Art as a Human Behavior: Toward an Ethologz'cal View of Art

Ir snouu) BE a matter of some interest and concern to those who teach and contribute to
humanistic studies such as the philosophy of art that their work is founded on a heritage of
philosophical speculations about the nature of knowledge and the mind that was formulated by
men who had no reason to suspect that human consciousness and mental activity have had a long
evolutionary history. Although modern linguistic phi10s0phy postulates inherited predispositions
for language and hence for mental functioning, most branches of phi10s0phy continue their
investigations without regard for the implications of recent palaeo-anthropological discoveries
which imply that the human mind is of a remote antiquity or that it has evolved (and is evolving)
within certain bio-logical limits and that its varied abilities have necessarily and primarily been .of
importance to man's survival as a species.1 Aesthetics is one of the branches of Western
philosophy that has generally, even resolutely, held itself aloof from scientic en-croachment or
scrutiny. In Western thinking art resists methods of science such as categorization, denition, or
precise measurement. Its complex workings whether of construction or appreciation are private,
un-observable and usually eeting, and there-fore do not lend themselves to scientic perusal.
Viewing art from the perspective of bio-logical evolution, as in the present paper, is not quite the
same thing as subjecting it to scientic analysis. More accurately, it is a way of looking2 at art as a
human behavior, based on the assumption that human beings are a species of animal like other
living creatures, which further implies that their behavior like their anatomy and physiology has
been shaped by natural selection. Such a viewpoint may suggest new avenues for thinking about
some of the problems with which aesthetics has traditionally been concerned: the nature, origin,
and value of art, not as an abstraction, not rui generis, but as a universal and intrinsic human
behavioral endowment.3 As this is, as far as I know, the rst attempt to examine art closely in this
way, my effort is in the nature of a preliminary inquiry, with the hope that others will be
encouraged to modify, rene and extend the ideas presented here. Ethology and Art I. Ethology
and Art The biology of behavioror as it calls itself, ethologyis a relatively new science that is
concerned with what living creatures do in their normal, everyday existence. General and specic
activities, particularly those that contribute to the unique way each ani-mal ts into its larger
world of natural environment and other creatures, can be dened and observed. Recognizing that
behavior is as characteristic of and dependent on an animals way of life as his anatomy and
physiology, ethologists observe (and compare, in order to better understand an individual species)
universal behavioral phenomena and tendencies such as courtship and mating, territorial
maintenance and spacing mechanisms, or communicatory be havior. It is possible to view human
beings from an ethological perspective if one acceptsas seems undeniablethat man is an
animal species who has evolved and whose behavior as well as his biological organs and systems
has had adaptive or selective value in that evolution. Human ethologists propose that certain
ubiquitous behavioral features or tendencies in mans life are an intrinsic, relatively unchangeable
part of his nature and have arisen and been retained because they contribute positively to his
evolution- ary success, his survival as a species.
Those who attempt to view humans ethologically are often dismissed as being sensationalists,
reductionists, or mechanists. They are accused of being slipshod, or simplistic, or spinning theories
heavier than the facts will bear. It is easy to nd counter-examples that appear to refute broad,
speculative theories, particularly where man is concerned, who for the last 25,000 years has
unlike any other animaldisplayed a prodigious cultural evolution whose amazing variety of
manifestations has tended to obscure the more broadly-based limits of bio-logical evolution on
which they are undoubtedly based. Yet limits undeniably exist, and in order to understand these it
is necessary to collect and compare examples of universal human behaviors from many societies.
Accounts from anthropological studies of a wide variety of human groups show that in spite of
wide lability in details, human beings universally display certain general features of behavior that
ethologists have identied inmost animal societies as well. For example, both human and animal
societies tend to form and maintain some kind of social hierarchy. Both humans and animals
(including reptiles, birds, and even insects) use ritualized nonverbal communicatory signals that
DISSANAYAKE formalize emotional responses, channel aggression, and reinforce social bonds. Like
many young animals, all human children play. Fundamental universal human pat- terns and
behavioral sequences have been observed in courtship and mating practices or in the mother-
infant association, although these are overlaid with individual cultural variations. Similarly, in both
animals and humans, an individual zone of physical distance from others is maintained, and
relaxed with certain intimates or in certain situations.
There are in addition behaviors that seem unique to the human species. Among these is art.5 No
human society has been discovered that does not display some examples of what we, in the
modern West, are accustomed to call "art." It is worth investigating whether we can identify a
universal behavior of art" and, if we can, attempting to determine what its selective value has
been in human evolution. Such an approach may seem distasteful or irreverent: the eld of
thinking about art, now that the subject matter of theology is usually handed over to the social
and behavioral sciences, re- mains the last bastion of those who assume that man and his works
are "above" or at least unconcerned with biological imperatives. One may argue, however, that
regard-ing art as a fundamental manifestation of human nature with its roots in biological
processes is not to reduce it to these roots, or to denigrate it, but rather to better appreciate its
essential value. Awareness of mans connectedness with all life need not mean a denial of his
uniqueness. Indeed it indicates more clearly where that unique ness lies.
The paper will address three aspects of an ethological view of art: (1) the setting out of
fundamental assumptions that such a view demands; (2) the attempt to identify a behavior of
art"; and (3) a discussion of the posited contribution of art to human evolutionary success.
II. Assumptions
1.- The ethological view of art presumes that the history of art as a behavior predates by far what
is today considered to be the history of art. Chipped stone tools, cave paintings, and fertility
statues may be the earliest artistic artifacts that are extant, but they are not the beginning of art
as a behavior, whose origin must be at least in the pre-palaeolithic phase of hominid evolution. Art
is a manifestation of culture and in that sense is a concern of anthropologists, but one can claim
that like other specic cultural behaviors such as language or the skillful making and use of tools it
will have its roots in earlier, less differentiated, genetically determined behavior and tendencies.
