Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Volume 10 Issue 1 Volume 10, Issue 1 (2006) Article 6

2006

Evolutionary Universal in Ecological Rationality

Mimi E. Lam University of British Columbia

Roberto Gonzalez-Plaza Northwest Indian College

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Recommended Citation Lam, Mimi E. and Gonzalez-Plaza, Roberto. "Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics in Ecological Rationality." Journal of Ecological Anthropology 10, no. 1 (2006): 66-71.

Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol10/iss1/6

This Crib Notes is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Ecological Anthropology by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 66 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 10 2006

Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics in Ecological Rationality

Mimi E. Lam and Roberto Gonzalez-Plaza

Abstract We contend that individual reactions to universal aesthetics were critical in adapting brain structure and evolutionary cognition. Emotional responses to aesthetics and reflexive judgments by prehistoric people may have evolved an ecological rationality with intimate pragmatics of survival. In North American Pacific North- west ecosystems, complex indigenous societies flourished for millennia, developing strategies that allowed them to co-adapt with locally varying, productive . They evolved ‘societal phenotypes’ based on cultural belief systems fostering ecosystem balance. Their detailed contemplation and experience of natural phenomena, including other organisms’ behaviors, were formalized as traditional ecological knowledge. For example, pre-contact Pacific Northwest societies co-evolved with periodic salmon migrations and blooming gardens of camas lilies, aesthetic events that we suggest inspired awe, captured attention, and motivated memory in individuals. Sharing and collectively storing this ecological information as traditional knowledge enhanced the group’s survival. The natural endowment of judging the and the beautiful through an aesthetic or spiritual connection with the place likely contributed to the success of these indigenous societies, before reservations disrupted their local environmental relationships and cultural transmission of millennial place-based knowledge. Today, the subjective experience of evolutionary universal aesthetics may drive human affinities for natural phenomena and scientists’ preferences in ecological research. We motivate an argument for such unique by proposing an evolutionary relation- ship between the biophysical environment, aesthetic responses, and cultural belief systems.

