Delighted to be here and to talk to you about a subject dear to my heart, which is beauty. I do the philosophy of art, aesthetics, actually, for a living. I try to figure out intellectually, philosophically, psychologically, what the experience of beauty is, what sensibly can be said about it and how people go off the rails in trying to understand it. Now this is an extremely complicated subject, in part because the things that we call beautiful are so different. I mean just think of the sheer variety -- a baby's face, Berlioz's "Harold in Italy," movies like "The Wizard of Oz" or the plays of Chekhov, a central California landscape, a Hokusai view of Mt. Fuji, "Der Rosenkavalier," a stunning match-winning goal in a World Cup soccer match, Van Gogh's "Starry Night," a Jane Austen novel, Fred Astaire dancing across the screen. This brief list includes human beings, natural landforms, works of art and skilled human actions. An account that explains the presence of beauty in everything on this list is not going to be easy.
我很高興能來這裡 跟你們分享我所熱愛的主題 那就是「美」 我研究藝術哲學和美學 並以此為業 我試圖透過知性、 哲學、心理學的層面探討 「美」的感受究竟是什麼, 我們如何用理智的語言來詮釋「美」 人們如何透過非傳統的眼光來理解「美」 這個主題何其複雜 一部份的原因是,那些我們稱之為「美」的事物 是如此不同 試想它們是多麼南轅北轍: 嬰孩的小臉 白遼士的《哈羅爾德在義大利》交響曲 《綠野仙蹤》之類的電影 或是,契訶夫的戲劇 加州中部的壯麗景觀 葛飾北齋眼中的富士山 歌劇《玫瑰騎士》 世界盃足球賽 精采致勝的那一球 梵谷的《星夜》 珍‧奧斯汀的小說 螢光幕上弗雷德‧阿斯泰爾的舞蹈 剛剛簡略列出來的事物,包括人物 自然風景 藝術作品,以及人類精妙的動作 要找到一種說法能夠涵蓋剛剛所列出的 所有美麗事物 並不是容易的事
I can, however, give you at least a taste of what I regard as the most powerful theory of beauty we yet have. And we get it not from a philosopher of art, not from a postmodern art theorist or a bigwig art critic. No, this theory comes from an expert on barnacles and worms and pigeon breeding, and you know who I mean: Charles Darwin. Of course, a lot of people think they already know the proper answer to the question, "What is beauty?" It's in the eye of the beholder. It's whatever moves you personally. Or, as some people, especially academics prefer, beauty is in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder. People agree that paintings or movies or music are beautiful because their cultures determine a uniformity of aesthetic taste. Taste for both natural beauty and for the arts travel across cultures with great ease. Beethoven is adored in Japan. Peruvians love Japanese woodblock prints. Inca sculptures are regarded as treasures in British museums, while Shakespeare is translated into every major language of the Earth. Or just think about American jazz or American movies -- they go everywhere. There are many differences among the arts, but there are also universal, cross-cultural aesthetic pleasures and values.
但是,我至少能讓你們稍微了解 我認為 我們目前所有有關「美」的理論中 最有力的一個 這個理論不是來自於藝術哲學家 也不是來自後現代藝術理論學者 或是擲地有聲的藝術評論家 都不是。這個理論 是出自一位 研究藤壺、蠕蟲和鴿子繁殖的專家 你們應該知道我講的是誰: 就是達爾文 當然,很多人認為自己已經知曉 這個議題的最佳答案 什麼是「美」? 美是存在於觀者的眼中 是能觸動你個人內心的東西 或者像是某些人 尤其是學術界的人所偏好的說法 美是觀者在其個別的文化薰陶之下 所產生的觀感 人們都認同畫作、電影或音樂 是美麗的 因為他們的文化決定了他們美學品味的一致性 對於自然美景和藝術的喜好品味 能輕易地跨越 各種文化 貝多芬在日本備受推崇 祕魯人喜歡日本木刻版畫 印加雕刻在英國博物館 被視為珍寶 莎士比亞的作品則被翻譯成 全世界各種主要語言 或者光想想看美國的爵士樂 或是美國電影 在世界各地隨處可見 藝術有各種不同的形式 但卻也有普遍一致的 跨文化的審美樂趣 和美感價值
How can we explain this universality? The best answer lies in trying to reconstruct a Darwinian evolutionary history of our artistic and aesthetic tastes. We need to reverse-engineer our present artistic tastes and preferences and explain how they came to be engraved in our minds by the actions of both our prehistoric, largely pleistocene environments, where we became fully human, but also by the social situations in which we evolved. This reverse engineering can also enlist help from the human record preserved in prehistory. I mean fossils, cave paintings and so forth. And it should take into account what we know of the aesthetic interests of isolated hunter-gatherer bands that survived into the 19th and the 20th centuries.
