Nature, Art and Values; an Essay in Three Parts. 3.

  by Koenraad Kortmulder                                        k.kortmulder@kpnplanet.nl 

I. On Art and Nature; some parallels.

II. On Imaging in Art and Nature.

III. On Values of Art and Nature.

Abstract.

Individuals are members of classes, and of classes-of-classes. That is true for both individual animals and separate works of art. Classes result from break-throughs and the origination of new morphospaces. (I).

Interaction between or within individuals leads to imaging of one onto the other,, and thereby creates an archive of the evolution of nature, art and the planet. (II).

The archive of retained images and their integration defines an object’s value. (III).

Part III

III. On Values of Art and Nature.

III.1 Introduction: What is that: Value?

The first two parts of this essay could go without precise definitions of the main subjects. Though the contours of Nature and Art may be stuff for debate among specialists, everybody has some notion of both, sufficient for the present discussion. It is different for value. There is a considerable component of subjectivity in its appreciation, and the concept as such is often claimed to be philosophical rather than scientific. Hence this introduction.

All is true to its money, people say. Is that so? Is a thing worth as much as it costs? Lammert Leertouwer, at the time Vice-Chancellor of Leiden University, squarely contradicted it: “Politicians know of everything how much it costs; of none what its value is.” This was his reply to the suggestion that the university might sell part of its collections to meet its financial needs. Apparently, price is not the same as value.

For the opposite view take Georg Simmel. According to Rüdiger Safranski (2010: 58) the former’s great study Philosophie des Geldes (1900) was the very master piece of the entire philosophy of value. In Simmel’s view, money is the measure of all things. The values of the most diverse objects, services and operations can be compared in terms of money. So, value = money?

The present essay deals with the values of nature (individual plants or animals, populations, species) and of works of art. I think that, at least for these categories, money is a very poor measuring rod. That is because money has its own dynamics, which has no relation to the real value of the things sold, but rather with prestige, profitability, currency stability etc. If anywhere, that is so with respect to nature and art, witness the prices of art at the prestigious auctions. And politicians barter away existing nature or conditions necessary for its conservation for gain in votes or in money for public revenues which they think are ‘worth it’. Therefore, I choose Leertouwer’s side. What value is, however, and how it should be measured are still unanswered questions.

Let us try a different approach along the lines of: “what is it worth to you? Or to me; or to him?” Or more formally: “The value of an object is the effort you (or one) find(s) necessary and justified to preserve it for the future.” This is no longer necessarily about money or one’s own possessions, but refers to a more general (and vaguer) notion: effort. Should we succeed in transcending the personal aspect of ‘you, me or him’, this definition wouldn’t be so bad. What we need, thus, would be an objective measuring rod. Searching it is the main purpose of this part.

But can such objective measure exist? I think it does as far as there cannot be disagreement about the quantity the rod will indicate. Choosing one rod or another, as well as its calibration remain subjective. The task of the present essay then is to find a rod that you find convincing. If my quest is successful, the above definition will gain considerably in strength.

Another attempt: Is ‘value’ synonymous with ‘use’? No; according to an essay by Ralph Vaughan Williams, music does not have any use (1); but he did not deny that music may have value. Actually, the music-without-use that Vaughan Williams had in mind is a limit case, a purity of the art worth pursuing and to be approximated through the abolition of financial, economical and emotional motives. However, even if it exists, nothing has yet been said about the value of such music.

It is precisely to avoid the aspect of ‘usefulness to humans’ that some philosophers speak of the intrinsic value of individual animals, species or nature at large. They are mostly concerned with the welfare of animals in captivity, laboratory animals, cattle or with the permissibility of certain techniques, such as genetic manipulation (Visser & Verhoog, 1999). This intrinsic value is thought by them to arise directly from the animal’s being, not out of any external source (use, market value or worship). Reading these authors, one gets the impression that their point is dignity rather than value. A question of respect. That may be why some bio-ethicists write inherent dignity (2)instead of intrinsic value (Heeger & Brom, 2001).

Now one may appreciate or attach value to the animal’s dignity or to respect paid to it. One may even conclude as to animal rights, but none of these inferences are compelling to everyone. One may also wish to derive the intrinsic value of an animal from its supposed (self-)consciousness. After all, in spite of the difficulties in assessing the latter with rigorous scientific methods, there are strong indications of its presence in at least some animal species. It is, however, unclear how, or for how much, we should add its value to the animal’s account.

The concept of intrinsic value does prompt yet another question: is value a quantity? Is one object or creature always more valuable, or less so, than another? My tentative answer is: “No, not always.” Value can be a quality as well as a quantity, be it perhaps not both simultaneously. Which of the two we apply depends on conditions which I may call stress. In the absence of conflicts over the values of different objects - or in the absence of measurement anyway - value is a quality. Of the stars of the Milky Way, the waves of the ocean, the trees in the wood or the leaves of a lawn none is worth more than the others; their individual values are indeterminate. That means they are not equal either. Not-different may be the term to be preferred.

In practice, however, value is often a quantity, namely whenever there is a conflict of values or a necessity of measuring it for whatever reason. That is where the need arises of an objective scaling independent from personal tastes.

In spite of all this, it is not certain that value is an objective property of an animal or thing, that is: independent of its being observed; but for the time being, I do assume that it is. In order to attach a value to it, I mean to take an objective as possible view-point, that is at least at a great distance from this planet.

The risk that at the end of this essay we must conclude that value cannot be expressed in a figure or even not on an ordinal scale, is at this point real, but in that case we may, I hope, have understood a little more about what we mean by saying “value”.

III.2. Caveat: On Measuring Values and Ethics

The creation of an objective measure of values, the purpose if this essay, is not a purely philosophical issue. This is most evident when the results would be used for comparing human individuals. The essay does not deal with humans, but the theory developed in it does not exclude this possibility either. Comparisons of the sort may be undesired and unethical. Even an ordinate scale could have disastrous effects.

Even now, however, there are situations in which such comparisons are being made and morally accepted, though not by all. For instance when one has to choose between the lives of mother or child in a fatally disturbed pregnancy, or in certain cases of abortion. In other cultures than our own other moral principles are held, certainly in extreme circumstances such as we do not experience. Some Inuit peoples accepted the abandoning of elderly persons to die in case of famine. In the most extreme conditions even infanticide was condoned. All for the survival of those who could have new children when the emergencies were relaxed. One judged the survival of the tribe more important than individual lives.

In non-extreme conditions, laws tend to reject comparisons of the respective values of persons. Regimes that openly practise them tend to be repudiated. In its first article, the Dutch Constitution proclaims that all inhabitants have equal rights. Without, by the way, stating that they are of equal value. In fact, in the terminology of this essay, their respective values would be formulated as being not-different.

All this need not be an obstacle to the treating of our theme. To me, this is a purely theoretical exercise on the concept of value. If it leads to a better understanding of what we mean by ‘value’, it was worthwhile. Should others wish to develop the ideas further and take ethics seriously - which is what I want - it will be important to try and shift the border between quality and quantity as much as possible in favour of the former. That could be achieved by avoiding conditions of stress (as meant above) 1. politically by furthering a more hedonic (3) society, ecologically by a better relationship to nature, 2. as an individual, by striving to judge the same conditions as less stressful (personal philosophy of life), and 3. by shifting the subjective border between quality and quantity of value towards higher degrees of stress (ethics)

Finally, it should be emphasised that this is a theoretical study, and not a handbook for conservation.

