Dutton’s effort to use Darwin to go beyond the origins of art and to evaluate its forms and resolve its philosophical ambiguities is animated by the desire to find the “human universals that underlie the vast cacophony of cultural differences through history and across the globe.” But why think of these differences as a cacophony? Why not celebrate them as a proliferation of human possibilities? Because the overvaluation of unity, an avatar of Platonic idealism, which lurks within Dutton’s naturalism has impelled him to write, in effect, two different books—one of which, on the prehistory of art, is better than the other, a novel and important work. Here, he is on solid ground—if, of course, we can speak of solid ground where speculation and theory are still impossible to distinguish. The evolutionary psychology of art seems to be living through its own Pleistocene Era. But to concede as much is also to suggest that, at least, it has a future. The Art Instinct is taking some of the very first, if uncertain, steps toward it.
more from The American Scholar here.