我們該怎麼解釋 這種普遍性呢? 最好的答案就在我們試著重建 藝術與美學品味的 演化歷史 我們必須回溯 目前既有藝術品味與偏好的源頭 理解它們從何而來 如何在我們的心志生根 從史前的人類活動 多活動在更新世環境中 也就是人類進化成全人的地方 以及不斷進化的 社會狀態 這樣的回溯動作 同樣也能幫助 保存記錄人類 在史前記錄的活動 像是化石,洞穴壁畫 我們也應該考慮到 那些舊石器時代的採獵族群 他們的美學興趣 是如何延續至十九與二十世紀
Now, I personally have no doubt whatsoever that the experience of beauty, with its emotional intensity and pleasure, belongs to our evolved human psychology. The experience of beauty is one component in a whole series of Darwinian adaptations. Beauty is an adaptive effect, which we extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of works of art and entertainment. As many of you will know, evolution operates by two main primary mechanisms. The first of these is natural selection -- that's random mutation and selective retention -- along with our basic anatomy and physiology -- the evolution of the pancreas or the eye or the fingernails. Natural selection also explains many basic revulsions, such as the horrid smell of rotting meat, or fears, such as the fear of snakes or standing close to the edge of a cliff. Natural selection also explains pleasures -- sexual pleasure, our liking for sweet, fat and proteins, which in turn explains a lot of popular foods, from ripe fruits through chocolate malts and barbecued ribs.
我個人 並不懷疑 美的體驗包含 強烈的情緒與歡愉 也就是屬於已進化人類的心理層面 美的經驗是一系列的達爾文演化論中 其中的一項元素 美是種適應性的影響 也就是我們加以延伸 強調 創作與享受 藝術品與其娛樂性 你們多數人大都知道 演化的過程是由兩個主要機制所操控的 第一為物競天擇 也就是隨機突變與選擇性的保留 加上人類基本的解剖與生理演化 例如胰臟,眼睛或指甲的進化 物競天擇同樣也能解釋 我們普遍感到懼怕與厭惡的事物 例如腐爛肉的可怕氣味 或恐懼,對蛇 或站在懸崖邊的恐懼 物競天擇也能解釋歡愉 性歡愉 以及我們對甜食,油脂與蛋白質的喜好 進而解釋現在許多受歡迎的食物 是熟成乾果,巧克力麥芽 與烤肋排
The other great principle of evolution is sexual selection, and it operates very differently. The peacock's magnificent tail is the most famous example of this. It did not evolve for natural survival. In fact, it goes against natural survival. No, the peacock's tail results from the mating choices made by peahens. It's quite a familiar story. It's women who actually push history forward. Darwin himself, by the way, had no doubts that the peacock's tail was beautiful in the eyes of the peahen. He actually used that word. Now, keeping these ideas firmly in mind, we can say that the experience of beauty is one of the ways that evolution has of arousing and sustaining interest or fascination, even obsession, in order to encourage us toward making the most adaptive decisions for survival and reproduction. Beauty is nature's way of acting at a distance, so to speak. I mean, you can't expect to eat an adaptively beneficial landscape. It would hardly do to eat your baby or your lover. So evolution's trick is to make them beautiful, to have them exert a kind of magnetism to give you the pleasure of simply looking at them.
另一個演化的原則 是性別選擇 這項機制運作方式相當不同 例如孔雀的華美尾巴 就是好的例子 這項機制跟物競天擇無關 事實上,是剛剛好相反 孔雀的尾巴 目的是吸引雌孔雀 決定要不要與之交配 這其實是相當耳熟的故事 女性是推動歷史演進的重要推手 另外,達爾文自己 也承認在母孔雀眼裡 公孔雀的尾巴是非常美麗的 他甚至用『美麗』一字來形容 接下來,請將這些觀念記住 我們可以說美的體驗 是演化其中一個方式 是喚起和維持 其興趣或喜好 甚至是迷戀 讓我們能做出 最適應環境的決定 以利生存與繁衍 美是一種 也就是 隔空影響的自然法則 我是指,你無法吃下 具有利適應條件的美好景色 你不可能如此對你的小孩 或你所愛的人 所以演化的技巧就是 讓他們變得美麗 讓他們擁有某種吸引力 讓你光是看著他們就感到歡樂
Consider briefly an important source of aesthetic pleasure, the magnetic pull of beautiful landscapes. People in very different cultures all over the world tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a landscape that just happens to be similar to the pleistocene savannas where we evolved. This landscape shows up today on calendars, on postcards, in the design of golf courses and public parks and in gold-framed pictures that hang in living rooms from New York to New Zealand. It's a kind of Hudson River school landscape featuring open spaces of low grasses interspersed with copses of trees. The trees, by the way, are often preferred if they fork near the ground, that is to say, if they're trees you could scramble up if you were in a tight fix. The landscape shows the presence of water directly in view, or evidence of water in a bluish distance, indications of animal or bird life as well as diverse greenery and finally -- get this -- a path or a road, perhaps a riverbank or a shoreline, that extends into the distance, almost inviting you to follow it. This landscape type is regarded as beautiful, even by people in countries that don't have it. The ideal savanna landscape is one of the clearest examples where human beings everywhere find beauty in similar visual experience.