III.3 Imaging and Value

So, my suggestion is that it is the degree to which an object carries images of its environment in past and present which creates its value (part II page ). Something, however, is missing. Typical for the objects we have chosen to study, organisms and art works, is that they not only register and retain, but integrate the incoming message with information they already contain. This is qualitatively different from the after-image of a flash of sun-light in one’s eye, orthe smell of a flower. Sensory images come and fade away with time. Integration, however, gives rise to new, unique results and has a high degree of irreversibility. So, could the quantity of images going in, together with the degree of their integration with the internal organisation already present  represent a practicable measuring rod of value? How to develop this idea? Let us first look at some of the terms: it is easy to say “integration” or “quantity of imaging”, but are these measurable things? And, is there any objective evidence for their existence? The following sections will seek an answer.

III.4 Is it visible?

As to organisms, one can see how they process incoming information. Most higher animals have sense organs receiving visual images, sounds, smells or gravitation. Besides, their skin is full of sensors for warmth, cold, pain, pressure, touch and patterns thereof. These animals respond to all these diverse stimuli, each in its own manner, according to their species-specific or individual inclinations, modulated by earlier experiences and depending upon their momentary state of excitation.

The controls for filtering, focussing, combining and selective responding are concentrated in a central nervous system, and in chemical networks of hormones, neurotransmitters and the appropriate receptors. Neuro- and chemo- are intimately connected with each other and interwoven. The main structures of the nervous system and their degree of (phylogenetic) development differ greatly between animal phyla. Vertebrates (phylum Chordata) are relatively well provided in this respect.

There is a lot to be read in their anatomy about the processing of information in the living organism. To the expert, that is. In these matters, I always consulted my late friend Jaap Dubbeldam, a neuro-anatomist, and I never came away without learning something new. For instance this: some animals are capable of developing in their brains a very detailed representation of their spatial surroundings, an atlas with maps as it were (4). Many mammals have visual maps. A nocturnal bird such as an owl does the same using acoustic  cues, while a nocturnal rodent’s maps are largely tactile. Fish that have electrical organs, such as the African Mormyrids, orient themselves by generating an electrical field in the space around them and detecting distortions of the field with specific sense organs. In all these cases, the brain region where the spatial information is stored contains a layered structure. The isocortex of higher mammals, which is part of the first brain division or telencephalon, is an example of this, but similar structures have been derived, in diverse vertebrate groups, from different divisions of the brain.

Incoming images are literally mapped into the cortical regions. These maps repeat themselves in each of the layers, so precisely that one can distinguish cylinders of cells, perpendicular to the plane of the layers and carrying the same parts of the same image. Cells within a cylinder are connected to each other, to neighbouring and more distant cylinders, as well as to other brain regions. Together, they form a complicated machinery, capable of analysis of the images, comparison with others and testing against memories, emotions, etcetera. And that is what actually happens.

Can one require more tangible proof of the processes of imaging and integration? Perhaps from the behaviour of live animals? Years ago Bill (W.M.S.) Russell theorised about the flow of information within an animal (1958-1962). He pinpointed several fundamentally different organisation principles. In the so-called ‘instinct system’, circuits generating different behaviour complexes do not communicate with each other. If the animal learns something new in one behavioural context, the innovations remains strictly limited to that context. In other contexts or moods it does not apply the new information. On the other hand, higher vertebrates in particular have what Bill called the ‘intelligence system’, where all information and all new experiences are immediately available to the whole animal, irrespective of its surroundings or mood. Not all behaviour of these higher vertebrates is ‘intelligent’. Especially under conditions of stress, even humans return to the instinct system (Russell & Russell, 1961). All this was mainly theory, but Bill underpinned it with observations and experiments on lower and higher vertebrates.

Every time an animal forms a new association between two events, or when it habituates to a repetitive, innocuous stimulus, something of the outer world is imaged within the animal. Each time it learns to change its behaviour - be it by learning a new movement, or by learning to perform something from its repertoire in response to a new stimulus - this means the integration of new information about the world around it with already existing circuits.

Thus, perception and integration in animals are visible. What about art? They are likely to be more elusive in that realm; or aren’t they?

III.5 Imaging and integration in the Artistic Process

Both artists and scientists are eager to observe and register their perceptions. Having processed the information, they bring it out again in an altered form. Yet, whereas an artist deliberately or subconsciously mixes observations with his own emotions and intuition, scientist strive to progressively parenthesise the latter. Many scientists may admit a role for intuition; some may even let themselves be inspired by considerations of beauty, but they all rate objective, empirical evidence, and repeatability, above both feeling and intuition. For artists, on the other hand, the stirrings of their soul are essential. Their works reflect self-observation as well as images from the outer world and the integration of the two.

In 1877 John Ruskin publicly disgraced a painting by James McNeill Whistler (‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875). Whistler, feeling harmed in honour and interests, summoned the influential art critic for libel. In court, the following discussion took place between Sir John Holker as Attorney-General and Whistler (5):

H: “What is the subject of the ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold?”

W: “It is a night piece and represents the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens.”

H: “Not a view of Cremorne?

W: “If it were called ‘A View of Cremorne’ it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call it a ‘nocturne’.”

And a little later:

H: “Did it take you much time to paint the ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’? How soon did you knock it off?”

W: “Oh, I ‘knock one off’ possibly in a couple of days; one day to do the work and another to finish it.

H: “The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?”

W: “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.

In other words: a work of art is the precipitation of a life-long Auseinandersetzung between and an integration of an artist’s outer world and his own mind. Do we need more evidence that imaging and integration come together in an artist’s work? Perhaps a few examples which at first sight seem to contradict the thesis, but confirm it in the end.

In Hans Holbein the Younger’s double portrait ‘The Ambassadors’ (1533), some musical instruments, books and surveyor’s tools on a side-table are painted so perfectly à trompe l’oeil that one can hardly believe they are not three-dimensional. Similar perfection is found in the intarsio of the study of Duke Federico de Montefeltro’s palace in Urbino. Are these not merely quasi-photographic representations of neutral objects - exact replica’s of the images on the artist’s retina? Perhaps they are, and perhaps they are art as well, but if they are, it is art with a message: “Look what a clever painter I am.”

John Constable valued the precise reproduction of reality. Nevertheless, in his landscapes there is not more than a complicated correspondence between reality and his representation of it. In Art and Illusion (1960: 29-33) Gombrich adduces ample evidence for this, taking Constable’s picture of Wivenhoe park and castle (1816) as an example. Natural as the painting looks, it is full of unspoken agreements between artist and beholder. There is, for instance, not a single touch that has the same colour or intensity as the corresponding fraction of the real landscape. At best, it is the relationship between parts that enables one to recognise the subject. To further illustrate this point, Gombrich quotes a well-known amateur painter, Sir Winston Churchill (p.34):

“It would be interesting if some real authority investigated carefully the part which memory plays in painting. We look at the object with an intent regard, then at the palette, and thirdly at the canvas. The canvas receives a message dispatched usually a few seconds before from the natural object. But it has come through a post office en route. It has been transmitted in code. It has been turned from light into paint. It reaches the canvas a cryptogram. Not until it has been placed in its correct relation to everything else that is on the canvas can it be deciphered, is its meaning apparent, is it translated once again from mere pigment into light. And the light this time is not of Nature but of Art.”

What has been said on Constable, may be applied also to the adamant realist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Besides, one may surmise that the harsh solidity of his apples, rocks, and even the light itself in his paintings reflect his harsh character.

“Monet n’est qu’un oeil”, said Cézanne about his confrater. Monet (1840-1926) and the impressionist school discovered important new facts about what nature actually looks like. In applying them they reached a new stage in true pictorial representation. But does this mean that their works are perfect copies of nature? For instance as for the realistic rendering of colours? Shadows were not just dark, they discovered, but consisted of colour, mostly complementary to those of the immediate surroundings. However, from the viewpoint of Physics, complementary colours do not exist in the objective world. They are a product of our retina. There, at the bottom of the eye, where images are projected, the retina not only contains the light-sensitive cells, but also a complicated neuronal network that creates the complementary colours well before they are actually perceived by the brain. Thus, to say that Monet was just an eye is an understatement. The impression that he represented on the canvas contained already a good deal of interpretation.  Even if an artist would try to paint ‘just what his eye sees’, he couldn’t, because between the retina and final perception there is a central nervous system manipulating the signal, in short all one may subsume as cognition. One can learn to deliberately switch off some of this, only to find another layer of cognition behind the first. “Nobody has ever seen a sensory impression”, Gombrich summarises the situation. I guess that, in addition to all this, Monet translated what he perceived into hues and intensities which harmonised within the work. Neither this harmony nor composition were necessarily present in the fragments of reality he chose to represent. Just imagine how van Ruisdael or Henri Rousseau would have painted the same subject.

