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

1. The EVOLUTION of ART and the SELF TVUUC FORUM, Part 2 14 November, 2004 Neil Greenberg Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee

2. The survival and prosperity of individuals and species depends on their ability to meet needs imposed by changes in themselves and their environments

3. Maslow’s need hierarchy Physiology (homeostasis, health) Safety (security, order, protection) Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love) Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment) Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)

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

5. "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" From “Caprichos” by Goya 1799

6. WE ARE AT WAR WITH OURSELVES! The place of REASON has been elevated out of context because it is our most distinctive HUMAN characteristic. It is coordinated by the highest cerebral attainments and has a central role in restraining or selecting between instinctive or automatized patterns organized at "lower" levels of the brain.

7. WE ARE AT WAR WITH OURSELVES! . . . it is impotent and helpless without a reliable sense of reality attained only by experience: "The senses cannot think. The understanding cannot see" (Kant); "The heart has reasons of which reason knows not” (Pascal).

8. BRIDGE THE GAP! RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other ! This is TRUE RELIGION! RELIGION: re-ligare , to re-ligate, to “stitch together”

9. BRIDGE THE GAP! RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other ! This is TRUE RELIGION! RELIGION: re-ligare , to re-ligate, to “stitch together”

10. BRIDGE THE GAP! RESTORE the parts of SELF to each other ! This is TRUE RELIGION! RELIGION: re-ligare , to re-ligate, to “stitch together”

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

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

13. ART meetsDEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS Developmental(exercises and trains our abilities to perceive and discriminate shapes, distances . . . Art dishabituates the routine habitual way of seeing things, providing a sense of new possibilities when old solutions are no longer effective ) Discovery (enlarging our spheres of experience, coordinating eye, mind, actions) “The Music Lesson” by Leighton

14. ART meetsSPIRITUAL NEEDS If you bring forth that which is within you, that which you have brought forth will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, that which you do not bring forth will destroy you. The Gospel of Thomas (Parable 70) Last page of Nag Hammadi ms

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

16. Needs, wants, motives, appetites, joy We are MOTIVATED to meet our NEEDS Our MOTIVES become APPETITES energized by their real or apparent URGENCY Satisfying appetites can be JOYFUL

17. Satisfying appetites can be JOYFUL Or at least, satisfying: There are two modes of knowing. . . through argument and experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but does not cause certainty nor remove the doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience Roger Bacon (1268)

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

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

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

21. What is the urgent need that is shared by those of art and science? We need confidence in our beliefs We call it “truth” and it is an amalgam of two functions, otherwise critical in their own right: CORRESPONDENCE (with reality) COHERENCE (within a web of causes and consequences) ART, by exploring the boundaries of experience, exercises and integrates these qualities, enlarging and improving their intercommunication.

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

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

24. GNOTHI se AUTON To be an effective, competitive organism, we would be wise to follow the advice of the Oracle at Delphi: “Gnothi se auton” (Know thyself) Is this the primal function of art? the ancient ruins of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. is spread out over the southern slopes of Mount Parnassos, beneath the Phaidriad rocks.

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

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

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

28. Searching for truth . . . se hace camino al andar

29. By searching for truth . . . We find our selves! We make the road by walking

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