Aristotle's dream: Evolutionary and neural aspects of aesthetic communication in the arts.

Art in general perception is something that transcends our notion of reality. In view of the earliest findings in Paleolithic sites, their abstract appearance and sometimes ceremonial context increased their status of a secret language. Even the first figurative cave paintings remained in a context of an encoded semantic whole. The highly symbolic value of art seemed invulnerable. It was just the claim for "mimesis" in Greek antiquity (Plato) that urged artists to "realistically" depict what can be seen-as to stay in track of eternal messages behind. This devaluated the artistic oeuvre to a purely imitating craft and had to overcome at once several inherent obstacles. First, that reality (the phenomenal world) is in general only a pale reflection of what lays behind (Platonic ideas) and second, that the human eye, unlike the human mind, cannot penetrate to more than ephemeral impressions. Moreover, it mixed up reality with what we are able to see (i.e. visual perception), thus supposing a pinpoint representation of the world by our senses. Aristotle was the first to qualify art as picturing more than we usually are meant to see, filling the gap between the sensual and the spiritual world. Aristotelian aesthetics includes concepts of reduction and selection of composition and emotion, thus a summarized view within any performance of poetics or painting. And it took centuries to close the gap between natural and aesthetic perception or art. Life sciences in the 20th century discovered the evolutionary basis of sensory perception as being highly biased and organized, concept as emotion-driven and thus, mentally equipped as well. This sets a new approach in our understanding of perception, art, and aesthetics as an ongoing communication in process on common bases. Art may cooperate or disagree, but never can cut the nexus with its perceptual prejudices and substrate.

Culture by Nature. Familial roots of ambivalent human social behavior and its cultural extensions in large-scale societies. A contribution of Human and Cultural Ethology.

Since Hobbes' dictum of "homo homini lupus" in 17th century the tenor in European philosophy was the one of human nature in need of strong external rules to restrain from mutual aggression, inter-personal and inter-group. Behavioral measures and rules limiting a presumably aggressive human nature were perceived as purely moral and cultural. Evolutionary theory in the 19th century seemed to confirm the notion of a self-interested individual, at least in parts. By contrast, new models of cooperation later on modified the concept of a selfish human nature. Under conditions of reciprocity, immediate or delayed, cooperative behaviors tend to function better than egoistic ones. According to Human Ethology, comparable conditions are found in the first nuclear small group that is the extended family. Kin-based societies hence shape the original form of sociability. The key for understanding the ambivalence of pro-social and asocial behaviors, trust and mistrust, is the evolution of parental care and individual bonding. With parental care friendly dispositions and signals came into being, already in vertebrate sociability, but the differentiation of "we and the others" as well. The appetence to bond is opposed by dispositions of mistrust that tend to keep a distance and defend primary resources. Hence, small-group sociability could be handled quite well. Rituals of appeasement and the leveling of dominance were cultural means that evolved to nurture group cohesion. As for the rise of Neolithic larger groups of heterogeneous populations living together, new cultural rules had to arise. This process includes forms of customs, of religion, monuments and sacred objects. We may observe comparable phenomena in traditional cultures that exist today. The construction of group identity depends on myths that explain the group's identity by means of the cultural creation of common ancestors. The earlier kinship-relations of group members are extended to become culturally co-defined relations. Materially, these myths are made manifest by sacred objects. Through such symbols, the group communicates its "identity". The small-group ethos is thereby transferred to a larger group. On another level, artifacts and monuments that derive their expression from the repertoire of ritual "hostility displays" are used to secure the group's territory. Both forms of symbolic practice serve to maintain group identity internally by binding through common descent and externally by territorial demarcation through agonistic symbols.

Art as behaviour--an ethological approach to visual and verbal art, music and architecture.

In recent years, the fine arts, architecture, music and literature have increasingly been examined from the vantage point of human ethology and evolutionary psychology. In 2011 the authors formed the research group 'Ethology of the Arts' concentrating on the evolution and biology of perception and behaviour. These novel approaches aim at a better understanding of the various facets represented by the arts by taking into focus possible phylogenetic adaptations, which have shaped the artistic capacities of our ancestors. Rather than culture specificity, which is stressed e.g. by cultural anthropology and numerous other disciplines, universal human tendencies to perceive, feel, think and behave are postulated. Artistic expressive behaviour is understood as an integral part of the human condition, whether expressed in ritual, visual, verbal or musical art. The Ethology of the Arts-group's research focuses on visual and verbal art, music and built environment/architecture and is designed to contribute to the incipient interdisciplinarity in the field of evolutionary art research.