A final example: young Piet Mondriaan drew his own consequences from the impossibility of rendering the colours of a landscape in paint, and painted the lighthouse of Westkapelle in red. In his later, progressively more abstract works, he edited reality to such an extent that one may well ask whether sensory perception of the world still played a role in them. Yet, he maintained to have always remained a realist. Apparently, even his most non-figurative works were derived from real, observed objects, only with even more cognition mixed in. Whether this applies to all non-figurative artists may be a matter of debate. With Mondriaan, in any case, it is clear how much of the artist himself has gone into the process, even, or rather exactly when, the work is abstract.

III.6 What is integration?

When can one say that an image from the outer world has been integrated into the whole organism or work of art? I think when something new has arisen out of the interaction. In the examples of the fore-going section such is the case. Through abstraction to various degrees, both Whistler and Mondriaan created in paint an image belonging to a new order as compared to what they originally saw.

To some extent the same is true for perspective and for meaning. The suggestion of space, based on conventions, has become an integral aspect of the representation. Through its context, a lady’s portrait may become a Madonna. Through selective attention you may, for a moment, see the portrait again, or the touches of dark and light that create the illusion of depth, but in the whole picture they are forever joined together in a new meaning.

The process of integration is irreversible also in a broader sense. From Whisler’s or Mondriaan’s pictures, the fireworks or the tree will never rise again, and that is true of any work of art, whether abstract or not. If the work is made to disintegrate, it does not return to a more original state, but it changes again into yet something else.

Thus, from irreversibility one can read integration. This also applies to nature. At the level of individual animals, the registering of events and conditions leads to adaptive changes in behaviour through learning. A new connection brought about in this manner is not reversible. Unlearning does not undo that connection; the latter is overruled by a new learning process. Even less, of course, does unlearning re-establish the conditions or the sensory impressions that originally gave rise to the adaptive change.

It is similar with evolutionary adaptations. For the first organisms on earth, who got their energy out of diverse chemical transformations, oxygen was a deadly poison. For some, though, it was a by-product of their metabolism and, as a result, oxygen gradually became a substantial component of the atmosphere. As the O2 pressure grew, certain organisms made a virtue out of necessity. They re-adapted their metabolism making the poisonous gas into an obligatory commodity. It were these adaptors that gave rise to all higher plants and animals.

The semicircular tubes in the inner ear of mammals and birds reflect the three-dimensional space in which they developed the art, through evolutionary adaptation, of moving about. Camouflage colouring on butterflies’ wings image the barks of trees on which they rest but, also, the potentialities and the limits of the eyes of birds that prey on them. Sexual selection shapes males of certain species such as peacocks in the course of many generations to suit the idiosyncratic preferences of the brains of their female conspecifics. Here, as in learning, disintegration does not mean running the tape in reverse. Life progresses and does not retrace its steps. This principle is also known as Dollo’s Law: once an adaptive structure has been , it is never formed again in the same manner as the original.

III.7 How much of it? (Towards a formalism)

I have suggested to let the value of an organism depend upon the quantity of imaged material integrated into the whole of the organism. Can this be stated more precisely? One step may be to count the number of images being enfolded and assess the quantity of information enfolded with each image. One immediate problem is how to define one image. Can each image be divided into a collection of smaller ones? However, as long as quantities are added up, this does not matter. Next we may express the integration of new images as the number of new connections involved in the process (6). These connections may be visualised as psychological (associations and the like) or, at a smaller scale, neural.

But what is the whole organisation in which the incoming image is integrated; and how should it be accounted for in the organism’s value? I think it is the sum of life-long experiences, growth and development, in other words the sum of images of the outer world and, by the way, of parts and actions of the organism itself. One may visualise this as an arithmetic series of terms, to which new terms have been added throughout the life of the organism. The measurement discussed in the fore-going paragraph concerns the latest term.

Having included life-time, shouldn’t we also include phylogeny, because the latter produced the fertilised egg, capable of development, where the life of the individual began? The phylogenetic information contained in the individual is, however, largely shared with its conspecifics. Therefore it is elegant to deal with the phylogenetically caused fraction of value together with the values of the entire species, and leave it beyond the limits of this essay (7) (but see next section).

How does this apply to art? In the example of Whistler vs Ruskin we saw that the maker being imaged into his work may embrace his entire previous experience as an artist. Not all of it, possibly, but anything from that period of his life. One may also assume that the artist was not unfamiliar with works of contemporaries and predecessors at the moment he started his career. However, for this essay we may, as with nature, parenthesise everything beyond the individual’s own experience, while acknowledging that in the end it should be included.

The arguments on art and nature in the fore-going sections ran parallel, but the formalisation of the value of art objects seems to be more difficult, because the material representation of newly established connections is less tangible or even imaginable. Nevertheless, one may presume that a similar formula describes the value of an art object: a long series of terms, which is augmented by addition in each new work. 

It seems we are still incapable of substituting realistic figures into the formula. Even so, the fore-going sections have shown that the projected terms are natural; the processes are visible, both in art and nature. In practice, the ultimate goal of a measuring rod for value may be still be far removed, but we can visualise a formula and think about how to quantify its terms. Also, I think we have a better understanding of the concept of value.

This seems to be an appropriate ending to this essay, but I am tempted to peep over the fence of self-imposed limitations.

III.8  Other scales of magnitude

First, what happens when we consider entities larger than individual organisms or works of art? Not much news, I presume. Also populations of animal or plant  species are products of numerous, integrated influences, now and in the past, from landscape, climate and other species, and similarly for oeuvres or styles in art. Among the c. 4,000 planets so far discovered outside our solar system, none are very much like the Earth in size, composition and distance to their respective suns, nor are they like each other. Their diversities are thought to be  due to their origins as well as to their interactions with sister planets of the same system and/or their stars.

The extension to larger entities does create a new perspective: what does the uniqueness of individuals per se look like when considered from the viewpoint of the whole species or style? In the movie “The Third Man” (Carol Reed), the criminal Harry Lime takes his pursuer Holly Martins up in the giant wheel high above Vienna. He points at all those humans, far below them, appearing minute and anonymous as they move about like ants on their nest. “Would you notice if one or two of them were missing?” he asks. From afar - or within a wide angle - one loses sight of each individual’s unicity; they all look the same or at least not different and thus of little or no value; but that is deceitful (8).

How do we account for this multi-layered reality in our formula? Consider values only in one scale at a time? No, that is unfair. So value has to be calculated in all scales and somehow added up. What this should look like mathematically, I do not know yet.

A second exploration is concerned with time. Shouldn’t we add ‘value to be expected’ to our criteria? With a young organism we may be justified to have expectations on what it may gain in value later on, at least statistically. Individuals may differ greatly in this respect, and so do different species. Art objects may inspire whole generations, or at the other extreme remain practically unnoticed. Particularly in art such ‘potential values’ are difficult to estimate. There is a whole new field to explore.

Finally, speaking of time, one may wonder whether I haven’t focussed too much on the finished objects of art rather than on the artistic process per se. Doesn’t value reside in the latter? Instead of organisms at one or more points in time, one might emphasise the dynamics of development and evolution. I did, in fact, discuss the artistic process rather than pictures and gave some attention to the process of learning, but neither development nor evolution stop there. A more dynamical approach might open new vistas, but also extreme complications.