An ethological approach should attempt to examine and delineate these.6 2. Another assumption,
alluded to in the introduction, is that the behavior of art has(or has had) selective value, that it in
some way enhances the survival of a species whose members possess that behavior. Such an
assumption appears to controvert the premiss that generally obtains in modern views of art since
Kant, i.e., that it is for its Own sake" and has no practical or extrinsic value. An ethological view
generally assumes that any widely prevalent behavior has a function and is the way it is for a
reason. Art would not exist universally if it did not possess positive selective value, and we must
ask ourselves what it could be about art that is essential to the survival of the human species or to
individuals in it, or to the genes of individuals]
3. Although the qualifying features of a behavior of art remain to be identied and discussed in the
next section, we must mention here that the concept of art as a behavior does not refer only to
specic artistic acts of making and enjoying artworks. In-stead it comprises a broad general
phenomenon which (like other general "behaviors,"e.g., aggressive behavior or sexual behavior) is
characteristic of all human beings, not just the special province of a minority called "artists."
4. Similarly, all human societies will have art, although it is accepted that no society need
demonstrate or emphasize equally allthe kinds of manifestations of this behavior.
5. Concern with the nature, origin, and history of the behavior of art does not in- 399 clude any
assumption about the value (other than selective value") of its result. Art does not, as in so
many discussions of aesthetics, presuppose or mean good art."
6. The manifestations of a universal behavior in one human group in one spot in time and space
are certain to be limited. Art in our Western view will have to nd its place as one of a number of
manifestations that have existed and do exist.
7. Making art and recognizing (or "appreciating") and responding to art are more easily considered
separately, although they are related and must each be understandable within the ethological
purview.
III. Art Viewed Ethologically
The Problem
At one time discussions of art by philosophers and critics assumed that it was dened by a quality
(e.g., beauty, harmony, proportion, representational accuracy, signicant form) inhering in an
object that was recognized by a kind of predisposition in the attitude of the beholder. As aesthetic
theory has developed, the number of apparently undeniable qualities or characteristics of art that
have been suggested and must some- how be incorporated into any denition has become
decidedly unwieldy,8 and today it is generally agreed that denitions of art, if one desires them at
all, must be either injunctive or open-textured. Although the attendant problems and difculties
are of a different kind, an ethological approach to art is perhaps no less complex or dauntingat
least initiallythan a philosophically-based inquiry. To begin with, the assumptions listed above
must not be contravened. What we call art must be universally applicable to all men (not only
artists") and societies past and present(not only modern Western society), and must have
plausible adaptive value. At the same time we must hope that what we eventually choose to
regard as artistic behavior will be neither so labored nor so broad that it is meaningless. Secondly,
one who proposes an ethological view of art is as it were breaking new ground.9 To be sure others
have made suggestions about the origin of art and about its signicance or necessity to mankind.
However, these o Eerings have rarely come from evolutionists or biologists (who tend to omit art
from their speculations), but from writers on philosophy, history, criticism, and aesthetics. On
inspection they turn out tobe of little use to an ethological inquiry, for they are not based on the
essential premise that art is a behavior that is the handiwork of biological evolution, and therefore
theydo not meet the assumptions listed above. Regarding arts origin, for example, quasi-
evolutionary views in the past have tended to trace it to one source: to play,10 to body o
mamentation, to a congurative urge,"12 a creative or expressive impulse,13 to sympa-thetic
magic,14 to relief from boredom," orto motives of self-gloricationl-any one of which can be
shown to be inadequate to explain the genesis of more than a few of the varieties of art. Attempts
to decide what art is, not by speculating about its origin but by isolating some essential X-factor
that art provides to human life (e.g., adornmentor decoration; practice for real life, es-cape
from real life; sensuous or "aesthetic" satisfactions; order; disorder) have beenmade, but on
inspection are partial and thus inadequate as well. It is art's stubborn and irrepressible varietyof
objects, activities, attitudes, effects that causes grief to ethologists in search of rst principles no
less than to hapleSs philosophers of art. This variety is so in other human societies no less than in
our own. When we survey primitive societies in the Americas, in Africa and in Oceania we discover
a wide variety of artistic and aesthetic conceptions." For some societies art is extremely important
and in others it has little or no importance. In some groups artists are specialists; in others art is
considered to bean ability of everyone. Art may be in the service of specic communal ends or
per-formed as a personal expression of feeling. Art objects may be carefully looked after or
casually discarded; they may be considered sacred and valuable in themselves, or their value may
reside in the supernatural power they embody. Value may accrue to novelty or to conventional
formulaic repetition of DISSANAYAKE tradition. Depiction may be abstract or representational. The
artist may be admired orrevered, or he may be regarded as deviantor socially inferior. Some
groups consider that art comes from a special or divine realm, or that it is widespread, occurring
gratuitously. Although usually one person creates one work, in some groups several persons may
work on the same object.18 Our own Western notion of art is far from uniform or clear. When one
examines writ-ings on art he nds that, depending on the author, the word refers to a bewildering
array of meanings. Art may be viewed variously as artice (both in the sense of skill fulness or craft
and of articiality); as fan-tasy (make-believe, wish-fulllment, illusion, the ideal, play); as
creativity (exploration, invention, innovation, self-expression); as form or order (the psychological,
perceptual and mental need to discover or impose a formal order on experience; pattern-making;
recognition of beauty as order); as height- ened existence (emotion, ecstasy, extraordinary
experience, entertainment); as dis-order (deviance or dishabituation); as sense(the immediate
fullness of sense-experience as contrasted with abstract thought, or the sensuous qualities of
things such as color or sound); as revelation (or innately-com-pelling symbols, of God, of reality);
as adornment or embellishment (the wish ortendency to beautify, a decorative or congurative
urge); as self-exPression, as signicance or meaning (interpretation) and as combinations of two or
more of these. It is evident that art is somehow concerned with all these things, but when theyare
more carefully examined from an ethological standpoint, the concept "art" tends to evaporate.
