Evolution and Art (the "signature of man")

In an American Spectator essay, "Evolution Needs to Evolve", Hal G.P. Colebatch writes:

Monkeys and men appear to have a common ancestor. Monkeys, like men, have hands. But, as Chesterton said, the significant point is not that monkeys have hands, but that, compared to Man, monkeys do almost nothing with them. A five-year old child can paint a crude picture of a monkey. But not the wisest monkey ever painted a picture of a child. Years of experiments trying to teach apes language show they cannot form even the simplest sentences.

If a monkey was born capable not only of gathering nuts and bananas but also of building cathedrals, writing Hamlet or flying to the moon, we would see it as a major objection to the pure theory of evolution. We might even be tempted to believe that a God had intervened somewhere along the line.

But Man is born capable of doing these things and has done them. The fact speaks for itself. Further, as far as paleontology can tell us, Cro-Magnon Man, the earliest form of Homo sapiens, had brains as good as modern men -- Cro-Magnon Man simply knew less. We know from cave paintings that 16,000 years ago at least Man had highly developed art.

Why? Art is useless for survival. There is no reason why evolution should have produced it. It is possible to be reminded of Gandalf's cryptic comment in The Lord of the Rings: "Something else is at work."

The reference to Chesterton is, I believe, a reference to one or more passages in The Everlasting Man, one of his greatest books. Chesterton wrote:

 It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

That is the sort of simple truth with which a story of the beginnings ought really to begin. The evolutionist stands staring in the painted cavern at the things that are too large to be seen and too simple to be understood. He tries to deduce all sorts of other indirect and doubtful things from the details of the pictures, because he can not see the primary significance of the whole; thin and theoretical deductions about the absence of religion or the presence of superstition; about tribal government and hunting and human sacrifice and heaven knows what. ... When all is said, the main fact that the record of the reindeer men attests, along with all other records, is that the reindeer man could draw and the reindeer could not. If the reindeer man was as much an animal as the reindeer, it was all the more extraordinary that he could do what all other animals could not. If he was an ordinary product of biological growth, like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one. ...

It is not contended here that these primitive men did wear clothes any more than they did weave rushes; but merely that we have not enough evidence to know whether they did or not. But it may be worthwhile to look back for a moment at some of the very few things that we do know and that they did do. If we consider them, we shall certainly not find them inconsistent with such ideas as dress and decoration. We do not know whether they decorated other things. We do not know whether they had embroideries, and if they had the embroideries could not be expected to have remained. But we do know that they did have pictures; and the pictures have remained. And there remains with them, as already suggested, the testimony to something that is absolute and unique; that belongs to man and to nothing else except man; that is a difference of kind and not a difference of degree. A monkey does not draw clumsily and a man cleverly; a monkey does not begin the art of representation and a man carry it to perfection. A monkey does not do it at all; he does not begin to do it at all; he does not begin to begin to do it at all. A line of some kind is crossed before the first faint line can begin.

On a lighter note, see the young Chesterton's satirical piece, "Half Hours in Hades" (written and illustrated in 1891, when Chesterton was seventeen), which contains a section on the "evolution of demons". The piece contains this little bit of hilarious brilliance:

To proceed at once to business, I will first introduce to my young readers the Common, or "Garden" serpent, so called because its first appearance in the world took place in a garden. Since that time its proportions have dwindled considerably, but its influence and power have largely increased; it is found in almost everything.

Indeed!

Comments

[Louis]

Simply as a side note, tangential: It was recently pointed out to me that, so far as we now know, while many other animals generate tears, man is the only animal that sheds them because of emotion. We are the only animal that weeps for another.

[craig]

When it comes to evolution the question always is: did we evolve or not? If yes, then the question becomes: is it strictly a natural occurence as Darwin posits or did God guide the process of 15 billion years of cosmic/biological evolution? If He guided the process, then the question becomes: how and to what extent? Further questions that arise are: what does ancestral sin ("original sin" in the west) look like in an evolutionary model where our impulses and drives are explained as natural aspects of our natures? Also my favorite question: what the different species that will be the descendents of Homo sapiens???? Are they guaranteed to have "human" souls? If not, does that cause any metaphysical difficulties?