Certainly, concerning the evolutionary process of nature on our planet, it is more important than the artificial conservation of single species or individuals, though both are valuable too. However, it may be clear that the argument of the greater value of the evolutionary process is easily corrupted into a pretext to let individuals or species die. After all, it is all of them together that are the bearers of the evolutionary elan, and nobody can predict where the limits of the latter are. We may tempt it too far only once.

Notes:

(1) "We do not compose, sing, or play music for any useful purpose" (1972: 205).

(2) The notion of inherent dignity has been borrowed, I assume, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, established in 1948 by the United Nations. In its turn, the latter concept is derived from the Kantian notion of Würde  (Drenthen & Kockelkoren, 1999) which is nicht-verrechenbar (cannot be bartered) (Wikipedia - Würde).

(3) The notion of 'hedonic society' may require explanation. In biological terms, human interrelations are often described as hierarchies (pecking order) and territoriality (in surface areas, competences, rights, powers). It was Michael R. A. Chance (1970) who first stated that these are patterns, the meanings of which are determined by two modes of behaviour which he dubbed hedonic and agonic. These modes may describe relationships between individuals, as well as social structures of and between groups. For example imagine this:

Your boss at the office is a tyrant. He gives orders and does not wait for comments. He does not trust you; checks your work and the way you spend your time, always ready to reproach or fire you at the slightest provocation. You distrust him. You are all the time aware of his presence and afraid to give him a reason for his wrath.

But things can also be like this: your boss says good-morning as he comes to your desk. Having instructed you as to your next task, he takes time to listen to any questions you may have about it. He may solicit your attention to its importance  to the firm, and says thank you when you have finished it correctly. He is boss, the one to take decisions, but he allows you to feel like contributing to the common purpose. You trust him to not unexpectedly punish or dismiss you.

These are examples of the agonic and the hedonic styles respectively. They differ in the structure of attention between the actors and in the direction of information: up-down only in the former case, both ways in the other. In the agonic mode the authority of the boss is based on his power to punish. He binds your attention. Social tension is strong. The hedonic boss also solicits your attention, but on the basis of his prestige rather than power. The atmosphere is relatively relaxed.

Both modes are comparatively stable, though not forever; both are economically effective. They can also coexist, even between the same persons, depending on the moods or on the well-being of the firm. In adverse periods the agonic mode may prevail; the hedonic may reestablish itself when the tide turns (Kortmulder & Robbers, 2005).

(4) One can conclude as to the presence of such brain maps whenever an animal proves able to solve spatial problems without help from an experimenter, viz. finding a short-cut it has never been able to see before (E,C, Tolman's classic experiments) or making an efficient detour when an obstacle is placed in its habitual path.

(5) Here quoted from Dorment & McDonald, 1984.

(6) The number of new connections is a rather primitive measure. Ideally, one should know how information is stored in a network as well as what kind(s) of network the brain consists of.

(7) But not to be ignored!

(8) Perhaps the H2 molecules of a cosmic hydrogen cloud are all the same, or the particles of a flu virus, but even that is not certain, since each of them has its history.

Discussion; questions asked at diverse presentations.

Q1: As to imagings from the outer world getting integrated in an individual animal’s or human’s system: this suggests that an individual gains in value with time, which seems intuitively to be right, at least during the active part of its life. Quite apart from old age, however, there is a phase in the normal development of a child where parts of the brain are broken down, connections abolished. How do you account for that in your assessment of the child’s value? It can’t go down, can it?

A1: In principle, I have no objections to the idea that an individual’s value - as visualised in my presentation - may temporarily go down. The local reduction of  brain connections around the age of three may be a question of se reculer pour mieux sauter. However, if the reduction is part of a reorganisation that as a whole improves the integration capability of the whole brain, there even isn’t a dip in value, only a shift in its content. Alternatively, I may point at what I said on ‘value to be expected’. So far, I stick with the concept of value at a certain moment, but that is mainly because the practical problems with assessment are multiplied in the alternative, more dynamic, model.

Q2: I think your view of value misses several points. In my eyes, a mediocre piece of art from a period of which little is left, is worth much more effort to conserve than a masterwork from a well-documented time or area.

A2: One of my points of departure is that the value of an art object as an art  object does not change when it becomes rare or when many similar objects are discovered. What you allude to as reasons for conservation is the scientific value, or the commercial. The latter I have left out from the beginning. The scientific value is possibly what Leertouwer had in mind. His remark served the purpose in the introduction, but I think also scientific value should be excluded from the artistic value.

Q3: On the whole, I appreciate your approach to the concept of value in nature. A similar treatment of art, however, is unjustified, because it ignores the transcendent values inherent in the latter, in particular the value of beauty. How do you propose to deal with them?

A3: This is a very important point. Let me add a few notes. First - at the risk of damaging my own point of view - I have doubts about any categorical distinctions between humans vs animals, culture vs nature. Nature too appeals to our sense of beauty. Moreover, wherever natural beauty is a result of sexual selection, it mirrors the sense of beauty of the selecting partner (who was/is an animal).

Second, it is important to distinguish between the concept of beauty and its actualisation in this or that object. As we all know, the presence and degree of it in a certain object is admitting of personal taste and of cultural background.

In the art world of to-day, the predicate of beauty is out. More weight is given to an object’s power to arrest and hold attention. This may do paltry justice to the concept of beauty, but the advantage is that one can measure that power by observing people. More or less the same is true for other non-verbal responses of spectators betraying the perception of beauty: being awed, stunned, reverent, devoted etc.

As to mutual gauging of different measures, I derive some confidence from the fact that it is all about images, also in the appreciation of beauty: the perfect balance between qualitatively different subjects in a painting, the brilliant turn in the plot of a story, the surprising yet familiar shift of key in music, etc.

Finally (but not least), should such integration of measures prove impossible, and our measurement of value be of necessity incomplete, this should not deter us from further developing and applying the new principle here proposed for as far as it goes, in art as well as in nature. In my opinion, it contributes to our understanding of what this is: an object’s value.

References I - III.

Alberts B, Bray D, Lewis J, Roberts K, Watson JD (1983) Molecular biology of the cell. Garland, New York

Blaauw M, Christen JA (2005) Radiocarbon peat chronologies and environmental change. J Royal statistical Society https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467.9876.2005.00516.x

Chance MRA, Jolly CJ (1970) Social groups of monkeys, apes and men. Jonathan Cape, London

Dorment R, MacDonald MF (1994) James McNeill Whistler. Tate Gallery Publications, London

Drenthen M, Kockelkoren P (1999) Het milieu van de filosofen: 20 jaar milieufilosofie in Nederland. Filosofie & Praktijk 20/4: 191-197

Gombrich EH (1983) Art and illusion; a study in the psychology of pictorial representation, 5th edn. Phaidon, London/Oxford

Kennedy M (1997) The oxford dictionary of music. Oxford University Press

Kortmulder K, Robbers Y (2011) The agonic and hedonic styles of social behaviour; Mellen studies in sociology 49. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lampeter/ Queenston/Lewiston

Pevsner N (1963) An outline of European architecture. Penguin Books Ltd, Hammondsworth

Russell WMS (1958-1962) Evolutionary concepts in behavioural sciences I-IV. General Systems 3: 18-28, 4: 45-73, 6: 51-92, 7: 157-193

Russell C, Russell WMS (1982) Cultural evolution 1. Social Biology and Human Affairs 47/1: 17-38

Russell C, Russell WMS (1990) Cultural evolution of behaviour. In: Bakker TCM, Kortmulder K, Essays in honour of P Sevenster. Neth J Zool. 40/4: 745-762

Safranski R (2010) Heidegger en zijn tijd. Atlas/Olympus, Amsterdam

Sevenster P (1973) De rol van leerprocessen in natuurlijke situaties. In: Baerends GP (ed) Ethologie, de biologie van gedrag. Pudoc, Wageningen

Simmel G (1900) The philosophy of money, english translation, 3rd edn. 2004. Routledge, London

Vaughan Williams R, (1972) Why do we make music? In: National music and other essays. Oxford University Press  p 205

Visser MBH, Verhoog H (1999) De aard van het beestje; onderzoek naar de morele relevantie van ‘natuurlijkheid’in discussies over biotechnologie bij dieren. NWO Ethiek en Beleid, Den Haag

Wagner F, Bohncke SJP, Dilcher DL, Kürchner WM, van Geel B, Visscher H (1999) Century-scale shifts in early holocene atmospheric CO2 concentration. Science 18 June 1999: 284/5422

Nature, Art and Values; an Essay in Three Parts. 2.

by Koenraad Kortmulder                                       k.kortmulder@kpnplanet.nl

I. On Art and Nature; some parallels.

II. On Imaging in Art and Nature.

III. On Values of Art and Nature.

Abstract.