Each of the above-mentioned aspects of experience can be subsumed under another psychological
or biological need or propensity, without invoking a special behavior, "art," at all. For example, the
well-studied behavior of play is able to cover all non utilitarian making, as well as fantasy, illusion,
make-believe, ornamenting and decorating. Exploratory and curiosity behavior can account for
instances of innovation and creativity, if they are not simply called problem-solving behavior.
Sensory experiences can be studied as examples of perception. All animals require formal order
and predictability: cognition cannot occur without them, and some would say that cognition is
perceiving or imposing order. Similarly, all animals require disorder and novelty: behaviors that
include or provide these need not be called art. Heightened existence is frequently sought and
obtained in experiences few would call artistic or aesthetic e.g., sexual orgasm, successful
acknowl- edgement or exercise of power, achieved ambition, sporting events, catastrophes, car-
nival rides, even childbirth. Revelation and a sense of signicance are components of religious
experience, or of loving and being lovednot only of art. It would seem that by assuming any
ofthese is art or is provided by art, a specic identifying feature still eludes us. To say that art is
any of these one must say what it is that is dierent about "artistic" play, artistic order, "artistic"
perception, artistic" signicance. In other words, one must still determine what is artistic about
art. Identifying a Behavior of Art If there is such a thing as a behavior of art" we must assume that
it developed in human evolution from an ability or proclivity that our pre-palaeolithic ancestors
could have shown. I should like to suggest that this root proclivity is the ability to recognize or
confer "specialness," a level or order different from the everyday. In every case, even today, when
givin gartistic expression to an idea, or decorating an object, or recognizing that an idea or object
is artistic, one gives it (or acknowl-edges) a specialness that without ones activity or regard it
would not have. One renders it special, recognizes that it is extraordinary. This characteristic of art
has been referred to by other names by other thinkers, e.g., transformation, aesthetic
transposition or promotion.20 It is a sort of jacking-up,"a saltation or quantum leap21 from the
quotidian reality in which lifes vital needs and activities occur, to a different order, an "aesthetic
order"22 which has its own kind of motivation or intention and a distinctive attitude or response.
This root proclivity may also be identied in two other kinds of behavior whose similarities to art
have indeed frequently been noted: Play and Ritual. For example, in most instances both play and
artzJ use make- believe, illusion, and metaphor; neither is directly concerned with primary ends of
direct survival (like eating, ghting, escaping danger) but is performed for its own sake"; as
behaviors they are labile and relatively unpredictable; they make use of novelty, incongruity,
surprisegness, complexity, change, variety; they have an inherent dynamic of tension and release,
arousal and relief, deviation and recurrence or restate- ment'4 As behaviors, ritual and art are
similar in that both formalize and shape emotion; communicate in a symbolic "language"; and for
expressive effect make use of out-of-context elements, of exaggeration, and of repetition. Many
rituals are expressly concerned with another level or realm from the ordinary, and art is used by
ritual as a means to the end of revealing this special, extraordinary reality.26
The close relationship even today between art and play and art and ritual suggests that in human
evolutionary history they were once intimately related if not indistinguishable. Acted upon by
different evolutionary requirements and molded by different emergent physical and mental
endowments, the root proclivity of making special could di- verge into related but usually distinct
cur- rents: play, ritual, and art.
Art as we are accustomed to think of it, then, should be considered as an instance of the broader
proclivity of making special. In our ethological view, artistic behavior shaPes and/or embellishes
everyday reality with the intention27 of constructing or manifesting(or recognizing) what is
considered to be another "level" from quotidian practical life.
Yet, although according to this view all societies and people have art, we cannot assume that all
societies and people regard works of art with the distinctive aesthetic attitude that is usually
presupposed by modern Western theories of art. The usual hu-man responses to art, to things
made special or the act of making special, are reactions such as being impressed by power or size
or opulence or skill or monetary value; sharing the excited reactions of a crowd; feeling
satisfaction at the carrying out of a known practice or observance; sensuous or kinaes-thetic
pleasure; vicarious enjoyment; catharsis; and so forth. Although these may be ingredient in our
Western response to art as well, we usually insist that there be an added "aesthetic" re-gardthat
the work of art be experienced not only as it has been translated into an- other plane, set apart
from the everyday world, but by an awareness and acknowledgement of the way in which this has
been done. Although non-Western peoples are certainly capable of making such judgments (e.g.,
recognizing that a tale is not only a good tale, but that it is "well told"; 23 agree-ing that a dispute
is not only settled, but settled artfully/'29 and some persons of leisure and cultivated taste in all
higher civilizations have most likely been able to appreciate the "art" in art), such discrimination is
in general not observably a widely-held ability or proclivity. In other words, we can propose that it
is the behavior of making things special and appreciating that some things are special which is
fundamental, universal, and which has had selective value, but not the ability to appreciate how
this specialness is achieved. Appreciating "how," the way something isdone, demands a cognitive
awarenessa more or less self-conscious discriminating, relating, recognizing and following
manipulations within an acquired code. This type of awareness is of course biologically use ful in
human communication and in the processes of cognition and perception generally. But it seems
safe to say that when developed to the degree necessary to appreciate a Bach fugue or Czanne
landscape, such an abilityis biologically irrelevant.
IV. The Value of Art
Although it has just been stated that art as we are accustomed to understand the term the ne
artsis not biologically necessary, there are those who would claim that art is still in some sense
vital. Apart from biologists who might attribute a general adapt-ive value to art, poets and
philosophers have often expressed their conviction that art is DISSANAYAKE necessary, that it
makes a qualitative difference to human life. Let us examine some of the ways in which art has
been said to have functional or selective value to human societies, and thus presumably to the
human species.