Introduction In the diverse and productive North American sophisticated cognition of the natural world; i.e., an Pacific Northwest human ecosystems, indigenous “ecological rationality” (Gigerenzer and Selten 2001). societies co-adapted with their landscapes for mil- Relocation of aboriginal communities to reserva- lennia (Trosper 2002, 2003). While these societies tions disrupted complex cultural and environmental have been much studied (Ames and Maschner 1999; practices emerging from this traditional place-based Suttles 1987), their “remarkable properties;” i.e., knowledge (Gonzalez-Plaza and Lam 2004). the (specific) manifestations of human cognitive Here we propose an inherent basis for aes- and behavioral abilities in these ecosystems (Stepp thetic discrimination, which supports the biophilia et al. 2003), have not. Facing variable climate and hypothesis that have an innately emotional recurrent environmental disturbances, they evolved affiliation to natural phenomena (Wilson 1984); as resilient complex adaptive systems (Gunderson its potential consequences in ecological research and Holling 2002; Holling 2001) with ‘phenotypes’ are explored by Kovacs et al. in this issue. Mental expressing belief systems that preserved relatively har- constructs or cultural models (Holland and Quinn monious relationships with the animate and inani- 1987) of indigenous societies—formalized as tradi- mate ecosystem elements. The millennial continuity tional knowledge (Berkes 1999; Pierotti and Wildcat of place, culture and resource use that distinguishes 2000)—regulated human activities toward sustain- indigenous societies (Kempton 2001) manifests a able ecological management by fostering respectful Vol. 10 2006 Lam and Gonzalez-Plaza / Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics 67 ecosystem relationships. Captured in historical data, experience, not its social context, was likely critical. reconstructed oral stories, chronicles and archeo- Without rationality, the mammalian visual system logical evidence, survival strategies evolved through evaluates the environment to respond adaptively; it detailed contemplation and experience of natural discriminates and reconstructs information based phenomena and behavior (Laird 2002; Maffi 2001). on complex neuronal sets that synthesize the input Though mostly undocumented, two examples of the into coherent patterns for rapid processing. Early panoply of observations by indigenous societies to mammalian representations mediated by affective orchestrate strategies sustaining resource use are: in processing via basal brain nuclei were rewired in the high Andes, the influence of El Niño on Pleiades humans to higher cortex-based centers. Emotionally visibility was accurately interpreted to determine po- pleasing and captivating our senses, universal aes- tato plantation time (Orlove et al. 2000); in another thetics may have attracted humans to beautiful and ecoregion, the Blackfoot imitated wolf bison-hunting sublime natural events, which aroused the “promise strategies (Barsh and Marlor 2003). We suggest that of function” (Greenough 1958) with ecological infor- many indigenous societies sustained integrated hu- mation used to survive. This of cognitive man ecosystem services and functions with cognitive mechanisms in a “biophilic” ecological rationality mechanisms embedded in cultural belief systems and offers an evolutionary perspective for the aesthetic an ecological rationality predicated on evolutionary judgments central to the biophilia hypothesis (Kellert universal aesthetics. and Wilson 1993). As behaviors adapted to ecological challenges selecting early brain biological adapta- Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics tions, this data was mapped in the brain structure, We view evolutionary universal aesthetics enhancing individual learning and . or “Darwinian aesthetics” of nature (Voland and As individuals processed specific ecological in- Grammer 2003) to be a key psychological human formation to file a survival database that maximized adaptation based on an ecological rationality deeply fitness, evolutionary universal aesthetics likely cast in our brain biology. We suggest that ecological prompted improved attention, memory and learn- rationality; i.e., a logic system mapped to the struc- ing. Categorizing information by Kantian kinds ture of the biophysical environment and motivated created referential databases, with the adaptive value by emotional responses to universal aesthetics, was a that pattern recognition constituted learning events sine qua non condition for human survival. We argue from which future outcomes could be predicted. that environmental knowledge evolved from indi- Exploiting the statistical structure of the environ- vidual responses to universal aesthetics of natural or ment, fast and frugal heuristics (Gigerenzer and Kantian kinds, such as the beautiful and the sublime Selten 2001) devised simple decision mechanisms (Kant 1952, 2004). By instigating an intellectual with ecological rationality to interpret biophysical activity or reflexive judgment of the order or bal- data quickly and successfully. Ecological rationality, ance of the world, emotional responses to universal coupled with logical cognition; i.e., the capacity aesthetics may have catalyzed the first individual to infer (Houdé and Tzourio-Mazoyer 2003), may learning events. In contemporary socio-cultural en- have evolved as de facto adaptive mind tools. Logi- vironments, aesthetic preferences may be implicitly cal cognition, used in conjunction with the innate influencing our belief systems, thinking and knowl- capacity to handle numerical data (Snyder and edge—such as how and what science is conducted Mitchell 1999; Hauser 2005), could statistically (Kovacs et al., this issue)—by biasing judgments and average environmental information to recognize decisions made regarding the biophysical information spatial and temporal periodicity for predictive in human ecosystems. comparison. By instantiating learning events with At the evolutionary onset of human learning, survival benefits, of nature’s when the biophysical environment was the primary and pattern coherence may have been selected as information source, we contend that the individual aesthetics-mediated human adaptations. 