The philosophical problems with theories of evolution - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ARTelevision · 01-31-2005, 01:19 PM

As an aesthetician, I have little use for notions of “evolution” or “progress.” I can give you some examples from my own field of study as to why this is so…

It is axiomatic that there is no progress in art. This is because art is always an exact reflection of its particular time and place, the circumstances of its creation, and the artist’s unique experience and expression at the moment of creation.

For example, the history of drawing and painting is not like the history of technology. The history of vehicular technology – to choose one of countless examples – is about how human beings gradually improved vehicles from the discovery of the wheel through the Space Shuttle. In contradistinction to that, the history of drawing and painting is not about how humans learned to draw and paint better and better. I see students come into Art Appreciation classes thinking that cave men drew stick figures because they were unskilled at the craft and that the history of drawing and painting chronicles improvements in draftsmanship and chromatic skill that reach certain apogees and thresholds in artists’ quest toward increasing “realism” – or some similar notion.

No, the history of drawing is not about how people learned to draw better and better. The elegant and sophisticated drawings on the caves of Lascaux are equally whole, valid, complete, perfect, and fully realized as the drawings of Picasso. Art simply moves with the time and space of its creation – it does not progress toward any particular higher plane.

I’m thinking of this today because of an interesting confluence of factors. Over the weekend we escorted our art classes on a tour of the local museum and as sus did not mention the “There is no progress in art” axiom, I decided to explain it to the assembled group of students. Additionally, today I spent some time on www.howardbloom.net thinking about this notion of “progress” and how it is applied everywhere – especially since Darwin – and I also happened upon an entry in roachboy’s journal in which he ruminates on a related matter as regards museums of Natural History.

I get a sense that anything that smacks of anti-Darwinism these days quickly becomes hopelessly politicized. I hope that doesn’t happen here. If it does, I’d expect we can discuss the ways in which all aspects of the political spectrum are contaminated by notions of “evolution” or “progress.”

My problems with a Darwinian notion of “progress” as applied everywhere is not religious – it is aesthetic and more generally, philosophical. I have a sense that if we could purge the hopelessly lopsided and problematic idea of “human progress” from all of the frameworks in which it does not belong, we’d be the better for it.

Can you see other ways in which we have allowed notions of evolution or progress to permeate areas of thought in which other - less linear and hierarchical - ways of thinking might do us much better as a thinking collective?

Master_Shake · 01-31-2005, 01:54 PM

Things certainly change over time, problems arise when we try to label such changes as good or bad.

I think the reason thinking in this way is dangerous is because we don't have clear goals about what these things should be moving toward (if anything). Should art move closer to realism? If so, then photography might generally be a better form than cave paintings.

When we have clearly defined goals I think evolution or progress can be measured and quantified. If your goal is safer automobiles, or better fuel efficiency than current mass-produced production models are clearly better, or have progressed further toward the goals than older cars.

Attempting to set system-wide goals for art seems to be a very tricky thing to accomplish, so I don't know if you can say art progresses. In order for it progress, it has to progress toward something. I don't know what it's supposed to progress toward, or indeed, if it even should progress toward anything.

MageB420666 · 01-31-2005, 02:07 PM

You don't always have to make progress for something to progress.( Geez, that kinda statement just makes you hate the english language, doesn't it?)

Art progresses in different ways than other fields, it progresses through time and styles and artists and fads and all that other stuff. Progress does not equal improvement, it just means movement. Art moves from idea to idea, era to era, and so on and so forth, sorry I just can't speak poetically. If something cannot progress, it dies (or is already dead) and since art is neither dead or dying, it must be progressing, just not in a fashion that most people associate with the word "progress". And yes art does evolve. Evolution is nothing other than changing to meet the needs of a new environment, it does not mean that it is improving, but you have to admit that art would not be around now if it was still just crudely drawn cave paintings.

fckm · 01-31-2005, 02:14 PM

Nonono. I think you misunderstand the Scientific Theory of Evolution. The theory does not mean to imply that there is "progress" or "improvements" in a general sense. Evolution is always considered with relation to environment. Animals change to adapt to roles in the environment. Animals don't get "better" or "worse" in any absolute sense.