Individuals are members of classes, and of classes-of classes. That is true for both individual animals and separate works of art. Classes result from break-throughs and the origination of new morphospaces. (I).

Interaction between or within individuals leads to imaging of one onto the other, and thereby creates an archive of the evolution of nature, art and the planet. (II).

The archive of retained images and their integration defines an object’s value. (III).

Part II

II. On Imaging in Art and Nature.

II.1 Imaging in nature.

Pitch sticks, as the saying goes. It leaves its traces on the person who interacts with it. Conversely, the person’s actions get depicted in the sticky substance as it is warmed, poured out or kneaded into forms. It conserves foot- or fingerprints, tiny skin scales, scents etcetera from which, given sufficient time, knowledge and technology, the actions of the handler may be read.

Some contacts are closer than the example; many are more remote. Your eye registers images of nebulae millions of light years away. It may be long before a reciprocal action reaches those same celestial bodies, but at least your act of observation here and now distorts the electromagnetic field radiated long ago, and depicts itself precisely and irreversibly in that field. Instead of depiction I shall henceforward use imaging.

Not all resemblances are caused by imaging through mutual interaction. Similarities between this hydrogen atom here and one at 13 billion light years distance are not necessarily due to their having met, though the greater regions to which they belong must have, during the early life of the universe.

As yet, the null hypothesis that everything is being imaged all around, and that the limitations to this process may be treated as special cases, looks like a reasonable point of departure. What kind of images?

The dry soil of the Nevada Desert, New Mexico, has through 40,000 years been conserving the nests of desert rats, complete with mineralised urine residues in the shape of chlorides and carbon-containing substances. From the latter, one can derive the age of the nests with the C14 technique. Among the chlorine (Cl) atoms in the urine deposits, a small proportion are Cl36 , formed out of normal chlorine (Cl34) under influence of cosmic radiation. The stronger the radiation, the higher the isotope percentage. Decaying time is very long. So the percentage Cl36 reflects the intensity of cosmic radiation at ground level at the time the sediment was formed. On this basis, researchers of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology were able to sketch the course of radiation intensity through the past 40,000 years. One conspicuous result was a rather abrupt halving of that intensity some 11,000 years ago. This event roughly coincides with changes in the earth's magnetic field, as measured using different methods. Earth magnetism wards off cosmic radiation; the stronger the field, the more radiation is intercepted.

Another example: when the atmosphere contains more CO2, plant leaves make more stomata per leaf surface area. In a moister climate, on the other hand, the same leaves grow faster, which results in larger stomata. Friederike Wagner (University of Utrecht) assessed these two parameters in fossilised leaves from datable layers of peat soil sampled in Florida. By doing so, she read back, as in a book, the history of the climatic factors during the past 1,000 years. With another method, Maarten Blaauw (now Queen’s University, Belfast) read fluctuations in the C14 content of the air through the past 10,000 years from Dutch peat-moor samples (Wagner et al., 1999; Blaauw & Christen, 2005).

The climatic conditions of the Earth, volcanic eruptions, ‘summer-less’ years and cosmic explosions have left their traces in the fine structure of the Greenland ice mantle, in peat layers of the world, in the stems of trees both living and fossil, as well as in fossilised rat urine. With a good deal of patience and laboratory equipment we can read that book.

At this point you may put forward that these examples are mere exceptions, incidental cases of conservation under special circumstances. You argue that by far the largest part of the planet’s crust is constantly put into motion by wind, water, erosion, tectonics, volcanos and what not, and much of it never was deposited in neat layers as discussed above. Would that not mean that most of what happens is never imaged or, if it is, erased soon afterwards? I reply: isn’t erasing only a question of the traces becoming more complicated, being among other things shifted from macroscopic to microscopic and still more microscopic patterns to the extent that we can no longer retrace them? The distinction between being imaged and readability is essential; the former is nearly unlimited (1), the other ends where technology ends. Scientists look for the simpler, practically readable traces for their reconstructions of the past.

So let me push the argument a little further. The examples above dealt with tens of thousands of years. Some readable traces are much older. The solid crust of our planet retains memories about collisions with meteors and fluctuations of the magnetic field during many millions of years. Sediments from diverse geological periods have been coloured, deformed, broken by magma eruptions, earthquakes and tectonic movements. Darkness following the crashing of comets and the dying of whole faunas were imaged in it, as well as the ever revived evolution of new forms. The drift of the continents has been reconstructed from the magnetic orientation of natural rocks in situ. Now we know that 300 million years ago all of to-day’s continents were united in one land mass: Pangaea.

Long before the planet Earth existed, or even the sun around which she travels, the cosmos depicted itself in itself. The cosmic background radiation is a print of the universe as it was when only some 400,000 years old. At that ‘moment’, the first electrically neutral atoms were formed out of the seething plasm of ions, electrons and electromagnetic radiation. Subtle variations in density between diverse regions of the young universe left their traces in the shape of slender differences in the background radiation which can be read to-day - tremendously expanded and cooled-down, but still measurably different and slightly polarised exactly as calculated by the theory of its origin. In the future, scientists may be able to detect the traces even of gravitation waves that should have shaken the universe in its first few seconds.

II.2 Common languages in Nature

One basic feature of this our universe is that it is not homogeneous. Local condensations have given rise to stars, planets, galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Organic molecules, cells, organisms have drifted together and actively assembled themselves into larger units. The complexity of communication necessary to keep a cell, an animal, a colony together is easily under-estimated. Effective signalling requires common language. A large proportion of scientific effort goes into deciphering such languages. A couple of examples may suffice.

‘Post-code’ systems. The control centres of leg- and arm movements of vertebrate animals are located in the spinal chord. The corresponding muscles are further down the extremities, at macroscopic distances from the controls. In full-grown condition the two are connected by nerve fibres or axons, long-drawn extensions of nerve cells which have their main body, containing the nucleus, in the spinal chord. It is these fibres that conduct the nimble, electro-chemical messages in the shape of impulse patterns, At some time during the individual’s development the fibres have bridged the gap between the cell bodies and the correct position in the right muscles. How does a growing axon ‘know’ where it has to go and when ‘it is there’?

To this purpose, very specific protein molecules sit on the surface of the growing fibre. As a group they are referred to as ‘neural-cell adhesion molecules’(N-CAM). Every axon has its own specific set of them. These molecules are carried with the growing tip, like flags, until they contact equally specific receptor molecules on the surface of the muscle that has to be innervated by this particular axon. Some of these contacts may be transient only, as with intermediate stations; after a brief stoppage, growth continues until the final destination is reached.