Anthropologists frequently claim that art contributes essential social benets to primitive
societies: it expresses or relieves or canalizes feelings, reiterates social values, mirrors the social
code, provides an avenue for shared experience, and the likeall of which hare socially useful
activities.30 In historic times in the West, too, art has served social ends such as documentation,
illustration of precepts and stories that are signicant to society, pictorial reinforcement of
traditional beliefs, distraction and entertainment, impressive display of wealth and power,
facilitation in a group of a dominant mood, and so forth. Even today with much of art existing
ostensibly for its own sake, art has socially observable practical and social as well as aesthetic
consequences.
Yet there arises a difculty with attributing the selective value of art to these or other social
functions that it serves. The ethological view of art is not surprised that art is socially useful. But it
is interesting to note that in some instances the socially signicant function of art is to represent
cus- tom and tradition, that is, to uphold the status quo and maintain concord; in others, art
provides an escape valve" through li-cense and heightened or diverted feeling. Art may be orderly
and disorderly, immanent and ideal, emotional and intellectual, Apollonian and Dionysianwhich
suggests that it can be all things to all social and individual requirements.
Additionally, the biologically adaptive functions that have often been proposed for art (like the
oft-cited characteristics of art hat were mentioned above) refer upon closer examination not to
art, but to characteristics art shares with other behaviors or to these behaviors themselves. Thus,
for ex-ample, when people suggest that art is therapeutic, 31 or gives us direct unselfconscious
experience} 2 provides paradigms of order,33trains our perception of reality,34 gives a sense of
signicance or meaning to life,35 and so forth, it is arguable that what is being referred to is not
what is artistic about art, but rather what art shares with play, exploration, ritual, order-giving,
and so forth. It might be suggested that although other behaviors may contribute to our practical
life, our sense of fulllment and meaning, our psychological or social integration, it is the degree to
which art embodies and communicates experience that makes it unique36 and irreplaceable. For
those who are receptive to works of art in the modern sense this is probably so. Yet, as we have
implied, great numbers of people appear to get along psychologically and practically without
assistance from the more complex and rened arts, and in addition they seem to nd the ir
greatest emotional sense of signicance to come from non aesthetic experiences such as
parenthood, achievement and successful practice of a skill, power, recognition, being praised and
needed, and so forth. It has been only a very short time, speaking in evolutionary terms, that art
has been detached from its afliates, ritual and play. and that its various components have
coalesced to become an independent activity. Until less than a hundred years ago the primary
tasks of artists were not to "createworks of art" but to reveal or embody the divine, illustrate holy
writ, decorate shrines and private homes and public buildings, fashion ne utensils and elaborate
orna ments, accompany ceremonial observances, record historic scenes and personages, and so
forth. The artist, in our terms, made these things special, but specically aesthetic
considerations were no more important to most observers than other functional requirements
although it is not to be denied that artists of all times have been highly skilled in marrying the two.
Although space does not allow a detailed reconstruction of the way in which the behavior of art
could have originated and evolved, it is my contention that only in historic times did the behavior
of art become increasingly detached from the rest of life, regarded and valued primarily for its
own sake. Although today in advanced Western society we acknowledge that it is possible to
shape and embellish other human behaviors sex, eating, communicating by word orgesturein
order to make them special, and the relationship of art and life can be said to be a major
preoccupation in advanced contemporary thought} 7 it is not often appreciated that in a quite un
self conscious way art actually appears to inform all of life in some traditional societies. Js It would
seem that in its rudimentary beginnings, the activity of giving shape to and embellishing life was
not an impractical, leisure-time activity, but the way the human mind worked: it was a way of pre
hending and comprehending the world. Looked atin this way it was not separated from the
activities of formalization (embodied in such activities as cognitive orientation, conceptualization,
cognitive structuring, systematizing, giving narrative relationship in time or perceptual shape in
space) and of the propensity inherent in the ability to symbolizeto recognize or imagine an
order other than the mundane. Such a proclivity demonstrates simply that man cannot bear,
individually or as a species, senselessness or lack of meaning. Our minds still "work" the same way.
We still need a sense of meaning. But rather than nding this meaning exclusively in explanations
provided by traditional social institutions (e.g., tribe, clan, family, caste, religion, a body of
tradition, language, rituals) that are expressed and reinforced in symbol swhich have been given
artistic form and embellishment, as have most human beings throughout the ages, many of us in
the modern world are in a position of not accepting traditional meanings, or nding that they are
inadequate.
The ways in which meaning was apprehended by our ancestors were not divided into separate
entities called "art," "science,"metaphysics. Our attribution of the name art to tribal singing or
dancing or to cave paintings is articial and misleading. More simply, these are ways of nding
meaning in life or giving it, making it special, ways that were inextricably bound to social
institutions and practices whose fundamental assumptions are no longer accepted
unquestioningly. By looking back and identifying elements, activities, and artifacts that suit o o g l
e
Page 1
ELLEN DISSANAYAKE Art as a Human Behavior: Toward an Ethologz'cal View of Art Ir snouu) BE a
matter of some interest and concern to those who teach and contribute to humanistic studies
such as the philosophy of art that their work is founded on a heritage of philosophical speculations
about the nature of knowledge and the mind that was formulated by men who had no reason to
suspect that human consciousness and mental activity have had a long evolutionary history.
Although modern linguistic phi10s0phy postulates inherited predispositions for language and
hence for mental functioning, most branches of phi10s0phy continue their investigations without
regard for the implications of recent palaeo-anthropological discoveries which imply that the
human mind is of a remote antiquity or that it hase volved (and is evolving) within certain bio-
logical limits and that its varied abilities have necessarily and primarily been .of importance to
man's survival as a species.1 Aesthetics is one of the branches of Western philosophy that has
generally, even resolutely, held itself aloof from scientic encroachment or scrutiny. In Western
thinking art resists methods of science such as categorization, denition, or precise measurement.