Alright, re-reading your post, I guess the misunderstanding is not on your part, but rather on the part of Society, and I think you and I are saying the same thing. Lay people tend to take a very specific statement, such as Darwinian evolution, and apply it to all sorts of stuff that it shouldn't be applied to. Darwin never said anything about organisms "progressing", he always talked about organisms adapting to fit with their environments.

sapiens · 01-31-2005, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ARTelevision

My problems with a Darwinian notion of “progress” as applied everywhere is not religious – it is aesthetic and more generally, philosophical. I have a sense that if we could purge the hopelessly lopsided and problematic idea of “human progress” from all of the frameworks in which it does not belong, we’d be the better for it.

Art, I would echo fckm's comments. It sounds like you don't have a problem with a Darwinian notion of progress. Darwinian evolution is not directional. From a Darwinian perspective, we are not any "better" than our early hominid ancestors- just different.

raveneye · 01-31-2005, 03:16 PM

As an evolutionary biologist and a jazz musician, I would say that Darwinism is a metaphor that is ubiquitous and certainly does apply to art. For example, there is a crucible of ideas, and certain ideas that don't "work" within a particular framework of expression cannot compete against ideas that do "work", and the latter come to predominate. What "works" might be a decision made by a single artist, or it might be a result of synergism with other artists, and it may be conscious or unconscious.

And I think you can use the term "evolution" within the context of art. For example, a single individual might evolve through several phases, each one informed by the one previous, so that there is a definite direction of "development" that can be perceived and analyzed. And you can expand that idea outward from a single individual to a group of interacting artists, who synergistically might develop or "evolve" a kind of expression through several intermediate stages. New stages may be coincident with new ideas ("innovations") that change the way we perceive the art and require development of new kinds of expression, that usually contain remnants of the previous.

Whether there was "progress" along that line of development is a separate issue that is not contained within the idea of "evolution" itself.

Or to put it more simply, Darwinian evolution says nothing about progress. It simply is a theory of adaptive change. Adaptive change is everywhere in living things, in the short term, long term, and all levels of biological organization. Artists certainly undergo adaptive change. In fact if they did not, then one could probably say that their particular art is "dead". Now there's another biological metaphor

flstf · 01-31-2005, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ARTelevision

Can you see other ways in which we have allowed notions of evolution or progress to permeate areas of thought in which other - less linear and hierarchical - ways of thinking might do us much better as a thinking collective?

I agree with you that the arts (visual, music, theatre, literature, etc..) evolving do not mean progress in the sense that they get better with each iteration. I think the cave drawings at Lascaux are some of the most beautiful ever done by humans. The same can be said about the other arts as well. The tools used for creating have evolved mostly in the positive or at least more alternative direction though such as cinema, music samplers, computers, etc.. I often wonder what Da Vinci or Mozart could do with our modern tools.

Politics and economics may also be examples of endeavers that are not improving (progressing) much. Governments seem to come into existence, evolve for a while, then end in chaos. I don't think democracy has been around long enough to determine if it can stand the test of time yet. War has certainly evolved improved methods for killing through science but our ability to avoid it has not. Monetary systems come and go.

Off the top, I cannot think of a science that has not evolved in a progressive fasion. Unless we consider the ability to annihilate ourselves easier a step backward.

Just because some of the things mentioned above do not seem to be evolving in a positive direction does not necessarily mean that progress isn't being made though. Trying things that haven't been done before at least shows us what doesn't work.

Suave · 01-31-2005, 05:08 PM

On top of what you've written, the worst part of Darwinian "progress" is that evolution was never postulated to be progressive by Darwin. The notion of evolution being progressive overall has caused numerous issues, stemming from inaccurate biological perspectives to extensions into, as you mentioned, the art world and other aspects of society. In current society, I don't think the term evolve or evolution is improper to apply to art however, as they do not truly embody progressive change, but simply change in itself.

ARTelevision · 01-31-2005, 06:03 PM

Great responses already, folks!

Thanks. This is exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping would ensue...

roachboy · 02-01-2005, 08:28 AM

darwin's work was overlaid almost from the outset with spenser (social darwinist) "logic"--which set up a curious hall of mirrors between texts--the latter was explicitly positivist and relied upon enough information from darwin to recode the narrative--and the darwin narrative was amenable to such re-interpretation.

at the level of theory, darwin/evolution is a framework for making inferences. it is a descriptive theory. the correlate in the arts would be art history, the system of selecting/legitimating/classifying of art production in general. in both cases, notions of "progress" (a favorite bourgeois phantasm) would be a second-order description, one that characterized particular results of a prior classification. questions about progress, like questions about what is and is not included in prior classifications, would operate at a third level.

logic shift: besides, it is obvious that notions like "progress" also work at the ideological level, and that theories outlined within the genre "science" do not operate outside a general ideological climate, either in themselves or (particularly) as objects which circulate in particular cultural spaces. given that we operate in a capitalist environment, and given that one of the stronger and more persistent tendencies within that environment has been to route ideological claims through scientific theory to legitimate the claims (regardless of the violence this might do to the theories, which in the end are secondary), that darwin would have provided a playground for bourgeois political triumphalism is not a surprise, really.

the notion of progress also sucks precious bodily fluids from previous narratives, like the one about the second coming of christ. as capitalism in its nation-state oriented form continues its process of collapse, some of the older narratives resurface as such, maybe because they are not falisifiable, maybe for alot of other reasons.....

