ABSTRACT
A recent book David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash announcing itself as "A Darwinian Look at Literature" with the title Madame Bovary's Ovaries is an ominous foreshadowing of what people may expect in the future. In his chapter on the arts in The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker brings to bear a conception of human nature, presumably derived from evolutionary psychology, on his evaluation of the arts. In addressing the arts, however, Pinker derives his categories or criteria not from the science of evolutionary psychology, but from the philosopher Denis Dutton, who has "identified seven universal signatures of art." Unhappy about the condition of modern art, he wants to answer the question of why "the arts are in trouble." The effect of Pinker's evolutionary aesthetic on the arts would be conservative, should it ever take effect, since it views traditional forms as conforming to its conception of human nature.
