Posted on 04/11/2009 9:21:02 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Art as Propaganda for Evolution
April 10, 2009 — Should a scientific theory be propagated by appeal to scientific evidence, or by appeal to emotions through visualization? Nature this week contained two articles that shamelessly praised art as propaganda for evolution. Surprisingly, one of them mentioned Charles Darwin as someone “at the cutting edge of visualization.”
The exhibit examines the history of art as Darwinism was overtaking traditional religious beliefs.
The exhibit does a good job of showing how differently people saw the world at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Nature was replete with signs of divine design. A painting of Noah’s flood was considered historical art. Yet Darwin was able to learn a great deal from art of this time, whether he was studying illustrations of geological formations or marvelling at the paintings of French–American naturalist John James Audubon, who Darwin met as a teenager.Zimmer claims that Darwin did not use pictures merely to illustrate ideas, but to investigate them. For instance, “the very notion of beauty was something Darwin wanted to explain: the beauty of orchids actually masked a complex contrivance for getting pollen onto insects; the beauty of an Argus pheasant’s feathers was the result of sexual selection.” Artists, in sympathetic vibration, paid attention to Darwin. “They replaced sentimental scenes of nature with bleaker portraits of the struggle for survival.”
As Darwin developed as a scientist, he made some modest art of his own. On his journeys in South America, he painted the rock strata of the Andes in watercolour. On his return to the United Kingdom, he began to scribble odd little tree diagrams in his notebooks – a visual expression of his great epiphany that species are related through common descent. Darwin worked closely with artists to illustrate his books. This may surprise readers of On the Origin of Species – a book with a single illustration showing the branching of species. But his other books were lavishly illustrated....
Darwin was at the cutting edge of visualization. His 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was one of the first books ever to be illustrated with photographs – including pictures of faces distorted by electric currents, produced by the work of French physician Guillaume Duchenne.
Zimmer was glad the exhibit did not shy away from difficult subjects. “....some [artists] wrongly took it [evolution] as justification to elevate whites over other races, cloaking their freak-show voyeurism in the guise of anthropology.”Why Zimmer gives the exhibit “great credit” for this was not explained. Is he glad that the dark side of evolutionary thinking is being exposed?
God – or Gorilla hints at a larger clash of visual cultures between modernists and fundamentalists: Neanderthals versus Adam and Eve, church frescoes depicting ascent from protozoa against a ‘picturable God’. That would be a great topic for further research, which would need to pay religious icons more attention, but this highly readable book is valuable as it stands. It is also timely. The 1920s shaped pictures of evolution, and of evolutionary debate, that are still in our heads. As biologists work with illustrators to communicate science, and creationists attack textbook icons,3 it is helpful to reflect on the struggles of that decisive decade.Hopwood thus identified the evolutionist imagery as useful to science, whether or not it was accurate. Clark, for instance, said “Cartoons played on images of the Scopes ‘monkey trial’, and people joked about missing links.” In museums, tree diagrams and misleading sequences like the fossil horse series were presented as “unvarnished facts.” Hopwood did not condemn any of this. For instance, he disparaged the attempts of Henry Fairfield Osborn to imply that evolution was compatible with religion. “This theistic evolutionism repelled secular scientists and fundamentalist Christians alike, but was often presented as the scientific consensus.” Hopwood seems to imply that the scientific consensus allows no such accommodationism – it must be anti-religious and materialistic.
458, 704-705 (9 April 2009) | doi:10.1038/458704a; Published online 8 April 2009.
3. This seems to be a direct reference to Icons of Evolution by Dr. Jonathan Wells (Regnery, 2000). Visualization is one of several pedagogical aids that can enlighten or propagandize, depending on how it is used. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with cartoons, simplified illustrations, and diagrams if they illuminate the truth. However, wrong inferences can be made – such as Darwin’s photos of people expressing emotion being used to infer they inherited these capabilities from apes. Art and visualization can distract, mislead, mischaracterize, or create emotional responses in lieu of scientific evidence. Darwinists have been very skilled at this propaganda since their master wrote his materialist manifesto. They should be scorned, not praised, for pretending that peppered moths prove humans had bacteria ancestors, or for piecing together unrelated fossils into a story of evolutionary progression. Awareness of the danger of visualization is the best defense, and the best offense is to unmask it as propaganda. Truth needs illumination, not varnish.
I’m just trying to figure out what the difference between an artist’s rendering of a dinosaur and one of something like Noah’s Ark that make’s one “deceptive propaganda” and the other not. Your explanation is about as clear as mud.
I hope you can work it out but my hopes aren’t high when if you seriously believe this;
“One man’s “illustration” is another man’s “propaganda”.
Cheers.
I seriously believe that. The alternative is to believe that people are perfectly objective, and I know better than that.
Yes, I will explain.
If you go to a large museum you'll see statues from ancient Rome and Greece, many of them nudes. Michaelangelo's David comes to mind as well as other heroic characters.