For such post-code systems to work adequately, the start- and terminal stations have to agree on the meaning of each message. How does a cell body in the spinal chord ‘know’ what kind of receptor is there on the muscle far away? Ever since the separation of the respective embryonic regions of the nervous system and the extremity, they have not ‘seen’ each other, both developing autonomously. Somewhere, at some time, mutual ‘consent’ must have been created on a common language, either during the very early development of the embryo, or during the phylogeny that brought it forth. In both cases there must have been a moment when the two regions were still close together.

At a much smaller scale, but just as amazing, substances are transported within a living cell. Molecules to be moved are tagged with certain chemical groups at specific positions. The groups are recognised at some distant address. The tags may be stereo-chemical configurations folded-in during transport and unfolded on arrival. Plied in a different manner at an intermediate station, they may act as codes for a further stage (Alberts et al.,1983).

II.3 Imaging and common languages in Art

An artist paints a landscape, a still life or a moment in urban life, but the subject is only one aspect of the whole creative process in which he is involved. That process entails a multiple Auseinandersetzung of the maker and his work, with his materials and competence; with imaginary or real beholders; with contemporaries, predecessors, his own earlier work, and his conscious or unconscious motives. All this together constitutes the world from which the work in progress derives its information. Again, common languages are indispensable to this complex communication network. A few examples may illustrate this: perspective and dissonance.

E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion does justice to the role of language (convention) in pictorial art. The ancient Egyptians’ visual faculties were no doubt the same as ours, certainly good enough for them to know that a person’s eye is not at the side of the head, that the gaze is not normally parallel to the shoulder, or the feet in the same direction. Nevertheless, they pictured people in that cramped posture. No spectator or commissioner of the time is likely to have had problems with it. They must have agreed on the current pictorial language.

The way the Greeks or the medieval and Renaissance artists dealt with perspective may look increasingly familiar to us, but does not convince anybody who sees it for the first time. Gombrich cites a risky misunderstanding around a portrait of the American Indian ‘Little Bear’, painted by George Catlin c. 1838. The traditional side lighting was interpreted by the native onlookers as representing only “half a man.” The story is apocryphal (2), but does draw attention to the fact that there is no objective difference, in a painting, between a face lighted from one side and one painted dark at the other, or half a face for that matter. Only convention can decide the point.

In the gothic pictorial language, as in the ancient Greek, perspective is indicated by representing objects or persons that are farther away as partly hidden by those on the fore-ground, or just smaller. For instance Simone Martini’s fresco of Guidoriccio de Fogliano on horse-back with a fortified town in the back-ground. The early attempts at representing buildings in perspective, such as  those by Giotto, look awkward to our eyes; not because their meaning is unclear, but because we are used to a different language: the developed linear perspective of the Renaissance (3). So accustomed are we to the latter, that we do not usually realise that also this depends on conventions rather than representing objective truth. To demonstrate this, Gombrich argues that a rectangular box painted in perspective is only recognised as such if one assumes that it is rectangular. Objectively, it could be viewed as a non-rectangular box in a different position, or rather an unlimited number of possible boxes. It is only through additional information in the whole painting (making a further appeal on the observer’s cognition) that this point can be decided. In fact, the very possibility of optical illusion proves the role of convention.

The conventions implicit in these examples are of diverse origins. The eyes of artists, onlookers and users have the same capacities by common biological descent. The persons also share traditions and prejudices, living as they do in the same culture. They are thus connected by common languages created by ongoing and past interaction. In its turn, much of human cultural language has biological roots, and the biological has physical causes.

The other example is about the perception of consonance and dissonance in music. These are relative notions. According to the classical convention, dissonant chords must be resolved towards consonant ones. Which chords count as consonant, however, has varied with time. In Renaissance music (di Lasso, Palestrina) only a quint beside the octave was acceptable in a final chord (CGC’). Later, an additional third was allowed (CEGC’), but until within J.S. Bach’s time a minor third (CE-flatGC’)was considered to be less appropriate. In the 20th century also a sixth (CEGAC’) was accepted.

The law that dissonances have to be resolved drives classical music forward. While the family of consonants was widened, composers kept stretching the limits of dissonance by playing, for instance, with melodic lines (creating crash notes) and with the rules of tonality. In chromatics the degree of dissonance of a chord itself becomes uncertain. The reinterpretation of G-sharp into A-flat or of F into G-double flat manipulates the listener’s perception towards a different key, in which the push and pull instantly take new directions. In twelve-note music the notion of dissonance itself lost its classical meaning, because any resolution of a dissonant chord in the traditional manner would now imply an admission as to one or another diatonic scale, and thus should be avoided. On the basis of a different theory, Debussy created series of chords in which a certain degree of dissonance seems to be conserved rather than resolved.

Through the ages, the language of music, like that of the plastic arts, has kept changing. As a result, each particular chord came to be differently  perceived - it really did sound differently, even though the vibrations in the inner ear of humans were identical.

To summarise the fore-going sections, it may be stated that every object that has interacted with others, be it an organism or a work of art, may bear with it images of those interactions (and vice-versa). At this point, anticipating on Part III of this essay, I may suggest, that it is these images which somehow determine the object’s true value. In order to test this idea, we may now go into some further detail in the artistic and natural processes respectively. For practical reasons, the following discussion will be centred at the level of individual organisms and individual works of art.

II.4  The fine structure of the Artistic and Natural processes

The smallest unit of the artistic process is the ‘conversation’ between the maker and his work (Fig. 1a). As the painting develops, the actions of the artist are imaged in it, directed as they are by the latter’s observation, intentions, reminiscences of other works etcetera. All the while he is getting information back from the work, which he compares with his model and its lighting or his concept and the way to express it. The work as a process is thus continually being imaged into the artist.

Fig.1. Cycles of mutual imaging. a: the artist at work; b: beholders (elite, critic, maecenas); c: interests (user, owner, politician); d: 'beholders' (nature lover, breeder, conservationist); 'interests' (user, owner, politician).

The maker is at the same time observer, user and owner, in the extreme case the only one of each. In practice, however, the process is not limited to this. Somebody may come and watch, a second one may offer comment, and a third decides to support the artist. The elite, the art critic and the Maecenas have thus been born, and got involved in the process. Their cycles of observation and response nestle up to the primary cycle, influencing it and vice versa (Fig. 1b).

Similarly, cycles of interest come into being: the user, the owner and the politician, and feed back on the primary cycle (Fig. 1c). All these cycles together create a complex network of mutual imaging in people, culture and art, all influencing each other and soon becoming unique and irreversible.

What about nature? Does she have that sort of creative cycles, like art? Yes, but not the same (Figure 1d). From an anthropocentric viewpoint we may still recognise the cycles of interest: owner, user and politician. Perhaps nature lover, breeder and conservationist are similar to elite, critic and Maecenas in that order, but their impact is only secondary; nature has not been created by them. It is self-creating, self-organising, and therefore the relationships of these man-made cycles to the central, natural, processes are different.

What is in the centre? Nature has cycles of its own, within itself and on its own accord. Any single organism interacts with others: friend and foe, predators, parasites or preys, with its environment as a whole, and in all time scales ranging from actual behaviour to evolution. It is similar with the mineral world: stars within galaxies; sun, moon and earth; climate and geology; atmosphere and cosmic radiation.

All those interactions, the physical, the biological and the artistic, lead of necessity to mutual imaging, as the universe, life on this planet and art evolve.

End of Part II.

Notes:

(1) A limit is given by Quantum Theory, at least in its Copenhagen interpretation.

(2) The portrait still exists and shows hardly if any side-lighting.

(3) First formulated succinctly by Brunelleschi.

Nature, Art and Values; an Essay in Three Parts. 1.

 by Koenraad Kortmulder                                       k.kortmulder@kpnplanet.nl 

I. On Art and Nature; some parallels.

II. On Imaging in Art and Nature.

III. On Values of Art and Nature.

Abstract.

Individuals are members of classes, and of classes-of-classes. That is true for both individual animals and separate works of art. Classes result from break-throughs and the origination of new morphospaces. (I).

