--Ecclesiastes 3.9-11

The sense of beauty

Denis Dutton is not happy about the present state of relativism in the arts. In his book, The Art Instinct Mr. Dutton objects to postmodern art critics, who insist that the only meaning in art is that which the observer or the critic imposes, and to cultural anthropologists, who want to level the playing field in the arts and say that every culture is equally beautiful, when regarded from its own unique perspective.

Mr. Dutton believes that there is such a thing as “beauty.” He seems to think that the idea of beauty exists in a kind of absolute way, so that, even though different people may hold to different criteria of what counts as beautiful to them, still, they share an idea about beauty that informs their thinking and guides their tastes in the arts.

This notion may seem self-evident to most of us: Doesn’t everybody have some idea of “beauty” to guide his taste in culture, people, experiences, and the like? Indeed, they do. The interesting facet of Mr. Dutton’s essay is that he wants to explain that idea of beauty genetically, as the result of evolution and natural selection. Human beings have a kind of genetic predisposition to art and things beautiful, an inclination which began somehow as a survival mechanism and that, having once kicked in, quite by accident, now seems to serve us well in preserving and advancing the species.

The faith of evolution

We should expect an evolutionist like Mr. Dutton to argue this way. The nature of evolutionary thinking is expansionist in the extreme. As a substitute for the Christian worldview, evolution eliminates the need for God and absolute truth and thus must fill up the space left vacant by the banishing of these players with its own explanations of all things. This is what you would expect of any worldview. After all, one of the criteria of a reliable worldview is that it must be comprehensive, capable of explaining everything that is according to its own most basic presuppositions. When it comes to the idea of beauty and, consequently, the arts, Mr. Dutton sees these uniquely human attributes as having evolved into our gene pool from some original random mutation that somehow improved our ability to survive and reproduce.

But while Mr. Dutton may argue this point eloquently, he would be hard pressed to prove it by means of scientific experimentation. And in the evolutionary worldview, that only can be regarded as true in any sense which is demonstrable by the scientific method. Mr. Dutton’s attempt to explain the human impulse and attraction to things beautiful thus falls into the category of a theory, an idea that must be accepted by faith before it can be subjected to scientific validation. The evolutionary view of beauty and arts, in other words, requires a faith commitment, a belief in unseen realities that cannot be proven but that must be, or have been, in order to make one’s theory make sense.

It will be extremely difficult, I think, to prove in a science lab that my great appreciation for Andrew Wyeth, Johan Sebastian Bach, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Phil Keaggy is bound up in a certain one of my genes. And why, if there is a “beauty gene” inherited by all the species, should we have such widely differing tastes and views of what constitutes beauty? And why do some people seem to have almost no appreciation for artistic beauty?

It takes a lot of faith to believe that Mr. Dutton’s evolutionary explanation of the idea of beauty and our propensity toward art is the best explanation available. Some, however, will choose to embrace it, because failure to do so represents a crack in the evolutionary foundations. Even if it does sound a little far-fetched, and cannot be proven scientifically, still, if one is inclined to think in evolutionary terms, Mr. Dutton’s view of the reason for beauty and the arts will do.

A Biblical explanation of beauty

Personally, I think the Biblical explanation is more convincing. It, too, begins in an act of faith; however, unlike the evolutionary view of beauty and the arts, the Biblical view has deeper roots, and features a long history of those who, believing that men are made in the image of God, have set about the work of art to bring that image to expression and honor God with beautiful works in all kinds of genre. There was nothing of a survival motive for any of these great artists; rather, they were simply pursuing their inward sense of beauty as they understood that from their relationship with God. The fact that, thus motivated, they produced most of what are still today considered the greatest works of art in the history of mankind, says, I think, a good deal about the compelling power of their own sense of the nature of beauty and the source of the arts.

Evolutionary thinkers will, of course, disagree with me, and that’s their prerogative. Each of us must decide what’s beautiful and which works of art will satisfy our own aesthetic needs. But as we are engaging this conversation and considering these important matters, let us not assume that evolutionists have uttered the last word on this or any other subject. Their worldview is always open to challenge, even though they may suggest that “everyone knows” that evolution is true and that’s that.

Well, everyone doesn’t know it, and, in fact, those who look carefully to understand the Biblical and Christian perspective on the origins and nature of such things as beauty and the arts often discover in the Christian worldview a much more compelling, much more reasonable, and much more elegant explanation than the tooth-and-claw/time-plus-chance mantra of the evolutionary worldview.

For more insight to this subject, get the book, State of the Arts, by Gene Edward Veith, Jr., from our online store. Or read the article, “A Profound Whimsy,” by T. M. Moore.