Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature (31 page)

Boyd acknowledges that artists are motivated not just by an inchoate need for self-expression, but also by the adaptive payoff that comes from enhanced status. And yet, he simultaneously denies a role for sexual selection. This is most curious, since sexual selection consists precisely of intersexual selection (so-called epigamic selection, in which members of one sex are chosen by members of the other), combined with intrasexual competition, whereby individuals of either sex compete among themselves. Status is not an end in itself, but rather, it is of biological value precisely because it leads to reproductive success via sexual selection. The fact that creative artists typically value the success and status they receive is not only consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis but also fundamental to it.

Achieving social status is not an alternative to sexual selection; rather, it is one of the main ways whereby sexual selection operates. “If there were no beautiful women,” Aristotle Onassis is reputed to have said, “money would be meaningless.” So, too, would being the center of attention as a creator of great stories, paintings, songs, etc. This leads, in turn, to a controversial issue: whether creative genius is sexually asymmetrical.

On the one hand, the fact that there are so many more “great masters” than “great mistresses” in every major artistic discipline is consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis, since males—sperm makers, and therefore capable of inseminating many females—would be more strongly selected to be sexual/artistic/creative show-offs than would females, who are egg makers and thus less able to transfer sociosexual success into a large Darwinian reproductive payoff. In addition, the evidence is overwhelming that
Homo sapiens
are primarily polygynous, and in such cases, males are favored who manage to attract more than their “fair share” of sexual attention, whether via head-to-head combat as
with elk or by doing something that gets them selectively chosen by females, as with those “artistic” bowerbirds.

But on the other hand, it is clear that cultural biases and social norms have long restricted the creative outlets for women. Doubters should read Virginia Woolf’s essay on a hypothetical “Judith Shakespeare,” a meditation on how an equally or even more talented sister of William would have had her talents suppressed. Moreover, as the cultural prohibitions against women’s artistic creativity have fallen, the ranks of women artists have swollen. This suggests that women’s artistic capacity may well be at least as great as their manly counterparts, and not limited to being an appreciative—albeit discerning—audience.

There is yet another evolutionary argument for biologically based equality with respect to the arts: Unlike many mammal species, in which females choose among pushy, courting males, in the case of human beings, sexual choice works both ways. Men choose among women, just as women choose among men. This is presumably because
Homo sapiens
has such a long developmental trajectory, with infants born completely helpless and requiring substantial and prolonged investment long years after birth. As a result, ancestral men have been selected to seek for something more than healthy DNA and a suitably packaged body
^vi
with whom to combine their genes and in which to incubate their offspring. Cross-culturally, men as well as women identify kindness, intelligence, and a sense of humor among the primary traits sought for in a romantic partner.
⁹

Earlier, we briefly considered the fox and the hedgehog as a metaphor for societies with (fox) and without (hedgehog) artistic diversity and for individuals with and without artistic capabilities. It can also be applied to intellectual styles, and indeed, this was Isaiah Berlin’s intent in his now-classic essay. He contrasted foxes such as Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, and Joyce, who exemplified many different themes and perspectives, with hedgehogs such as Plato, Dante, Dostoyevsky, and Ibsen, each of whom focused on a particular defining idea or approach. Tolstoy, the ostensible
subject of Berlin’s essay, desperately wanted to be a religiously Christian hedgehog, but the depth and complexity of his characterizations showed that he couldn’t help being a fox.

In any event, it is noteworthy that in developing evolutionary hypotheses for the arts, most scholars tend to be hedgehogs, promoting a unitary explanation: The arts are a by-product, or cheesecake, or a tactic for achieving group cohesion, or a product of sexual selection, and so forth. Such intellectual tunnel vision may itself be an adaptive academic strategy, since scholars are more likely to achieve renown by associating themselves with a single, memorable hypothesis rather than spreading their reputation across various shades of gray. It is also possible, of course, that the predominant scientific view is simply and honestly that a single grand idea will prove, in most cases, to be correct.

According to Aldous Huxley, “At present all too many scientists … seem to think that theories based upon the notion of ‘nothing-but’ are somehow more scientific than theories consonant with actual experience, and based upon the principle of not-only-this-but-also-that.”
¹⁰
And it may be that a single hedgehoggy hypothesis will ultimately prove to be correct. My guess, however, is that in this case—as in most others considered in the present book—foxiness wins.

The ancient Roman playwright Terence is particularly known these days for his comment, or boast,
Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto
(“I am a man: nothing human is alien to me”). When it comes to explaining that wholly human phenomenon, the arts, perhaps no evolutionary hypothesis should be considered entirely alien, either.

1
. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Does beauty build adapted minds? Toward an evolutionary theory of aesthetics, fiction and the arts.
SubStance, 94/95,
6–27.

2
. Orians, G. (In press).
Environmental aesthetics
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

3
. Appleton, J. (1975).
The experience of landscape
. New York: Wiley.

4
. Shepard, R. N. (1990).
Mind sights
. San Francisco: Freeman.

5
. Dunbar, R. (1998).
Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

6
. Richards, I. A. (1943).
Basic English and its uses
. London: Kegan Paul.