Interaction between or within individuals leads to imaging of one onto the other, and thereby creates an archive of the evolution of nature, art and the planet. (II).

The archive of retained images and their integration defines an object’s value. (III).

Part I

I. On Art and nature; some parallels.

I.1 Parakeets and piano-concertos.

I turn the radio on. Presently, sparkling piano notes come tumbling out. They are accompanied and relieved by orchestral sounds. Familiar and yet full of unexpected moves. A Mozart piano concerto. One I have not heard before. No wonder, for Mozart wrote 27, and at best half of those are part of the regular repertoire.

But stop, how can I identify this as Mozart’s if I do not even know the music? Admittedly, the instruments pin down the genre: concerto for piano and orchestra. Harmonic transparence, the quick passages and rhythm define the approximate period when it was written. But why Mozart specifically? Why not Haydn or Beethoven or, if I can exclude them, Clementi or others? Because Mozart had his own personal style (or styles). It would take a professional to sum up its specific features. I can only say that Mozart developed his style in a number of phases, disengaging himself from his teachers; Johann Christian Bach, for example; and above all his father, who had very precise opinions on what music should be like, as well as on his son’s career. As a result, one can even assign a composition to a specific period of Mozart’s life, though roughly and with some room for error.

A contemporary critic praised the new inventions in Mozart’s music, but complained that there were too many of them. No keeping pace with it, even for an expert. The man did not see that Mozart was creating a wholly new way of writing music, reaching beyond all those details.

Let us take an example from another art: architecture. The invention of the gothic style has been attributed to Abbot Suger. His abbey church of St Denis was the first gothic building. The choir, that is. The nave was reconstructed later, also gothic, but in a more developed version.

Characteristic of the gothic style are the pointed arch, the rib vault and the flying buttress - the external arch that connects the nave to the vertical buttress. Each of these three elements had already been put into practice in Suger’s time. The Romanesque cathedral of Durham, for instance, has rib vaults, and pointed arches may be seen in many a Romanesque church of Southern Italy (1). The quintessence of gothic is not in any of these structures alone, but in using them to create thin, flowing lines leading the forces of gravitation from the vaults, the walls and the columns towards the ground. These lines may be emphasised by thin shafts accompanying the great pillars and the walls above them and connecting to the ribs of the vaults. Also the shafts were an invention of the late Romanesque (for instance La Madeleine at Vezelay) and they were even incomplete in some early gothic churches (Notre Dame, Paris).

The flowing concentration of forces, typical for gothic, creates an impression of lightness. Not only an impression: the walls between the supports can be thinner and the windows larger without the whole losing its stability. The three elements mentioned above are thus only means to the goal of lightness (Pevsner, 1963), just like Mozart employed diverse inventions to create his own style. After St Denis, builders followed suit, exploring the possibilities offered by the new concept. Ever higher and seemingly lighter the great churches became, culminating in the unfinished cathedral of Beauvais.

The break-through to gothic took place in a Romanesque environment. The latter, in its turn, may be identified on the basis of certain features, such as the groin vault and round arches. As with the gothic, these elements had been invented earlier, but were now used to a new end: the orderly and transparent articulation of space, an ideal that took shape during the 11th century in several parts of Europe (Pevsner, op.cit.). 

Back to the radio. To test my guess, I can only wait for the announcer. The composition might be an imitator’s work, one Franz Xaver Süssmayr’s or Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s, or even an early Camille Saint-Saëns. Many a composer to-day would be able to write a concerto in Mozart’s style so well that you and I could not distinguish it from the real stuff. Yet, the inventor of that style was Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. ‘Mozart’ is the label of the style which unites all of Mozart’s works and those of his imitators.

Presently, my attention is diverted away from the radio by some high-pitched shrieks outside. A bird? But what bird? I step into the garden and see two birds flying overhead: the size of a dove and bright green. They produce the sounds I heard. Long, pointed tails, rounded heads on short necks, and hooked beaks. Parrots or parakeets, no doubt. An article in a nature periodical comes to mind: these must be Ring-necked Parakeets. Native to the heights of the Himalaya, they have found the way to Europe, some 20 or 30 years ago. Probably not on their own wings, but introduced by a bird-fancier or just escaped. They survived and reproduced in our urban environment, now numbering thousands in every town.

Now I know what species they are, but note that one could identify them as Psittacidae - a bird family - without knowing the species. Just as I could identify an unfamiliar piece as ‘Mozart’.

As I re-enter the house, music is still pouring from the radio, but different. I have missed the announcer and it would now take some effort to ascertain whether, a few minutes ago, I listened to Mozart or ‘Mozart’. I do not mind. It was not the reason for this little story, as you may have guessed.

I.2 Breakthroughs and morphospaces.

So, what does it mean, that almost trivial fact that one can successfully guess at an organism’s or an objet d’art’s taxonomic status? It must mean that each individual or species is a member of a natural class, distinct from other classes on a few, clear-cut criteria. Those distinguishing characteristics came into being at a certain moment as ‘break-through’ within an extant routine. The break-through opened a new, untrodden space of possibilities. One may think of a master of chess who finds a worm-hole in an already well-analysed variant, creating new vistas; or a child at play stumbling upon a new insight, for instance a combination of two toys. Next, it will apply the discovery to all familiar situations. Claude Debussy (or Eric Satie) discovered that music can be based on parallel chords as well as on classical tone scales, and whole new worlds of music came within reach.

As a term for such newly discovered spaces ‘morphospace’ seems appropriate; borrowed from developmental biology. A morphospace delineates the limits and possibilities of the class that it represents. This applies to works of art as well as to animals or plants. Both evolve, and in both evolution is marked by break-throughs alternating with phases of exploration of the new spaces. Exploration leads to the actualisation of some or all of the possibilities of the morphospace.

Break-through and exploration do not always neatly alternate. In practice, new break-throughs, small or big, often pop up while the new space is still being explored. Thus morphospace itself may grow. As already indicated, ‘Mozart’ did not arise in one stroke, but it evolved in phases. Not every composer is as inventive as Mozart. Stravinsky once complained that Vivaldi was overrated as a composer. Once you had heard one of his violin concertos, you had heard them all. Grumpy Stravinsky may have ignored that Vivaldi was also a composer of vocal music, for both the stage and the church. As to the majority of the concerti, however, he was right. Vivaldi wrote them for practical use and in doing so explored and rather filled out their morphospace. Another space: ‘Concerto for flute and orchestra’ was explored extensively by composers of the Mannheimer Schule (2) and their contemporaries (3). Giorgio Morandi created hundreds of superb paintings on the theme: ‘still life with vases’.

These were examples of the exploration of new spaces. Let us now look at their coming into existence. I have already dealt with architecture in some detail, so examples from music, painting and nature next.

I.2.1 music.

Music can be described according to other criteria besides composers.  Dependent on instrumentation, for instance: violin solo, string quartet, symphony orchestra, opera. Another is rhythm: waltz, forlane, siciliano. Most relevant for our purpose are classifications of the internal structure, the ‘architecture’ of music: fugue, air, sonata form, tri- or quadripartite form of large instrumental pieces. Structures of that sort are the skeleton of the work.

The authors of some of these structures are known. The air, element of opera and cantata among others, has a long history, but it was Alessandro Scarlatti who bestowed upon it a very successful form: tripartite, with the last section repeating the first. A fugue is characterised by two or more voices beginning the same subject each in turn and at a different pitch. Typically, the first voice takes the main or tonic key, the second the dominant, the third one octave up from the first, etc. As the piece develops, variations on this configuration are added, linked by episodes. Who composed the first fugue I do not know. In any case Johann Sebastian Bach contributed significantly to its evolution and propagation. He made modulation an integral part of the episodes (Kennedy, 1997). 

