Bioaesthetics: The evolution of aesthetic cognition in humans and other animals

Bioaesthetics, an exciting new branch of aesthetics, examines the evolutionary origins of aesthetics in humans and other animals. We suggest that aesthetics is a multicomponent faculty and discuss certain traits that are shared with other species. We discuss Richard Prum's theory that aesthetic signal and audience are joined in a coevolutionary loop: one by necessity shaping the other. We discuss its implications for aesthetic phenomena as diverse as sexual selection, domestication, and cuisine. In addition to biologically evolved aesthetics, we emphasize that humans possess culturally coevolved aesthetics, which helps explain the unusual variability of aesthetic domains across human cultures. We analyze social and cognitive factors that may have driven this development, particularly exploring the role of the artist, who we argue must mentally adopt the position of the audience while producing an artwork, instantiating a third coevolutionary loop on the individual level.