Research Paper on:
Human Experience, Art, and Evolutionary Theory

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
where the society is bound because it entails the processes of past and present in a way that forecasts the future even as it reflects the present. Plato (and,  by extension, Socrates) holds that art should be judged according to its truth, but it can provide only "true opinion" at best because it must be judged by external standards.  To consider art in terms of its role and purposes in the overall evolutionary processes of humanity is to consider the development of an awareness in the human psyche that  extends beyond mere "survival of the fittest." Dissanayake and "What Is Art For?" In her 1995 book, "Homo Aestheticus; What Is Art For?" (2000), Ellen Dissanayake sets out to illustrate  her two primary assumptions regarding art and the evolutionary processes of humanity. First, she notes that aesthetic experience in all its variety (viewing paintings, listening to a concert, watching the  sunset over the ocean, taking pleasure in the blossom of a flower, and so on) share certain fundamental characteristics with the experiences most often associated with feelings of love --  whether those feelings are parental, fraternal or romantic. The other point she wants to make is that these characteristics may be situated within a theory of natural selection as it  worked on primates and early hominids. Dissanayake sees a distinct connection between the ways in which both love and art address the human "hierarchy of needs." In terms of  the "hierarchy of needs" as introduced, understood, and explained by Abraham Maslow nearly forty years ago, the foundation of the hierarchy are the most fundamental components (biological, physiological) of human  life while those concerned with an individuals highest potential are at the top. The first level according to Dissanayake of the hierarchy ("mutuality") is best understood in terms of the