Evolutionary aesthetics

Evolutionary aesthetics is the multidisciplinary investigation of the origins and evolution of our artistic and aesthetic behaviours and the capacities underwriting those behaviours. Key research questions include when, in the evolutionary past of our species, aesthetic sensitivities and artistic behaviours originated, and how, as well as whether those behaviours are evolutionary adaptations, by-products of evolutionary processes, or nonbiological cultural products. More recently, researchers have explored the explanatory potential of niche construction and gene-culture coevolutionary theory with respect to aesthetics and the arts.