01-31-2005, 01:19 PM	#1 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	The philosophical problems with theories of evolution As an aesthetician, I have little use for notions of “evolution” or “progress.” I can give you some examples from my own field of study as to why this is so… It is axiomatic that there is no progress in art. This is because art is always an exact reflection of its particular time and place, the circumstances of its creation, and the artist’s unique experience and expression at the moment of creation. For example, the history of drawing and painting is not like the history of technology. The history of vehicular technology – to choose one of countless examples – is about how human beings gradually improved vehicles from the discovery of the wheel through the Space Shuttle. In contradistinction to that, the history of drawing and painting is not about how humans learned to draw and paint better and better. I see students come into Art Appreciation classes thinking that cave men drew stick figures because they were unskilled at the craft and that the history of drawing and painting chronicles improvements in draftsmanship and chromatic skill that reach certain apogees and thresholds in artists’ quest toward increasing “realism” – or some similar notion. No, the history of drawing is not about how people learned to draw better and better. The elegant and sophisticated drawings on the caves of Lascaux are equally whole, valid, complete, perfect, and fully realized as the drawings of Picasso. Art simply moves with the time and space of its creation – it does not progress toward any particular higher plane. I’m thinking of this today because of an interesting confluence of factors. Over the weekend we escorted our art classes on a tour of the local museum and as sus did not mention the “There is no progress in art” axiom, I decided to explain it to the assembled group of students. Additionally, today I spent some time on www.howardbloom.net thinking about this notion of “progress” and how it is applied everywhere – especially since Darwin – and I also happened upon an entry in roachboy’s journal in which he ruminates on a related matter as regards museums of Natural History. I get a sense that anything that smacks of anti-Darwinism these days quickly becomes hopelessly politicized. I hope that doesn’t happen here. If it does, I’d expect we can discuss the ways in which all aspects of the political spectrum are contaminated by notions of “evolution” or “progress.” My problems with a Darwinian notion of “progress” as applied everywhere is not religious – it is aesthetic and more generally, philosophical. I have a sense that if we could purge the hopelessly lopsided and problematic idea of “human progress” from all of the frameworks in which it does not belong, we’d be the better for it. Can you see other ways in which we have allowed notions of evolution or progress to permeate areas of thought in which other - less linear and hierarchical - ways of thinking might do us much better as a thinking collective? __________________ create evolution Last edited by ARTelevision; 01-31-2005 at 01:21 PM..

01-31-2005, 01:54 PM	#2 (permalink)
Master_Shake Addict Location: Pennsylvania, USA	Things certainly change over time, problems arise when we try to label such changes as good or bad. I think the reason thinking in this way is dangerous is because we don't have clear goals about what these things should be moving toward (if anything). Should art move closer to realism? If so, then photography might generally be a better form than cave paintings. When we have clearly defined goals I think evolution or progress can be measured and quantified. If your goal is safer automobiles, or better fuel efficiency than current mass-produced production models are clearly better, or have progressed further toward the goals than older cars. Attempting to set system-wide goals for art seems to be a very tricky thing to accomplish, so I don't know if you can say art progresses. In order for it progress, it has to progress toward something. I don't know what it's supposed to progress toward, or indeed, if it even should progress toward anything. __________________ ------------- You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

01-31-2005, 02:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
MageB420666 <Insert wise statement here> Location: Hell if I know	You don't always have to make progress for something to progress.( Geez, that kinda statement just makes you hate the english language, doesn't it?) Art progresses in different ways than other fields, it progresses through time and styles and artists and fads and all that other stuff. Progress does not equal improvement, it just means movement. Art moves from idea to idea, era to era, and so on and so forth, sorry I just can't speak poetically. If something cannot progress, it dies (or is already dead) and since art is neither dead or dying, it must be progressing, just not in a fashion that most people associate with the word "progress". And yes art does evolve. Evolution is nothing other than changing to meet the needs of a new environment, it does not mean that it is improving, but you have to admit that art would not be around now if it was still just crudely drawn cave paintings. __________________ Apathy: The best outlook this side of I don't give a damn.