Its complex workings whether of construction or appreciation are private, un-observable and
usually eeting, and there-fore do not lend themselves to scientic perusal. mm DIssAN/nuuu: is a
writer living in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Viewing art from the perspective of bio-logical evolution, as in the
present paper, is not quite the same thing as subjecting it to scientic analysis. More accurately, it
is a way of looking2 at art as a human behavior, based on the assumption that human beings are a
species of animal like other living creatures, which further implies that their behavior like their
anatomy and physiology has been shaped by natural selection. Such a viewpoint may suggest new
avenues for thinking about some of the problems with which aesthetics has traditionally been
concerned: the nature, origin, and value ofart, not as an abstraction, not rui generis, but as a
universal and intrinsic human behavioral endowment.3 As this is, as far asI know, the rst attempt
to examine art closely in this way, my effort is in the nature of a preliminary inquiry, with the hope
that others will be encouraged to modify, rene and extend the ideas presented here. Ethology
and Art I. Ethology and Art The biology of behavioror as it calls itself, ethologyis a relatively
new science that is concerned with what living creatures do in their normal, everyday existence.
General and specic activities, particularly those that contribute to the unique way each animal
ts into its larger world of natural environment and other creatures, can be dened and observed.
Recognizing that behavior is as characteristic of and dependent on an animals way of life as his
anatomy and physiology, ethologists observe (and compare, in order to better understand an
individual species) universal behavioral phenomena and tendencies such as courtship and mating,
territorial maintenance and spacing mechanisms, or communicatory behavior. It is possible to
view human beings from an ethological perspective if one acceptsas seems undeniablethat
man is an animal species who has evolved and whose behavior as well as his biological organs and
systems has had adaptive or selective value in that evolution. Human ethologists propose that
certain ubiquitous behavioral features or tendencies in mans life are an intrinsic, relatively
unchangeable part of his nature and have arisen and been retained because they contribute
positively to his evolutionary success, his survival as a species. Those who attempt to view humans
ethologically are often dismissed as being sensationalists, reductionists, or mechanists. They are
accused of being slipshod, or simplistic, or spinning theories heavier than the facts will bear. It is
easy to nd counter-examples that appear to refute broad, speculative theories, particularly
where man is concerned, who for the last 25,000 years hasunlike any other animaldisplayed a
prodigious cultural evolution whose amazing variety of manifestations has tended to obscure the
more broadly-based limits of bio-logical evolution on which they are undoubtedly based. Yet limits
undeniably exist, and in order to understand these it is necessary to collect and compare examples
of universal human behaviors from many societies. Accounts from anthropological studies of a
wide variety of human groups show that in spite of wide lability in details, human beings
universally display certain general features of behavior that ethologists have identied inmost
animal societies as well. For example, both human and animal societies tend to form and maintain
some kind of social hierarchy. Both humans and animals (including reptiles, birds, and even
insects) use ritualized nonverbal communicatory signals that DISSANAYAKE formalize emotional
responses, channel aggression, and reinforce social bonds. Like many young animals, all human
children play. Fundamental universal human pat- terns and behavioral sequences have been
observed in courtship and mating practices or in the mother-infant association, although these are
overlaid with individual cultural variations. Similarly, in both animals and humans, an individual
zone of physical distance from others is maintained, and relaxed with certain intimates or in
certainsituations.4 There are in addition behaviors that seem unique to the human species. Among
these is art.5 No human society has been discovered that does not display some examples of what
we, in the modern West, are accustomed to call "art." It is worth investigating whether we can
identify a universal behavior of art" and, if we can, attempting to determine what its selective
value has been in human evolution. Such an approach may seem distasteful or irreverent: the eld
of thinking about art, now that the subject matter of theology is usually handed over to the social
and behavioral sciences, re- mains the last bastion of those who assume that man and his works
are "above" or at least unconcerned with biological imperatives. One may argue, however, that
regard-ing art as a fundamental manifestation of human nature with its roots in biological
processes is not to reduce it to these roots, or to denigrate it, but rather to better appreciate its
essential value. Awareness of mans connectedness with all life need not mean a denial of his
uniqueness. Indeed it indicates more clearly where that uniqueness lies. The paper will address
three aspects of an ethological view of art: (1) the setting out of fundamental assumptions that
such a view demands; (2) the attempt to identify a behavior of art"; and (3) a discussion ofthe
posited contribution of art to human evolutionary success. II. Assumptions 1. The ethological view
of art presumes that the history of art as a behavior predates by far what is today considered to be
the history of art. Chipped stone tools, cave paintings, and fertility statues may be the earliest
artistic artifacts that are extant, but they are not the beginning of art as a be- havior, whose origin
must be at least in the pre-palaeolithic phase of hominid evolution. Art is a manifestation of
culture and in that sense is a concern of anthropologists, but one can claim that like other specic
cultural behaviors such as language or the skillful making and use of tools it will have its roots in
earlier, less differentiated, genetically determined behavior and tendencies. An ethological
approach should attempt to examine and delineate these.6 2. Another assumption, alluded to in
the introduction, is that the behavior of art has(or has had) selective value, that it in some way
enhances the survival of a species whose members possess that behavior. Such an as- sumption
appears to controvert the premiss that generally obtains in modern views of art since Kant, i.e.,
that it is for its Own sake" and has no practical or extrinsic value. An ethological view generally
assumes that any widely prevalent behavior has a function and is the way it is for a reason. Art
would not exist universally if it did not possess positive selective value, and we must ask ourselves
what it could be about art that is essential to the survival of the human species or to individuals in
it, or to the genes of individuals] 3. Although the qualifying features of a behavior of art remain to
be identied and discussed in the next section, we must mention here that the concept of art as a
behavior does not refer only to specic artistic acts of making and enjoying artworks. In-stead it
comprises a broad general phenomenon which (like other general "behaviors, "e.g., aggressive
behavior or sexual behavior) is characteristic of all human beings, not just the special province of a
minority called "artists." 4. Similarly, all human societies will have art, although it is accepted that
no societyneed demonstrate or emphasize equally all the kinds of manifestations of this behavior.