Sonata form was not there in Bach’s time, but soon afterwards it was well established by the Mannheimer School, and it has served many generations. Also in the sonata form key relationships are essential. In the simplest case, a first subject is introduced in the tonic key and a second in the dominant. After the exposition of the subjects (mostly repeated) comes the development, followed in its turn by a recapitulation of the beginning, but now with the second subject also in the tonic. A coda may be added to terminate the piece. This scheme is not rigid. Already Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert played freely with variants: adding new material at the beginning of the development, omitting elements or extending the coda into a second development. Brahms let the subject itself grow from a germ as part of the composition. Bruckner introduced a third subject.

The first movement of symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets is often in the sonata form. Three or four movements make up the classical symphony in the Vienna style. Joseph Haydn played a prominent role in the early development of this scheme in all three genres mentioned above. Once its main features had been established, they were open to much experimentation, not least by Haydn himself and by Mozart. The tri- or quadripartite movements scheme is probably the least rigorous of the four skeletons discussed here, but even so it has survived well into modern times. All four morphospaces have been explored by generations of composers.

I.2.2  painting.

Jacob van Ruisdael brought about a revolution in 17th-century landscape painting. His uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael, painted tonal perspectives according to the fashion of his time: little contrast in colour and coulisses to suggest depth. Famous contemporaries Jan van Goyen and Hendrick Avercamp did similarly. Jacob developed a more picturesque manner, with contrasts of light and shadow and of colours to suggest three-dimensional shapes and enhance the dramatic effect. Before he was twenty, he had the main lines of his discovery firmly laid down. Later developments of his style were largely concerned with scaling up, as he became familiar with grander views than the Dutch dunes and vistas could provide. (See for instance his View of Bentheim Castle).

His influence was phenomenal. Not only in his contemporaries following suit. Even during the 19th century his work inspired painters such as Constable, Corot, Théodore Rousseau and the schools of Norwich, Barbizon and The Hague, to mention a few.

By no means all break-throughs reach so wide and so far ahead. Max Liebermann discovered that small rounded spots of light paint on the ground carry the suggestion of sunlight filtered through the trees. He applied the idea many times, but it remained practically his own specialty. Contrast this with a few small innovations in key-board playing by Domenico Scarlatti, which turned out to be lasting successes: repetition of notes and crossing-hands. Seemingly insignificant details in his whole work, but apparently many could use them.

I.2.3 biology.

The geological period of the Devonian, 410 to 370 mln years ago, was characterised by a relatively dry climate and the elevation of several land masses. Together, these trends made freshwater bodies shrink and dry out. At the time, these waters were already populated by early bony fishes among others. Several of these fishes found evolutionary pathways to develop lungs of a sort, that is internal organs with which they could breath atmospheric air, as gill respiration became insufficient in the O2 -depleted stagnant waters. The Dipnoi and Crossopterygii had fins with a sturdy internal skeleton. With relatively small additional adaptations, the fins were strong enough to support them on land. An elegant performance it may not have been, but this first entry onto firm soil was a break-through. Combined with lung respiration, it enabled these fishes to leave shrivelling pools in search of larger waters The first steps having been made, the whole world of terrestrial life came within reach, at least in terms of evolutionary time scales. Exploring the new spaces, some of these land-fishes evolved into amphibians, and some of those towards the first reptiles. The latter developed an innovation in their eggs: the amnion. That is an additional membrane around the embryo, holding a small quantity of water. Amphibians depend on the vicinity of fresh water, because their eggs and larvae cannot develop without it (4). The amniote egg was worthy of Columbus name: the embryo is provided with its own private stock of water, and thus can be laid on land. It opened up many new habitats for the adults. Exploring them was a matter of time.

Evolution does not commonly come as quickly as an artist’s innovation. The decisive event, however, can happen in a moment in case of behavioural innovation. A now classic example arose from the year-long observations of Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata), kept in quasi-natural condition. The diet of the Koshima Island troop was supplemented with sweet potatoes and wheat grains thrown onto the beach. Imo, a young female, found that she could get rid of the annoying sand grains adhering to the potatoes by washing them in the sea. Similarly, she discovered how to separate sand and wheat as the latter floated on water. Her first follower was her mother. Others saw and imitated the procedures, and in no time the whole colony was washing lustily.

These simple inventions had far-reaching effects: Babies of the washing mothers came into contact with seawater at an early age. They experimented and acquired a habit of bathing when the water was warm. Some learned how to swim and dive and in doing so to pick up things from the bottom. None of their elders had ever done a thing like that. One even managed to swim to another island. Obviously, these new behaviours brought a wide range of new objects within reach, including edible ones. It takes little imagination to visualise completely different ways of life these monkeys may have developed a hundred generations onwards, including appropriate physical adaptations (5). From the very moment of the first invention, natural selection took a drastically different course.

The fore-going story has been told many times. I took my inspiration from a paper by Bill and Claire Russell (1990). They coined the term behavioural selection for the phenomenon. A more complete account is in their 1982 article. Piet Sevenster wrote about the macaques in 1973. In the same publication he summarises J. Nicolai’s work on African widow birds, Viduinae, who lay their eggs in the nests of waxbill finches (Estrildinae). Each widow species or subspecies parasitises one species or race of waxbill. The probable genealogies of Viduinae and Estrildinae even run precisely parallel, suggesting that they all descended from one widow and one finch species. That is where their common history began, probably when a female widow (which then looked very different and usually did her own incubation duties) in acute need of laying, dropped her egg in the nearest foreign nest. It happened to be a waxbill’s (which at the time responded more neutrally than their present-day descendants). Contingencies of this kind do occur sporadically in all sorts of birds. Rarely, but if it happens, the young, when hatched, is fed and reared by the foster parents and may learn the song repertoire of the latter (in case of a male; a female may learn to respond positively to the host’s song). It will also, whether male or female, remain attracted to the sorts of nests and parents with which it had its early experiences. This enhances the probability that the emergency act of the mother will be repeated by the daughter.

Only if a male and a female of the erroneously imprinted species find each other in the vicinity of  a host’s nest, the parasitic egg will be fertilised. Such a combination of events may be highly improbable, but given sufficient time, it may nevertheless take place now and then. Let the first ‘mistake’ occur in a certain neighbourhood once in 25 years. The likelihood of two similarly imprinted young co-occurring will then be once in 625 years. In 50% of the cases they will be of opposite sex. In evolutionary perspective even this is but a wink of the eye and, certainly, the original ‘mistake’ took very little time indeed. The evolutionary consequences were impressive: defensive behaviour in the waxbills and more and more accurate mimicry in the nestlings of the widow birds which nowadays are almost indistinguishable from those of the host species.

So far for the similarities between nature and art, that is to say between organisms and individual works. Comparable, though not identical processes, I think. A work of art is not an organism and vice versa. A picture does not have a life of its own and does not reproduce on its own accord. It derives its existence entirely from creation by humans. In contrast, organisms reproduce without human intervention, and have been doing so through hundreds of millions of years before humans evolved. On the other hand, both art and organisms are processes, with growth and development, and both with a history. Both come in the shape of individuals, which belong to classes, and classes of classes, as was demonstrated above. No objections, thus far, to my quest for how to assess value in both Art and Nature with similar methods.

End of part I.

Notes:

(1) For example in the apses and the West fronts of the cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalù, and emphatically so in the cloisters. Also the West front of Amalfi cathedral and the ancient Romanesque Basilico del Crocifisso of the 9th century beside it.

(2) Led by Johann and Carl Stamitz.

(3) Johann Christian Bach, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Frederic the Great and many others.

(4) Never say "never", to the question whether a certain trait occurs in some animal taxon. In evolutionary time, several amphibian groups have escaped from this dependency. The invention of the amnion is one of them.

(5) Sub-cutaneous fat, short fur, white bellies, shorter and broader extremities and enlarged lungs.