Obviously the nudity is not reality nor is eroticism. It is a propaganda tool to portray the individual in heroic physical perfection. The nudity was not nakedness in the intent of the sculptor. Nor was the nudity the message.
The underlying message was the virtual worship of human bodily perfection and the hero was supposed to have it.
That similar devices were and are used in art and advertising makes them propaganda first and any illustrative value is accidental if it exists at all.
Looking at the depictions of so-called “cavemen” as naked, grunting brutes, it takes not too much intellectual vigor to understand the propaganda behind them.
The same could be said of the
Dinosaur or ark, it can either be illustration or propaganda depending upon the context and purposes of the artist.
“For instance, “the very notion of beauty was something Darwin wanted to explain: the beauty of orchids actually masked a complex contrivance for getting pollen onto insects; the beauty of an Argus pheasant’s feathers was the result of sexual selection.”
If Zimmer is correct in his assessment of Darwin then even beauty is little more than a propaganda tool.
Yes, I will explain.
Dinosaur or ark, it can either be illustration or propaganda depending upon the context and purposes of the artist.
OK. What "other alternative" do you offer? You explanation still still comes down to the image, having to be either propaganda or illustration.
Not so. I’m sorry you can’t get past the superficial image. I really don’t see how I can make it more simple.
Maybe one of the other posters can do better.
Maybe, but it seemed simple enough. It still comes down to declaring it to be either illustation or propaganda.
The only thing your explanation does is remove any responsibily for making that determination from the viewer. Whatever they decide it's illustation or propaganda must be because that's how the artist intended it.
If the former can a generalized interpretation be predicted so that an artist could choose certain imagery with the hope of producing that interpretation effectively?
If the latter, can we, in the absence of a clearly stated objective by an artist, discern his motive, message, etc., apart from just examining the image, by examining the artist and the circumstances of his work?
As a corollary, If all interpretation is apart from the mind of the artist then can propaganda actually exist except in the mind of the artist? It seems the artist could not know how to make his message broad enough to reach a necessary majority of the viewers to actually produce propaganda or project some opinion if the probabilities of interpretation were infinite on the part of the viewer.
I realize this is a vast oversimplification but if it works why not?
If specific examples are needed the two greatest sources of propaganda that are easily shown in the visual, is art and advertising, even allowing for the overlap between the two.
I would suggest some study of those two as it can be easily and inexpensively done.
How did you determine, from looking at an artist’s rendering of a feathered dinosaur, that the artist intended to convey to you that this drawing was a accurate representation of what that animal looked like, right down to the placement and color of each feather, and not simply a illustration of what one might have looked like?
An artist's imaginative rendering, imaginative since what dinosaurs looked like in detail is unknown, is an attempt to give visual imagery to what is purely speculative. If the writer says this is just what is the possible appearance of a feathered dinosaur, the artist has provided something concrete and in lifelike detail.
The question of actual vs. possible is of far less importance than the detailed drawing that conveys the message that not only is this possible but here it is.
And I would further suggest that the illustrations of what something looks like that accompany text have a far greater impact on what the viewer thinks the text is saying than the words of the text its self.
I don't think the sharp distinction in your question exists when talking about how something looked physically.
Then perhaps I misinterpreted this statement from earlier in the exchange, although it seemed to be unambiguous at that time:
When a feathered dinosaur is shown in a drawing it is the possession and placement of the feathers on a particular animal that is being touted as fact by means of the illustration.
You asked:
“How did you determine, from looking at an artist’s rendering of a feathered dinosaur....”
It wasn’t from just “looking at an artist’s rendfering” as I think I’ve explained in several ways.
What makes one "deceptive propaganda" and the other "merely an illustration"?
In one form or another you’re asking the same question over and again. And I think you’re getting basically the same answers even if they’re not satisfactory to you. Sorry.
“What makes one “deceptive propaganda” and the other “merely an illustration”?”
I’ve given the best answer I can already.
“How are the details of what dinosaurs looked like any more speculative that the details of what Noah’s Ark looked like?”
Wouldn’t the answer depend upon the particular example?
From what you're telling me, the answer is no. It would depend on the the intent of the artist.
I've seen photographs of very detailed, life-sized, and very life-like models of dinosaurs they have at the Creation Museum. I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that those are going to deemed to be "merely illustrative".
Other models or drawings of dinosaurs that are of comparable detail removed from the context of presenting and supporting the biblical account of Creation will be "deceptive propaganda".
I have nothing to do with the Creation Museum and have no idea of what they have other than what the name suggests.
Not much I can say about them and their models, etc.
Not even if they have feathers?
I have nothing to do with the Creation Museum and have no idea of what they have other than what the name suggests so not much I can say about them and their models, etc.
I’d think you’d be more interested in them if they’re presenting life-like depictions of dinosaurs.
“Not even if they have feathers?” They have any?
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