L' evoluzionsmo puo' spiegare la musica, la bellezza, la letteratura?
Sì, perchè l' evoluzionismo, ricorrendo a spiegazioni banali, puo' spiegare tutto. Forse per quello esalta tanto noi dilettanti:
And the explanations really are as absurd... precisely because they are looking to explain something that they have not defined. Until you define what music is, and how it differs from pitched sound, for example, you will not know what question you are asking, when you inquire into its origins. Until you recognize that the human sense of beauty is a completely different thing from the peahen’s sexual attraction, you won’t know what, if anything, is proved by the sparse similarities...
Worse, the whole “adaptation” approach to human phenomena is topsy-turvy. It involves a mechanical application, case by case, of the theory of natural selection, as supplemented by modern genetics. It tells us that, if a trait is widespread across our species, then it has been “selected for.” But this means only that the trait is not maladaptive, that it is not something that would disappear under evolutionary pressure. And that is a trivial observation. Everything that exists could be said to be not dysfunctional. That tells us nothing about how the thing in question came to exist. Nor does it tell us anything about its meaning or significance for us.
Consider mathematics. There is no doubt that this is not maladaptive. A creature with mathematical competence is not likely to suffer from this trait in such a way as to impair its reproductive chances. Does this mean that we have at last got a theory of mathematics — a theory of what it is, why it exists, and what it means for us?...
