could guess about the beauty of a landscape. If you see a nice forest with green trees and a river, you would think “nice place to live! food and water easily available.”
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
Geez, fellas. I was thinking of pretty sunsets and Brahms’ piano works.
Everything’s sex, sex, sex with you guys.
Uke
OK, Ike, let me get my mind out of the gutter.
Why do we appreciate the beauty of Brahms’ piano works?
If I tell a beautiful woman that I admire the works of Brahms, she will think I am cultured and intelligent and it will be easier for me to get her in bed.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry
Ukulele Ike The question was about evoulutionary advantage. I don’t think you can address the question and avoid sex.
But you bring up another reason I said the question is too broad.
What do you mean by beauty? Beauty found in nature? Beauty created by man? What is a beautiful body? What about “inner” beauty?
“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone” - Fred Sanford.
I was only teasing, Doc. Besides, my post crossed with AW’s second one, where he mentioned paintings and sunsets in ADDITION to long, shapely legs, pert buttocks, soft, curling golden hair, and nice racks.
You’re right, though…HEY! KEN! Getcher ass back in here and define your terms!!!
Uke
That’s true by definition. Life evolved therefore all its skills are geared towards survival/reproduction.
Not so. Lots of things just don’t incur a significant evolutionary disadvantage.
Like the appendix.
ben
Exactly. There are lots of physical features that don’t have any evolutionary importance either way (eye color, for instance).
Beauty is an arbitrary concept in any case. Standards of human beauty have changed over the years.
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction.
www.sff.net/people/rothman
I think Arnold has the idea…
“If you meet someone that walks well, is reasonably proportioned, has no skin blemishes, symmetrical features, etc… there is a better chance they are in good health and thus able to bear offspring better or provide for the offspring (in the case of the male.)”
The idea of “beauty” is instinctive and goes back millions of years. “Love at first sight” is a good example. You can’t explain it except that it’s instinct. It all comes down to continuation of the species. It’s embarrassing to modern “civilized” humans to think they’re still driven by something leftover from monkeys and well before.
Newsweek (or one of those other weekly news magazines, can’t remember which) addressed this in 95 or 96. The article did a pretty good review of current research. It boiled down to where most facets of attractiveness were indicators of good health: even features because disease during childhood makes the body grow asymetrically, good hair, good skin tone all indicated health & therefore better disease resistant genes. This hold true in the animal kingdom as well: brightly colored feathers & butterfly wings are not as brightly colored when attacked by fungi or parasites.
The 70% hip to waist ratio holds true from pre-historic fertility figurines to Twiggy, and is confirmed in the research. This ratio has a significant impact on a woman’s fertility - there is a distinct drop in the fertility rates in women just going from 70% to 80%.
Mastery is not perfection but a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again
I took the OP to address beauty in general, not specification of a suitable mate. But was there an implication in the OP that only humans had standards of beauty? And, if so, what was this conclusion based on? Certainly if you take beauty here to refer only to the mate-selection problem, there’s hardly any reason to believe that other species are any less selective in that task than are humans. But even as to the general-beauty case, why wouldn’t you allow a cat to appreciate purr-fectly beautiful weather? Cat’s have eyes, don’t they? And they’ve always been telling me that “Art is in the eye of the beholder.” So if some of those things have 7 eyes. . .what they see is even beautif’ler, right? 7/2 times so than what you see.
Ray (one eye mostly gone)
Just because you don’t know if it gives an advantage doesn’t mean it doesn’t. Don’t light eyed people have a higher risk for eye damage? So having brown eyes in a sunny climate is an advantage.
Besides, like I said, it’s true by definition. If people like a certain colour of eye then that person will have an easier time finding a mate.
Who thinks the appendix is beautiful?
Sometimes the appendix is beautif’ler than the body of the book.
Ray (and don’t just it by the book’s back cover)
BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a
husband.
-Ambrose Bierce
Regarding sunsets, landscapes et al.
I do not know of any animal that can appreciate a sunset, or be inspired by the dawn. Mountain ranges do not create a sense of awe in racoons; nor do cattle stop to contemplate the beauty of a high surf at the seashore.
Is an appreciation of beauty a function of the human soul? Evidence for it’s existance?
Re other species perceiving beauty: how the hell do you know?
It seems there actually ARE standards for beauty, at least for human faces. I took my daughter to the orthodontist this morning and the doc actually had a graph based on facial dimensions of what people see as a beautiful face. It uses ratios of certain bone dimensions. I was floored when he told us that they try to get everyone “between these two lines” when they’re finished. I don’t recall the name of the standard since I was too dumbfounded to find out that you CAN put a number on beauty. What a country !