Essay #3 Rough Draft

When asking yourself what is beauty, it’s important to consider the words true definition which is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. For example, since the beginning of mankind our ideas about what is beautiful have remained generally universal.We subconsciously consider a wide range of art, people, sceneries, families, and especially skills beautiful on a daily basis. Therefore, beauty is derived from natural and sexual selection meaning its, for the most part, completely out of our control. Denis Dutton, a philosophy professor and editor of Arts & Letters Daily, presented a compelling speech about how beauty is a part of human nature entitled “A Darwinian theory of beauty” at Ted Talks in 2010. Based on Dutton’s persuasive slant on what beauty really is, one cannot help but conclude that the fascination in the well acquired skills it takes to create something so close to perfection will be beautiful until the end of time.

Furthermore, Charles Darwin first introduced the theory of natural selection which stated that organisms who have certain skill sets better enable them to adapt to different environments, avoid predators, and dominate competition for food and mates will survive and reproduce more than other organisms, thus ensuring those favorable traits in the future generations. To illustrate, Dutton uses natural selection to explain our basic revolutions such as fears and the stench of rotting food but elaborates, “Natural selection also explains pleasures -- sexual pleasure, our liking for sweet, fat and proteins, which in turn explains a lot of popular foods, from ripe fruits through chocolate malts and barbecued ribs.” (Dutton, par. 4) To clarify, because natural selection subconsciously pulls us toward more favorable qualities in people, places, food, and even movies it is embedded in our culture and our ancestors, and then handed down to us. Natural selection proves we can not help but admire anything that has been beautifully constructed and because the more dominant traits reproduce more, the beauty will inevitably remain timeless.

That is to say, sexual selection is a certain aspect of natural selection which occurs when organisms with more favorable qualities produce an exceeding number of offspring because they mate more in comparison to other organisms of the same gender and as result, promise the survival of the more inclined genetic traits. Dutton analyzes, “ ...the experience of beauty is one of the ways that

evolution has of arousing and sustaining interest or fascination, even obsession, in order to encourage us toward making the most adaptive decisions for survival and reproduction.” (Dutton, par. 5) We can not help but conform to what our body and mind subliminally choose for us. When examining the result of timeless beauty in families and groups of people all over the world, sexual selection is the only logical answer.

With this in mind, it is apparent that tremendous skill and quality is key to the creation of beauty, but especially in art. When studying the history of art, most would assume that the earliest known works were the ancient cave paintings which are roughly 32,000 years old when in fact, our race discovered aesthetic pleasures about 1.4 million years ago. As an illustration, The Acheulian hand axes was a very popular tool for centuries until a homo erectus began crafting it into slim stone blades that represented the shape of a teardrop. These hand axes where found basically everywhere life roamed, scattered through Asia, Europe, and Africa but the compelling thing about this tool is, the scarce number of them they found in each area and the little to no wear on the blade indicates that the Acheulian hand axes could not have been used for hunting. As a result, when wondering what these ancient artifacts could have possibly been used for, Dutton explains, “ The best available answer is that they were literally the earliest known works of art, practical tools transformed into captivating aesthetic objects, contemplated both for their elegant shape and their virtuoso craftsmanship.” (Dutton, par. 9) For that reason, it is undebatable that the beauty of the stone was not only in the stone itself, but the expertise it took to hand craft it. The Acheulian hand axes stands as a solid model of why skill is the key to success in forming something beautiful, and why even today, the scarcity of the competency it took to create one is seen as captivating.   

Correspondingly, what is so mind blowing to people today is how the hand axes was communicated throughout the land when there was no language. It’s almost unbelievable, but the

hand axes was made approximately 50,000 to 100,000 years before language was even developed. This furthermore explains why these skills were so glorified and Dutton points out, “Over tens of thousands of generations, such skills increased the status of those who displayed them and gained a reproductive advantage over the less capable.” (Dutton, par. 9) As noted, advanced skill sets contribute to sexual selection due to its way of heightening a person’s status. Therefore, we can not help but see beauty as timeless because the assets we use to achieve beauty are what are being considered in potential mates for procreation which is being taken with us generation, through generation.
Going back to the ancient cave paintings, consider this, when we see these works of art in museums we gawk and gaze at each ones beauty when in reality, a six year old could have drew a better animal. It is important to capture that your interest is not in the symmetry of the lines and design, but in the articulate abilities it took to create these works of art prevalent to it’s time. Our aesthetic taste is not only what's on the surface, but what is deep in our psyche. Evidently, beauty is, should, and always will be timeless due to its inability to be recreated based on time period and expertism.