[Mark Brumley]

Good questions, Craig.

It would be helpful to think a bit about the question, "Is evolution strictly a natural occurence as Darwin posits or did God guide the process ...?" I don't think Darwin addressed the issue in such a way that we can adequately distinguish in him between a natural process in the sense of a feature of the natural world, from a natural process that rejects any dependence of the natural world (and through it the natural world's processes) on anything beyond it. The second view, as you probably know, is usually called philosophical naturalism. I don't think Darwin intended to frame the issues in such a way that God was necessarily excluded altogether from the issue of human existence, whatever may be the implications of Darwin's position. In other words, Darwin wasn't claiming that evolution necesarily entailed atheism. But it is clear that he sought to exclude God's intervention as the explanation for the diversity of organisms and instead appealed to natural processes as accounting for that diversity. That God may ultimately have been the "author" or source of nature, and therefore the source of the processes of nature, including evolution, does not seem to be incompatible with his presentation of evolution.

Even so, the doctrine of creation is incompatible with Darwin's view of man as not radically different in kind from other animals. Even if one were to posit a natural process of evolution, one that does not entail God's intervention to account for the biological diversity of organisms, it seems that a more-than-natural (in the scientific sense of nature) explanation of man's intellectual and volitional abilities is still necessary.

[craig]

My reading of Darwin (both of his books and of his life) is that he really believed life arose and developed independent of Divine action (despite some PC comments here and there to the contrary). Also, I think once one admits that natural selection occurs, it is not beyond reason or science to see the jump between chimps and humans. Faith in God is faith....esp. in the face of a complete lack of evidence. If you have not read "The Origin of Virtue" by Matt Ridley you should. He explains how our higher human qualities could be the product of blind evolution. Despite that...I still have faith in Christ and His Church, but I admit it is unreasonable and unscientific. (I've become much more eastern in that regard than scholastic). --Just my two cents...

[LJ]

Despite that...I still have faith in Christ and His Church, but I admit it is unreasonable and unscientific.

The truth of that statement depends massively on your definitions of reason and science does it not, Craig?

This is the entire point that Chesterton and others are getting at, in my opinion. If I define reason as the objectivists do (the Randian cult) it would encompass all of art and virtue.

But if I am to consider reason as the "operating system", so to speak, of human beings, I can recognize that within that system there are self-diagnostic tools yet if I were to expect an upgrade to "2.0" I would have to get that from an outside source, outside of mankind. Which all just begs the inference that the original operating system comes from an outside source to begin with. The Scholastics are merely saying that it is a definition of God, the source of the operating system.

By that measure, the inference to God is not "unreasonable" because it is using the operating system of reason to infer God's existence.

Whether Darwin saw it or not, his theory was constructed in a similar fashion. That is to say, from science he made inferences that were not demonstrated scientifically, in the strict sense of that word.

Strictly speaking, science is the scientific method that we were all taught in high school (or should have been). By itself it holds nothing to be true that it cannot demonstrate, not necessarily explain fully, but can demonstrate consistently. That consistent demonstration itself is a function of reason. We look for "laws" or principles in science. Science is repeatability, the minimization of randomness and that is just a function of our operating system, our reason. It is what enables technology, which is really just employing any predictability in our world to our own ends.

But science as it seems to be applied in modern discourse goes far beyond that limitation and seeks to make proclamations properly belonging to metaphysics, making inferences and asserting them with the authority of "science" which we all mistakenly believe is still operating on that original scientific principle of verifiability. With such an authority we are then brought to this conundrum of thinking that there is a conflict between science and faith, between reason and faith, and we are led to say things like faith is "unreasonable and unscientific." I would say that it is neither.

Our inferences from the natural world, the world of pure scientific study, are as valid as the inferences drawn by Darwin and/or the recent army of atheist evangelists, because in either case they are inferences. I believe that many of us have been intimidated into trying to make some compromise with Darwin, without sufficient pure scientific evidence to do so. That in the big picture the existence of the biosphere and its origins is a subject that quite rightly admits of a variety of possibilities within the parameters of the Creed, in no way compels us to capitulate to the metaphysical inferences of Darwin or his descendents.