![]() Why is nature so filled with apparently useless beauty?ĭarwin’s solution to the conundrum was the principle of sexual selection. He wrote, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” The feather is unquestionably beautiful, but its evolution is nearly impossible to explain in terms of fitness and natural selection. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was, in large part, Darwin’s attempt to address a problem that had gnawed at him ever since the publication of Origin. Rather than responding to Bob’s questions and related thought-provoking musings one by one, I’d prefer to jot down my own thoughts on the subject in a (hopefully) semi-coherent way perhaps the result will address all four questions implicitly if not explicitly.Ĭharles Darwin’s second book, following upon On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has received far less attention than its elder sibling. Do biological and musical systems rely on common processes for their creativity ?.Is the link between nature’s beauty and human creativity just metaphorical?.Are the virtuosic inventions of a virus on a par with the virtuosic inventions of an Aretha Franklin or a Niccolò Paganini?. ![]() In his essay “ Darwin’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful: What’s Musical About Biology and Why Does That Matter?”, Bob Labaree posed four questions about music and nature, which I could summarize as:
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