268 HUMAN INTELLIGENCEoutstrips that of any other species. Let us now see how that complexity
with diversity may have come about and is expressed in cognitive abilities.THE MUSIC OF ( HUMAN) LIFESurvival in unpredictable environments is only pos si ble through systems
of pattern abstraction. Adaptation by ge ne tic se lection is too slow to keep
track. Simple cues are unreliable. So living things are intelligent systems
based on pattern abstraction (in this book, I have given it vari ous other
names as well). In a sense, pattern abstraction is intelligence, and intel-
ligence is pattern abstraction. Life itself originated with it. But as organ-
isms inhabited more complex environments, their powers of pattern
abstraction had to increase.
Cooperating with other individuals in survival and other tasks pres-
ents the most complex of all environments. Having evolved to deal with
it explains why humans are now compulsive pattern abstractors. We not
only revel in fi nding it in nature, we also celebrate the ability by creating
such patterns. Th at is what music, dance, art, and beauty are all about.
We also contrive pattern abstraction, and what to do with it, in a vast
variety of games and sports. Encountering patterns in any way makes us
feel better, because it makes the world feel more predictable, more secure.
Discovering and creating patterns makes a fi ne form of therapy.
Humans, in other words, are pattern junkies. But other lessons can be
learned from that. Why humans so exuberantly engage in activities like
art, dance, and music has been a major puzzle in the evolutionary psy-
chol ogy/cultural biology tradition. In Th e Descent of Man (1871), Darwin
wrote that musical ability must be among the most mysterious with which
humans are endowed. In 2008, the journal Nature published a series of
essays on it. Th e authors of these essays agreed that “none... has yet been
able to answer the fundamental question: why does music have such
power over us?”^13
In a narrow Darwinian tradition, in which only rigid adaptations
make sense, what kind of adaptations can these be? It is pos si ble that they
are happy side eff ects of abilities that evolved for other purposes, as pro-
posed by Steven Pinker. However, there may be a better explanation.
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:57:55 UTChttp://www.ebook3000.com