5. Concern with the nature, origin, and history of the behavior of art does not in- 399 clude any
assumption about the value (other than selective value") of its result. Art does not, as in so
many discussions of aesthetics, presuppose or mean good art." 6. The manifestations of a
universal behavior in one human group in one spot in time and space are certain to be limited. Art
in our Western view will have to nd its place as one of a number of manifestations that have
existed and do exist. 7. Making art and recognizing (or "appreciating") and responding to art are
more easily considered separately, although they are related and must each be understandable
within the ethological purview. III. Art Viewed Ethologically The Problem At one time discussions
of art by philosophers and critics assumed that it was dened by a quality (e.g., beauty, harmony,
proportion, representational accuracy, signicant form) inhering in an object that was recognized
by a kind of predisposition in the attitude of the beholder. As aesthetic theory has developed, the
number of apparently undeniable qualities or characteristics of art that have been suggested and
must some- how be incorporated into any denition has become decidedly unwieldy,8 and today
it is generally agreed that denitions of art, if one desires them at all, must be either injunctive or
open-textured. Although the attendant problems and difculties are of a different kind, an
ethologial approach to art is perhaps no less complex or dauntingat least initiallythan a
philosophically-based inquiry. To begin with, the assumptions listed above must not be
contravened. What we call art must be universally applicable to all men (not only artists") and
societies past and present(not only modern Western society), and must have plausible adaptive
value. At the same time we must hope that what we eventually choose to regard as artistic
behaviorwill be neither so labored nor so broad that it is meaningless. Secondly, one who
proposes an ethological view of art is as it were breaking new ground. To be sure others have
made suggestions about the origin of art and about its signicance or necessity to mankind.
However, these oEerings have rarely come from evolutionists or biologists (who tend to omit art
from their speculations), but from writers on philosophy, history, criticism, and aesthetics. On
inspection they turn out tobe of little use to an ethological inquiry, for they are not based on the
essential premise that art is a behavior that is the handiwork of biological evolution, and therefore
they do not meet the assumptions listed above. Regarding arts origin, for example, quasi-
evolutionary views in the past have tended to trace it to one source: to play,10 to body
omamentation, to a congurative urge,"12 a creative or expressive impulse,13 to sympathetic
magic,14 to relief from boredom," orto motives of self-gloricationlany one of which can be
shown to be inadequate to explain the genesis of more than a few of the varieties of art. Attempts
to decide what art is, not by speculating about its origin but by isolating some essential X-factor
that art provides to human life (e.g., adorn mentor decoration; practice for real life, es-cape
from real life; sensuous or "aesthetic" satisfactions; order; disorder) have been made, but on
inspection are partial and thus inadequate as well. It is art's stubborn and irrepressible vari-etyof
objects, activities, attitudes, effects that causes grief to ethologists in search of rst principles no
less than to hapleSs philosophers of art. This variety is so in other human societies no less than in
our own. When we survey primitive societies in the Americas, in Africa and in Oceania we dis-
cover a wide variety of artistic and aesthetic conceptions." For some societies art is extremely
important and in others it has little or no importance. In some groups artists are specialists; in
others art is considered to bean ability of everyone. Art may be in the service of specic communal
ends or per-formed as a personal expression of feeling. Art objects may be carefully looked after
or casually discarded; they may be considered sacred and valuable in themselves, or their value
may reside in the supernatural power they embody. Value may accrue to novelty or to
conventional formulaic repetition of DISSANAYAKE tradition. Depiction may be abstract or
representational. The artist may be admired or revered, or he may be regarded as deviant or
socially inferior. Some groups consider that art comes from a special or divine realm, or that it is
widespread, occurring gratuitously. Although usually one person creates one work, in some groups
several persons may work on the same object.18 Our own Western notion of art is far from
uniform or clear. When one examines writings on art he nds that, depending on the author, the
word refers to a bewildering array of meanings. Art may be viewed variously as artice (both in
the sense of skill-fulness or craft and of articiality); as fan-tasy (make-believe, wish-fulllment,
illusion, the ideal, play); as creativity (exploration, invention, innovation, self-expression); as form
or order (the psychological, perceptual and mental need to discover or impose a formal order on
experience; pattern-making; recognition of beauty as order); as heightened existence (emotion,
ecstasy, extraordinary experience, entertainment); as disorder (deviance or dishabituation); as
sense(the immediate fullness of sense-experience as contrasted with abstract thought, or the
sensuous qualities of things such as coloror sound); as revelation (or innately-com-pelling symbols,
of God, of reality); asadornment or embellishment (the wish ortendency to beautify, a decorative
or congurative urge); as self-exPression, as signicance or meaning (interpretation) and as
combinations of two or more of these. It is evident that art is somehow concerned with all these
things, but when theyare more carefully examined from an ethological standpoint, the concept
"art" tends to evaporate. Each of the above-mentioned aspects of experience can be subsumed
un-der another psychological or biological need or propensity, without invoking a special behavior,
"art," at all. For example, the well-studied behavior of play is able to cover all non utilitarian
making, as well as fantasy, illusion, make-believe, ornamenting and decorating. Exploratory and
curiosity behavior can account for instances of innovation and creativity, if they are not simply
called problem-solving behavior. Sensory experiences can be studied as examples of perception.
All animals require formal order and predictability: cognition cannot occur without them, and
some would say that cognition is perceiving or imposing order. Similarly, all animals require
disorder and novelty: behaviors that include or provide these need not be called art. Heightened
existence is frequently sought and obtained in experiences few would call artistic or aesthetic
e.g., sexual orgasm, successful acknowledgement or exercise of power, achieved ambition,
sporting events, catastrophes, carnival rides, even childbirth. Revelation and a sense of
signicance are components of religious experience, or of loving and being lovednot only of art.
