Does art give us evidence for or against the theory of evolution? I don't want to talk about the scientific controversy here. I want to talk about something else altogether.

Some people have arranged for an animal (usually a monkey, but I think elephants have been used as well) to make use of some media of art, and tools of art, to produce something that they then sell. A lot of times, these people make a lot of money. (I wonder about the aesthetic sense of their buyers, or maybe it's just the novelty of the thing.) I sometimes wonder how many extra bananas the "artist" gets. A monkey loves to play with paint. It's even possible they enjoy the use of bright colors when they make a "painting". But is it art? That is the question before us.

Many of us have been through school, and may have a degree in art, whether it be fine art or commercial art. If we went through fine art classes, as I did, we learn things like good composition, color theory, and so forth. When I studied art in school, I took a course in glaze calculation, which was very enjoyable. I learned how to make glazes that I would like to use on my pots. It is partly an exercise in chemistry, and mathematics, but there are also aesthetic aspects involved. I want a glaze of a certain color, perhaps an intense blue, so I will employ cobalt as one of my ingredients. Other things I might want include how the glaze will behave when put on the pot. Do I want it to be thick or thin, transparent or opaque? Do I want it to bubble? Do I want it to craze? Do I want it to be iridescent? And so forth.

I may study composition, and I will learn about the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean. I will learn about perspective. I will learn about how to draw an anatomically correct human figure or face, by studying the proportions of a human being. I learn, for example, that in the oval of a head, the eyes are almost always halfway down from the top.

I may study color theory so that I can become attuned to colors, how to produce the colors I want, and how to choose colors to achieve a certain effect in my paintings, or my digital art, and so forth. For example, I personally like to use colors that are somewhat adjacent on the color wheel, but sometimes I like to insert a color that is far away for an accent or added interest.

Suppose I am designing a fractal image (this is one of my main genres of expression these days). I have a computer program, and in this program, I have various display windows. One of them shows what the fractal image will look like if I render it in its present state. I have various windows or other dialogs that allow me to change it in various ways, by using certain mathematical formulas, and determining what the numerical values will be. It helps if I understand the mathematics behind it, but it's not essential, and many excellent fractal artists are clueless when it comes to the mathematics behind it. And some mathematically endowed people will design formulas that can be used in the various programs. For example, in UltraFractal, one type of formula is called UCL, which is a coloring formula. This determines what shapes and colors will appear around the various details of the basic fractal formula. In Apophysis, this is called a Script. And so forth. Many mathematically endowed people find the artistry involved to be tough going, but not all.

When I find an image that pleases me, I save my work in a little program that the computer will use to calculate the color of each pixel on the screen, and in this way, I produce a permanent copy of the image, which I can save in various formats, such as .jpg or .png, and which I can then use either for display on a site, or to make a print or some other product.

If I am making a digital landscape, I learn to choose colors that will look realistic when used on the terrain. I learn how to make realistic looking clouds. I may actually study different kinds of clouds (cumulus, cirrus, nimbus, and so forth) and I may look at lots of photos of clouds. I learned that clouds look different in different parts of the world, depending on how local winds behave. I will learn how to make convincing looking rocks, and trees with foliage and bark. I learn how light works so that I can make a foggy image or a sunset. I may learn how to model objects so I can design a house or a car for my scene, and I learn how to make the surface so that it looks like one: bricks, windows, chrome, and so forth.

Now suppose I give a monkey a paintbrush and some pots of paints. He will dip the paintbrush in a pot of paint, and then sling the paint onto a canvas. Monkeys can be great imitators of simple motions. I can show a monkey how to type, and he'll bang on the keys and produce gibberish. Remember the question of how many monkeys and typewriters it would take to write a play by Shakespeare? When he slings the paint onto a canvas, he gets something visual, but is it art? Oh, he may like the bright colors, but does he have enough aesthetic sense to do anything other than appreciate bright colors?

Can I show this blog to a monkey, let him read it, and then see what his thoughts are? Maybe he can say "I want a banana" in sign language, but can he say anything coherent about what I have said here?

Have you ever heard of a monkey even being TAUGHT to read? I haven't. Just for the heck of it, and to give you a perspective a little broader than mine, I looked at the Wikipedia article on the chimpanzee, the monkey most often used for cognitive experiments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee No mention of reading. Yes, mention of sign language, and self-awareness (well, maybe), but nothing beyond that. Do chimps name each other? Artists often struggle to name their art works. We not only name things, but we name things analytically. Chimps respond to their names. That's about it. If you Google "chimp reading" and look at the images, you might find a chimp posing with a book or magazine. I found only two pictures on the first page. But all they are doing is posing or copying human behavior. Catch him quick! while he is holding the magazine just so!

Do monkeys have an aesthetic sense? To ask is to answer. I don't know of ANYONE who would honestly say they do. The most you can say is that they like bright colors. They like the feeling of slinging paint onto a canvas. Maybe if you put several paintings in front of a monkey, he will choose one of them. But on what basis? You can't even ask, and if you did, do you really think he would tell you?

Not only do human beings have the capacity to make art, to observe various rules that will make their art better, or choose to break the rules for reasons of style, but we have the capacity to appreciate art in a deeper way than monkeys do. We all have an instinct that human beings have an aesthetic sense, and monkeys don't. Human beings can also make symbols, or make art for the purpose of accomplishing some other purpose. Africans of long ago (and even today) make masks for religious ceremonies. Native Americans painted themselves before going to war. They sometimes wear the head of an animal and do a dance simulating the movements of the animal. The monkey might be able to ape them (ever wonder where that word came from?) but he doesn't know the meaning behind it, and he can't design the costume or the dance. Native Americans also designed and make Kachina dolls. They designed patterns for their pots, and glazes and other methods of producing usable pottery, and what they designed became part of their culture and their lore. I could multiply examples. You get my point.

If you think about the theory of evolution, think about this: what survival value does an aesthetic sense have? I can't think of one! Maybe you can. If you can, how would the existence of an aesthetic sense increase the chances of survival of an individual? Sure, we can choose a mate based on aesthetic considerations, and maybe the monkey does, too, but mostly I suspect the monkey learns to identify the mate he chose based on her smell. But beyond that, what do you think? If people are tone deaf, are they less able to survive? Only if they speak a tonal language such as Chinese, and I'll bet you'll never find a Chinese who is totally tone deaf. I think being tone deaf is an acquired characteristic. It comes from being raised in a tonal vacuum. Remember the experiment where a child was placed in a room, and nobody spoke any language to him, so they could see which language is the true natural language? He didn't speak any at all! A human child must be exposed to a human language to learn it, but he learns it effortlessly. The chimp must be carefully taught. He might pass on a few words to his offspring, but he simply won't have a language that will be functional beyond the bare rudiments. And the human child can learn to be inventive with language (slang) and to use it for humorous purposes (puns require very high level thought).

And if you think about the theory of evolution, how would the trait of having an aesthetic sense develop in the first place? If monkeys don't have one, where did we get ours?

I submit that human beings are unique with respect to our capacity for art. Logically, we did not get our aesthetic sense by descending from any animal. Given that, this is one more bit of evidence that there is something seriously wrong with the theory of evolution.

Think about it.