68 Journal of Ecological Anthropology Vol. 10 2006 Pacific Northwest Traditional Ecological (Lam and Gonzalez-Plaza 2005), stabilized by a social Knowledge rationality reflecting reciprocal relationships and fair Five millennia ago, plentiful yet variable salmon judgments. As humans transcended ecological niches migrations stabilized, which together with cultivated to ‘eco-cultural niches,’ (Lam and Gonzalez-Plaza camas gardens and temperate coastal rainforests 2006) universal aesthetics likely mediated individual (Boyd 1999), consolidated the cultural archetype cognitive adaptations to configure social adaptations, of Pacific Northwest societies (Finney et al. 2002). which heightened awareness of the self, its biophysical Recurring aesthetic natural events, such as salmon environment and its social interactions. migrations and blooming camas lilies, were phe- Inextricably rooted to experience in eco-cultural nomena that we propose precipitated a local ecologi- niches, the adaptive cognition and behavior that form cal rationality. The upriver migration of spawning the cultural belief systems of indigenous societies are red sockeye salmon, Onchorhynchus nerka, likely manifest in place-based language, nomenclature, impressed the inhabitants with their majesty and technology, rituals, world views and spirituality (Lew- magnitude. The annual sockeye cycle then became is-Williams 2002; Mithen 1996). Elders bequeath environmental information used to anticipate and culturally embedded wisdom—“meta-heuristics” or plan the future. Another beautiful natural event theories of living (Baltes and Staudinger 2000)—with was the blue expanse of blooming gardens of camas practical survival algorithms. Cultural belief systems lilies, Camassia quamash, cultivated by the Coast emphasizing the “functional and structural coupling” Salish. We suggest that such periodic events of (Maturana and Varela 1980) between humans and universal aesthetic properties awakened attention the biophysical environment were perpetuated as mechanisms and irreversibly locked memory, learn- traditional knowledge. , harmony and sym- ing and knowledge. metry in nature were reflected in socio-economic The First Salmon Ceremony practiced by practices, such as cooperation, reciprocity, common Pacific Northwest tribes exemplifies the intimate resource management, community governance and coupling of emotional responses to aesthetics and the potlatch system, thus stabilizing Pacific North- cultural belief systems, preserving ecosystem bal- west societies and sustaining their resources (Gintis ance. The first salmon caught of the season was and Bowles 2004; Singleton 1998). We anticipate respected as an honored guest; its flesh was ceremo- that the biological basis of human indirect reciprocity nially cut and eaten by the community and its bones (Nowak and Sigmund 2005) and altruism (Fehr and returned to sea. Its spirit was believed to revive, Fischbaher 2003; Panchanathan and Boyd 2004) will communicate its good treatment, and bring about reveal critical evolutionary cognitive mechanisms. an abundance of salmon, whose bones were similarly recycled (Gunther 1926). Such societal phenotypes Conclusions or collective behaviors venerating animal and plant We have suggested that evolutionary universal ‘spirits,’ through ritualized ceremony, beliefs, taboos aesthetics may have adapted an ecological rational- and mythology, promoted abundant seasonal food ity, which formed the basis of a social rationality harvests. We suggest that the natural endowment predicated on harmonious relationships and bal- of judging the sublime and beautiful, through an ance. The consonance between universal aesthetics emotional connection with the place and its con- and social practice in indigenous societies is viewed stituents, fostered a life’s logic that increased the as an evolutionary adaptation or way of knowing. overall fitness of indigenous societies. Traditional ecological knowledge that is prompted The balance perceived in universal aesthetic by emotional responses to universal aesthetics properties and processes; e.g., animal group dynamics, wove a common mental heuristic around a natural may then have reflected a ‘social aesthetic.’ The evo- logic system that integrated values and traditions lutionary dynamics between individual learners may derived from local biophysical environments. As have transitioned to favor cooperative social learners the effective complexity of coupled human-natural

https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jea/vol10/iss1/6 | DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/2162-4593.10.1.6 Vol. 10 2006 Lam and Gonzalez-Plaza / Evolutionary Universal Aesthetics 69 ecosystems increases, we advocate a shift in human Fehr, E., and U. Fischbacher. behavior towards maximizing biosphere fitness 2003 The nature of human altruism. Nature to mitigate anthropogenic impact. Such praxis of 425:785-791. harmonious coexistence is reminiscent of many Finney, P.B., I. Gregory-Eaves, M.S.V. Doug- indigenous cultural belief systems. las, and J.P. Smol. 2002 Fisheries productivity in the northeast- Mimi E. Lam, Fisheries Centre, University of British ern Pacific Ocean over the past 2,200 Columbia, and Department of Biology, University years. Nature 416:729-733. of New Mexico, [email protected]. Gigerenzer, G., and R. Selten (editors). Roberto Gonzalez-Plaza, Northwest Indian College. 2001 Bounded rationality: The adaptive tool- box. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Acknowledgements Gintis, H., and S. 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