"Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature"
About this Quote
Pinker’s line is a polite way of smuggling a provocation past the guards. In one sentence, he nudges art out of the temple of ineffable mystery and back into the messy, measurable world of evolved minds, social instincts, and cognitive bias. “Ultimately” does a lot of work here: it implies that whatever else we argue about - taste, technique, politics, markets - the deepest driver is the machinery we all share. Art isn’t floated in from the ether; it’s built on the same mental scaffolding that makes us fall for faces, stories, rhythm, status games, and moral drama.
The subtext is an argument against two fashionable temptations. One is extreme cultural relativism, the idea that art is basically arbitrary, a set of local codes with no underlying constraints. The other is art-as-sacrament, where aesthetic experience must remain beyond explanation to keep its prestige. Pinker’s phrasing is careful: he cites “artists and scholars,” borrowing legitimacy from both makers and interpreters, then anchors their insight in “human nature,” his home turf. It’s an appeal to common ground that also asserts disciplinary jurisdiction.
Context matters: Pinker’s broader project has been to naturalize the humanities without reducing them to dullness. This line is less “science will solve art” than “art already reveals what we are.” It invites a reframing: instead of treating art as an exception to human behavior, treat it as evidence. The consequence is bracing. If art depends on human nature, then changes in culture can remix the surface, but they can’t repeal the appetite for pattern, meaning, and feeling that keeps art alive.
The subtext is an argument against two fashionable temptations. One is extreme cultural relativism, the idea that art is basically arbitrary, a set of local codes with no underlying constraints. The other is art-as-sacrament, where aesthetic experience must remain beyond explanation to keep its prestige. Pinker’s phrasing is careful: he cites “artists and scholars,” borrowing legitimacy from both makers and interpreters, then anchors their insight in “human nature,” his home turf. It’s an appeal to common ground that also asserts disciplinary jurisdiction.
Context matters: Pinker’s broader project has been to naturalize the humanities without reducing them to dullness. This line is less “science will solve art” than “art already reveals what we are.” It invites a reframing: instead of treating art as an exception to human behavior, treat it as evidence. The consequence is bracing. If art depends on human nature, then changes in culture can remix the surface, but they can’t repeal the appetite for pattern, meaning, and feeling that keeps art alive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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