7
. Dawkins, R., & Krebs, J. R. (1978). Animal signals: Information or manipulation? In J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies (Eds.),
Behavioural ecology
. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell Scientific Publications.

8
. Wilde, O. (1891, 2007)
The critic as artist: With some remarks upon the importance of doing nothing and discussing everything.
New York: Mondial.

9
. Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses resting in 37 cultures.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12,
1–49.

10
. Huxley, A. (1963).
Literature and Science
. New Haven, CT: Leete’s Island Books.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
Religion I: Genes, Memes,
Minds, and Motives

I
T IS POSSIBLE THAT
this chapter is a waste of time—yours as well as mine. Maybe religion isn’t an evolved human trait after all, but instead, entirely a product of culture, learning, and social tradition. After all, the religions of humankind are extraordinarily diverse, and, moreover, they are clearly passed on from person to person, nearly always from parents to children … but via transmission that is cultural, not genetic.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about 2,500 years ago, tells the following story. Darius, king of Persia, was intrigued to learn that east of his empire, in India, the Callatians ostensibly cannibalized their dead. He was also told that to the West, the Greeks cremated theirs. Darius sent emissaries to each, asking what it would take for them to switch practices. The Callatians responded indignantly that nothing could ever induce them to do something so barbaric as to bury their dead, while at the same time, the Greeks were equally adamant that they would never eat theirs. Darius concluded ruefully that not he, but custom, was king.

We might call it Darius’s Dictum, and indeed, the presumed primacy of custom over biology has long been the reigning ideology of social science. Doesn’t it apply not merely to funeral
practices—which, after all, are closely tied to religion—but to religion itself?

Probably not. (So you can rest easy: This chapter likely isn’t a waste of time after all.)

For one thing, even though there is tremendous worldwide diversity in the precise nature of religious practices, the fact remains that every human society engages in some form of religion
ⁱ
; they are an example of what anthropologists call a “cross-cultural universal.” And when something is consistent across all human groups, despite the enormous cultural differences between them, this in itself is
prima facie
evidence for some sort of biological underpinning. Human beings are a vast planet-wide experiment in which one thing—our biological essence as members of
Homo sapiens
—is held constant, while other things, namely, customs, are permitted to vary. When, in a scientific experiment, one thing is held steady while others are permitted to vary, after which something else stays unchanged, it is reasonable to think that the persistent outcome is due to whatever has also been held constant. In our case, this is the human genome. When it comes to the precise details of religion, Darius’s Dictum holds: Custom is indeed king.

Considering just the world’s major religions, there is immense diversity, even if we disregard the specifics of ritual and focus on underlying concepts. Thus, Judaism and Hinduism emphasize the narrative dimension; for Islam, the key is submission to the will of God; for Confucianism, the key appears to be social ethics; for Christianity, it’s primarily doctrine; and for Jews, it’s how to be a
mensch
. Today’s religions differ, as well, in their conception of the fundamental problems: For Confucians the primary evil is disorder; for Christians, sin; for Buddhists, suffering; for Hindus, the eternally recurring cycle of birth and death. And there is every reason to think that the earliest manifestations of religion were at least as diverse.

But as for religion itself—as distinct from
religions
themselves—the details of concern and custom bow to biology, since underneath the huge superficial diversity, there appears to be a biological
underpinning that enables us to talk about “religion” as something that acknowledges its universality and underlying common denominators.

In that case, what about going to the other extreme? If the key isn’t culture, but biology, then what about the prospect that people have a “God gene”? Wouldn’t that explain everything? No again, and for several reasons. First, as we’ll see, there is no “God gene.” And second, even if there were, the question would remain: Why is there such a gene (or such a God-seeking brain region, or God-seeking hormone, etc.)? An evolutionary mystery isn’t solved by pointing to a particular gene, brain region, or hormone, just as a murder mystery isn’t solved by pointing to a particular weapon, even if it turns out to be the “correct” one. The detective wants to know who wielded it, and why.
ⁱⁱ

“The human mind evolved to believe in the gods,” according to Edward O. Wilson.
¹
“It did not evolve to believe in biology. … Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms.” I hesitate to disagree with a great biologist (and one who has been something of a mentor to me), but in this regard, I think Professor Wilson is mistaken. The human mind may or may not have evolved to believe in the gods; that’s the subject of this chapter. But it seems evident that we definitely evolved to believe in biology, or at least, to readily accept and respond to biology’s basic truths: the difference between animals and plants and between predators and prey, the significance of genetic relatives—even without necessarily knowing anything about genes or DNA.

We evolved to “believe” in biology in the same way that we evolved to believe in physics: an intuitive understanding of Newtonian mechanics, including force, friction and momentum, acceleration, and, yes, gravity, even if our ancestors knew nothing about gravitons or differential calculus.
ⁱⁱⁱ
They didn’t know anything about quantum mechanics or relativity, any more than they evolved to believe in the Krebs cycle (the process whereby cells extract energy from food), although they certainly evolved to take advantage of the ATP produced via the Krebs cycle. Perhaps a belief in the supernatural is somehow privileged because of our biology, but no more so than a belief in biology itself.