01-31-2005, 02:14 PM	#4 (permalink)
fckm Insane Location: Ithaca, New York	Nonono. I think you misunderstand the Scientific Theory of Evolution. The theory does not mean to imply that there is "progress" or "improvements" in a general sense. Evolution is always considered with relation to environment. Animals change to adapt to roles in the environment. Animals don't get "better" or "worse" in any absolute sense. Alright, re-reading your post, I guess the misunderstanding is not on your part, but rather on the part of Society, and I think you and I are saying the same thing. Lay people tend to take a very specific statement, such as Darwinian evolution, and apply it to all sorts of stuff that it shouldn't be applied to. Darwin never said anything about organisms "progressing", he always talked about organisms adapting to fit with their environments. __________________ And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be. Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But What Is And What Should Never Be.

01-31-2005, 05:08 PM	#8 (permalink)
Suave Twitterpated Location: My own little world (also Canada)	On top of what you've written, the worst part of Darwinian "progress" is that evolution was never postulated to be progressive by Darwin. The notion of evolution being progressive overall has caused numerous issues, stemming from inaccurate biological perspectives to extensions into, as you mentioned, the art world and other aspects of society. In current society, I don't think the term evolve or evolution is improper to apply to art however, as they do not truly embody progressive change, but simply change in itself. __________________ "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

01-31-2005, 03:16 PM	#6 (permalink)
raveneye Born Against	As an evolutionary biologist and a jazz musician, I would say that Darwinism is a metaphor that is ubiquitous and certainly does apply to art. For example, there is a crucible of ideas, and certain ideas that don't "work" within a particular framework of expression cannot compete against ideas that do "work", and the latter come to predominate. What "works" might be a decision made by a single artist, or it might be a result of synergism with other artists, and it may be conscious or unconscious. And I think you can use the term "evolution" within the context of art. For example, a single individual might evolve through several phases, each one informed by the one previous, so that there is a definite direction of "development" that can be perceived and analyzed. And you can expand that idea outward from a single individual to a group of interacting artists, who synergistically might develop or "evolve" a kind of expression through several intermediate stages. New stages may be coincident with new ideas ("innovations") that change the way we perceive the art and require development of new kinds of expression, that usually contain remnants of the previous. Whether there was "progress" along that line of development is a separate issue that is not contained within the idea of "evolution" itself. Or to put it more simply, Darwinian evolution says nothing about progress. It simply is a theory of adaptive change. Adaptive change is everywhere in living things, in the short term, long term, and all levels of biological organization. Artists certainly undergo adaptive change. In fact if they did not, then one could probably say that their particular art is "dead". Now there's another biological metaphor

01-31-2005, 06:03 PM	#9 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	Great responses already, folks! Thanks. This is exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping would ensue... __________________ create evolution

02-01-2005, 08:28 AM	#10 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	darwin's work was overlaid almost from the outset with spenser (social darwinist) "logic"--which set up a curious hall of mirrors between texts--the latter was explicitly positivist and relied upon enough information from darwin to recode the narrative--and the darwin narrative was amenable to such re-interpretation. at the level of theory, darwin/evolution is a framework for making inferences. it is a descriptive theory. the correlate in the arts would be art history, the system of selecting/legitimating/classifying of art production in general. in both cases, notions of "progress" (a favorite bourgeois phantasm) would be a second-order description, one that characterized particular results of a prior classification. questions about progress, like questions about what is and is not included in prior classifications, would operate at a third level. logic shift: besides, it is obvious that notions like "progress" also work at the ideological level, and that theories outlined within the genre "science" do not operate outside a general ideological climate, either in themselves or (particularly) as objects which circulate in particular cultural spaces. given that we operate in a capitalist environment, and given that one of the stronger and more persistent tendencies within that environment has been to route ideological claims through scientific theory to legitimate the claims (regardless of the violence this might do to the theories, which in the end are secondary), that darwin would have provided a playground for bourgeois political triumphalism is not a surprise, really. the notion of progress also sucks precious bodily fluids from previous narratives, like the one about the second coming of christ. as capitalism in its nation-state oriented form continues its process of collapse, some of the older narratives resurface as such, maybe because they are not falisifiable, maybe for alot of other reasons..... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-01-2005 at 08:33 AM..