The Art Instinct by: Daniel Allen, January 27, 2009 It is hard to imagine what purpose art could have served in a world where every day was largely a struggle to survive until the next day. How did art develop among our ancestors, and what role did it play in their ability to survive and progress? In The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution, Denis Dutton seeks to answer these questions as he explores the characteristics of art in the framework of Darwinian philosophy and human evolution. Many readers will doubtless reject The Art Instinct out of hand, disagreeing...