It would seem that by assuming any of these is art or is provided by art, a specic identifying
feature still eludes us. To say that art is any of these one must say what it is that is dierent about
"artistic" play, artistic order, "artistic" perception, artis- tic" signicance. In other words, one
must still determine what is artistic about art. Identifying a Behavior of Art If there is such a thing
as a behavior of art" we must assume that it developed in human evolution from an ability or
proclivity that our prepalaeolithic ancestors could have shown. I should like to suggest that this
root proclivity is the ability to recognize or confer "specialness," a level or order different from the
everyday. In every case, even today, when giving artistic expression to an idea, or decorating an
object, or recognizing that an idea or object is artistic, one gives it (or acknowl-edges) a specialness
that without ones activity or regard it would not have. One renders it special, recognizes that it is
extraordinary. This characteristic of art has been referred to by other names by other thinkers,
e.g., transformation, aesthetic transposition or promotion.20 It is a sort of jacking-up,"a
saltation or quantum leap21 from the quotidian reality in which lifes vital needs and activities
occur, to a different order, an "aesthetic order"22 which has its own kind of motivation or
intention and a distinctive attitude or response. This root proclivity may also be identied in two
other kinds of behavior whose similarities to art have indeed frequently been noted: Play and
Ritual. For example, in most instances both play and artzJ use make- believe, illusion, and
metaphor; neither is directly concerned with primary ends of direct survival (like eating, ghting,
escaping danger) but is performed for its own sake"; as behaviors they are labile and relatively
unpredictable; they make use of novelty, incongruity, surprisingness, complexity, change, variety;
they have an inherent dynamic of tension and release, arousal and relief, deviation and recurrence
or restate- ment'4 As behaviors, ritual and art are similar in that both formalize and shape
emotion; communicate in a symbolic "language"; and for expressive effect make use of out-of-
context elements, of exaggeration, and of repetition. Many rituals are expressly con-cerned with
another level or realm from the ordinary, and art is used by ritual as a meansto the end of
revealing this special, extraordinary reality.26 The close relationship even today between art and
play and art and ritual suggests that in human evolutionary history they were once intimately
related if not indistinguishable. Acted upon by different evolutionary equirements and molded by
different emergent physical and mental endowments, the root proclivity of making special could
di- verge into related but usually distinct cur- rents: play, ritual, and art. Art as we are accustomed
to think of it, then, should be considered as an instance of the broader proclivity of making special.
In our ethological view, artistic behavior shaPes and/or embellishes everyday reality with the
intention27 of constructing or manifesting (or recognizing) what is considered to be another
"level" from quotidian practical life. Yet, although according to this view all societies and people
have art, we cannot assume that all societies and people regard works of art with the distinctive
aesthetic attitude that is usually presupposed by modern Western theories of art. The usual
human responses to art, to things made special or the act of making special, are reactions such as
being impressed by power or size or opulence or skill or monetary value; sharing the excited
reactions of a crowd; feeling satisfaction at the carrying out of a known practice or observance;
sensuous or kin a esthetic pleasure; vicarious enjoyment; catharsis; and so forth. Although these
may be ingredient in our Western response to art as well, we usually insist that there be an added
"aesthetic" regardthat the work of art be experienced not only as it has been translated into an-
other plane, set apart from the everyday world, but by an awareness and acknowledgement of the
way in which this has been done. Although non-Western peoples are certainly capable of making
such judgments (e.g., recognizing that a tale is not only a good tale, but that it is "well told"; 23
agreeing that a dispute is not only settled, but settled artfully/'29 and some persons of leisure
and cultivated taste in all higher civilizations have most likely been able to appreciate the "art" in
art), such discrimination is in general not observably a widely-held ability or proclivity. In other
words, we can propose that it is the behavior of making things special and appreciating that some
things are special which is fundamental, universal, and which has had selective value, but not the
ability to appreciate how this specialness is achieved. Appreciating "how," the way something is
done, demands a cognitive awarenessamore or less self-conscious discriminating, relating,
recognizing and following manipulations within an acquired code. This type of awareness is of
course biologically use fulin human communication and in the processes of cognition and
perception generally. But it seems safe to say that when developed to the degree necessary to
appreciate a Bach fugue or Czanne landscape, such an abilityis biologically irrelevant. IV. The
Value of Art Although it has just been stated that art as we are accustomed to understand the
term the ne artsis not biologically necessary, there are those who would claim that art is still
in some sense vital. Apart from biologists who might attribute a general adapt-ive value to art,
poets and philosophers have often expressed their conviction that art is DISSANAYAKE necessary,
that it makes a qualitative difference to human life. Let us examine some of the ways in which art
has been said to have functional or selective value to human societies, and thus presumably to the
human species. Anthropologists frequently claim that art contributes essential social benets to
primitive societies: it expresses or relieves or canalizes feelings, reiterates social values, mirrors
the social code, provides an avenue for shared experience, and the likeall of which hare socially
useful activities.30 In historic times in the West, too, art has served social ends such as
documentation, illustration of precepts and stories that are signicant to society, pictorial
reinforcement of traditional beliefs, distraction and entertainment, impressive display of wealth
and power, facilitation in a group of a dominant mood, and so forth. Even today with much of art
exist-ing ostensibly for its own sake, art has socially observable practical and social as well as
aesthetic consequences. Yet there arises a difculty with attributing the selective value of art to
these or other social functions that it serves. The ethological view of art is not surprised that art is
socially useful. But it is interesting to note that in some instances the socially signicant function of
art is to represent custom and tradition, that is, to uphold the status quo and maintain concord; in
others, art provides an escape valve" through license and heightened or diverted feeling. Art may
be orderly and disorderly, immanent and ideal, emotional and intellectual, Apollonian and
Dionysianwhich suggests that it can be all things to all social and individual requirements.
Additionally, the biologically adaptive functions that have often been proposed for art (like the oft-
cited characteristics of art that were mentioned above) refer upon closer examination not to art,
but to characteristics art shares with other behaviors or to these behaviors themselves. Thus, for
ex-ample, when people suggest that art is thera-peutic,31 or gives us direct unselfconscious
experience}2 provides paradigms of order,33trains our perception of reality,34 gives a sense of
signicance or meaning to life.
