Does beauty reduce to necessity? The Darwinian answer is “yes.”
Donald Culross Peattie wrote, “You may pretend so if you like, but it is not demonstrable.”
He wrote those words in An Almanac for Moderns in 1935. A nature writer could write such things in 1935, but today I think it is harder for one to say this.
The possibility that the struggle for existence is not sufficient to explain beauty worried Darwin. He worried that it is not demonstrable.
It is a pity that the view of evolution named Darwinian today does not reflect the full careful thought and wisdom of the man whose name it bears.
I think Peattie is right – we pretend that we believe beauty reduces to necessity. I wonder why we pretend so? It may be that through science we have learned to overcome the great power of chance and necessity, but if beauty is something else, something free, then its power must be awfully great, just as poets say. It may never yield its secret, its freedom, to us.
Lost Borders 
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February 28, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Chris
“It is a pity that the view of evolution named Darwinian today does not reflect the full careful thought and wisdom of the man whose name it bears.”
Emerson said an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. Much truth in that, especially when one considers that the shadow is not the man.
Peace to you today.
February 28, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Ken
That is a great quote and observation. Thank you.
April 25, 2009 at 5:25 am
highestform
Hi there,
I came across your blog the other day and I like it… I’ve thought about beauty and necessity too. The other day someone asked me why it was important to devote time and money to art (in jest) and I responded without thinking, “because it is unnecessary” (that may be a bit of an oversimplification). Anyhow. I enjoyed your post.
April 25, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Ken
Highestform:
I think your response that art is worth our time and money because it is unnecessary does get to the heart of art. The question reflects the commercial/economic orientation of our times. I think your answer deals with the question by changing the subject and it is right to do so. Art has been about many things over the history of humanity, and the least important of them has been money.
In modernity I think it is especially true that we engage in and appreciate art because it is unnecessary. In modernity I think art is an expression of freedom – a declaration of freedom, perhaps, from an existence that many other voices in modernity claim is reducible to necessity and chance.