Art as Human Behavior and so forth, it is arguable that what is being referred to is not what is
artistic about art, but rather what art shares with play, exploration, ritual, order-giving, and so
forth. It might be suggested that although other behaviors may contribute to our practical life, our
sense of fulllment and meaning, our psychological or social integration, it is the degree to which
art embodies and communicates experience that makes it unique36 and irreplaceable. For those
who are receptive to works of art in the modern sense this is probably so. Yet, as we have implied,
great numbers of people appear to get along psychologically and practically without assistance
from the more complex and rened arts, and in addition they seem to nd their greatest
emotional sense of signicance to come from non a esthetic experiences such as parenthood,
achievement and successful practice of a skill, power, recognition, being praised and needed, and
so forth. It has been only a very short time, speak- ing in evolutionary terms, that art has been
detached from its afliates, ritual and play .and that its various components have coalesced to
become an independent activity. Until less than a hundred years ago the primary tasks of artists
were not to "create works of art" but to reveal or embody the divine, illustrate holy writ, decorate
shrines and private homes and public buildings, fashion ne utensils and elaborate ornaments,
accompany ceremonial observances, record historic scenes and personages, and so forth. The
artist, in our terms, made these things special, but specically aesthetic considerations were no
more important to most observers than other functional requirementsalthough it is not to be
denied that artists of all times have been highly skilled in marrying the two. Although space does
not allow a detailed reconstruction of the way in which the behavior of art could have originated
and evolved, it is my contention that only in historic times did the behavior of art become
increasingly detached from the rest of life, regarded and valued primarily for its own sake.
Although today in advanced Western society we acknowledge that it is possible to shape and
embellish other human behaviors sex, eating, communicating by word or gesturein order to
make them special, and the relationship of art and life can be said to be a major preoccupation in
advanced contemporary thought}7 it is not often appreciated that in a quite un self conscious way
art actually appears to inform all of life in some traditional societies. Js It would seem that in its
rudimentary beginnings, the activity of giving shape to and embellishing life was not an impractical
,leisure-time activity, but the way the human mind worked: it was a way of prehending and
comprehending the world. Looked atin this way it was not separated from the activities of
formalization (embodied in such activities as cognitive orientation, conceptualization, cognitive
structuring, systematizing, giving narrative relationship in time or perceptual shape in space) and
of the propensity inherent in the ability to symbolizeto recognize or imagine an order other
than the mundane. Such a proclivity demonstrates simply that man cannot bear, individually or as
a species, senselessness or lack of meaning. Our minds still "work" the same way. We still need a
sense of meaning. But rather than nding this meaning exclusively in explanations provided by
traditional social institutions (e.g., tribe, clan, family, caste, religion, a body of tradition, language,
rituals) that are expressed and reinforced in symbols which have been given artistic form and
embellishment, as have most human beings throughout the ages, many of us in the modern world
are in a position of not accepting traditional meanings, or nding that they are inadequate. The
ways in which meaning was apprehended by our ancestors were not divided into separate entities
called "art," "science,"metaphysics. Our attribution of the name art to tribal singing or dancing
or to cave paintings is articial and misleading. More simply, these are ways of nding meaning in
life or giving it, making it special, ways that were inextricably bound to social institutions and
practices whose fundamental assumptions are no longer accepted unquestioningly. By looking
back and identifying elements, activities, and artifacts that suit our categories of what is artistic,
we are in danger of giving an interpretation that was not known to the people who used these
elements, engaged in these activities, and produced these artifacts. Is there any reasonable way in
which we can assign selective value to a behaviormaking specialthat was not independent?
Only by acknowledging that what has had selective value is "giving meaning" so that aesthetic
elements, activities, and artifacts, insofar as they have accompanied and rein- forced meaning-
giving have themselves had selective value. Another way of looking at it is to recognize that
meaning is aesthetic. Ordinary day- to-day life is formless, incoherent. When shaped and
embellished or transformed as in ritual or play or art it takes on a greater or more signicant
reality so that when we nd something to have coherence it seems to be "aesthetic." When we
feel something to be aesthetic we recognize that it is coherent. This seems such a fundamental
part of mans nature that the question of its selective value" is beside the point. What is
unprecedented today is that for modern man aesthetic meaning, bracketed, and re- moved from
everyday life, does not invariably reect a reality shared by his fellows, as it has for most of the
human species throughout human history. In large part modern man must be his own artist and
nd or create his own meanings, meanings which do not necessarily cohere with other meanings.
It is my suspicion that the widespread Western axiomatic notion of the incompatibility of art and
life, as well as the more recent concern with the shared boundaries and interpenetration of the
two, are symptoms or results of this broad and gradual change in the locus of human meaning. Al-
though their congruence with the concerns and values of human life remains an important
consideration in our response to works of art, some persons in the twentieth century in the
modern West have never theless been able to accept self-contained objects or events, isolated
from the rest of experience, as art and to respond t0 them aesthetically. DISSANAYAKE Indeed,
this attitudethat detached self- containment is a dening and even universal feature of art (at
least great art") and that ones response to works of art is primarily or preferably a detached
oneseems to be strongly embedded in contemporary advanced Western thought. I would like to
suggest that although writing and theorizing about art in this sense may well be a fascinating and
satisfying endeavor, it is how- ever likely that like its subject it is a self-referential activity
performed for its own sake and ultimately has no bearing on the wider consideration of art as a
universal human behavior. We must be aware that our pronouncements about the nature of art
derived from the culture-bound preconceptions of modern Western aesthetics may ap- ply only to
art produced and appreciated by persons of an innitesimal number in both time and space, who
appear in their conceptual framework and way of life to be unprecedented and without parallel in
hu-man evolutionary history.