另外,關於美所帶來的歡愉 另一個重要的來源就是 美麗風景的吸引力 全世界許多來自 不同文化背景的人們 都會喜歡特定種類的風景景觀 而這樣的風景剛好與史前時代 人類進化的環境相當類似 這樣的景觀畫面會出現在今天的 月曆上,明信片上 高爾夫球場與公園的設計 以及掛在客廳裡 並以金色邊框裱起來 不論是在紐約或是紐西蘭皆隨處可見 這是類似哈德遜河畫派的風景畫 有著廣闊的地理空間 低矮的草坪 許多樹叢散落其間 另外,這裡的樹,大多像是 樹枝幾乎觸地 也就像是,如果你在站某個茂密點上 便可以攀爬而上 這樣的風景,也包含了水的蹤跡 無論是直接地描繪在眼前 或是在畫面遠處以藍色筆觸表現水的存在 以及動物或鳥類 還有多樣的綠色植物 以及最後 一條小徑 或一條路 或是河岸,海岸線 延伸至遠處 就像是邀請你前往 這樣的景色被認為是美麗的 即使在某些國家裡的人們 不曾擁有這樣的景觀風景 理想的大草原景色 是其中一個明顯的例子 說明不管來自哪裡的人類 對美的認同 是具有相同的視覺體驗
But, someone might argue, that's natural beauty. How about artistic beauty? Isn't that exhaustively cultural? No, I don't think it is. And once again, I'd like to look back to prehistory to say something about it. It is widely assumed that the earliest human artworks are the stupendously skillful cave paintings that we all know from Lascaux and Chauvet. Chauvet caves are about 32,000 years old, along with a few small, realistic sculptures of women and animals from the same period. But artistic and decorative skills are actually much older than that. Beautiful shell necklaces that look like something you'd see at an arts and crafts fair, as well as ochre body paint, have been found from around 100,000 years ago.
但有些人也許會問 這只能說明自然美景 那麼人工藝術品呢? 藝術品難道不是完全的屬於個別文化性的嗎? 但我並不這麼認為 我想再一次請大家回到史前時代 來說明其原因 普遍認為 最早人類的藝術品 是高超技術的洞穴壁畫 從法國Lasaux洞窟壁畫 到Chauvet洞穴 Chauvet洞穴 大概已經三萬兩千年 有著一些逼真的精緻雕塑品 描繪當時代的女子與動物 但藝術與裝飾技巧 遠比所描繪的時代還要來得久遠 美麗的貝殼項鍊 就像是那種你會在藝術展覽場上找到的一樣 例如赭石人體彩繪 經研究 迄今已超過十萬年
But the most intriguing prehistoric artifacts are older even than this. I have in mind the so-called Acheulian hand axes. The oldest stone tools are choppers from the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. They go back about two-and-a-half-million years. These crude tools were around for thousands of centuries, until around 1.4 million years ago when Homo erectus started shaping single, thin stone blades, sometimes rounded ovals, but often in what are to our eyes an arresting, symmetrical pointed leaf or teardrop form. These Acheulian hand axes -- they're named after St. Acheul in France, where finds were made in 19th century -- have been unearthed in their thousands, scattered across Asia, Europe and Africa, almost everywhere Homo erectus and Homo ergaster roamed. Now, the sheer numbers of these hand axes shows that they can't have been made for butchering animals. And the plot really thickens when you realize that, unlike other pleistocene tools, the hand axes often exhibit no evidence of wear on their delicate blade edges. And some, in any event, are too big to use for butchery. Their symmetry, their attractive materials and, above all, their meticulous workmanship are simply quite beautiful to our eyes, even today.
但其中最吸引人的史前藝術品 其實比人體彩繪還要古老 是像 所謂的阿舍利手斧 是最古老的石器,用來當做手斧 是在東非奧度瓦伊峽谷所發掘的 迄今已有約兩百多萬年的歷史 這些原始的工具 都已存在超過幾千世紀 直到約一百四十萬年前 當直立猿人 開始削磨 單一,輕薄的刀片 有時磨成卵圓形狀 但大多時候,在我們看來 都是個對稱,尖頭樹葉狀 或是淚珠的形狀 這些阿舍利手斧 是以法國的阿歇爾遺址命名 當初於十九世紀時在這個地方開始發掘 出土的幾千把此類型手斧 遍及亞洲,歐洲與非洲大陸 幾乎有直立猿人 與非洲匠人地方都有其蹤跡 現在,光是這些斧頭的數量 便可證明這種手斧 不光光只是用來宰殺動物 當我們進一步了解,會發現此項假設為真 和其他史前工具不同 在這些斧頭 輕薄的刀片上 多數都沒有磨耗的痕跡 而且有些的體型明顯過大 不適於用在屠宰上 他們其對稱,流線的材質 以及 非常細緻的工藝技術 在我們今天看來 都是非常美麗的
So what were these ancient -- I mean, they're ancient, they're foreign, but they're at the same time somehow familiar. What were these artifacts for? The best available answer is that they were literally the earliest known works of art, practical tools transformed into captivating aesthetic objects, contemplated both for their elegant shape and their virtuoso craftsmanship. Hand axes mark an evolutionary advance in human history -- tools fashioned to function as what Darwinians call "fitness signals" -- that is to say, displays that are performances like the peacock's tail, except that, unlike hair and feathers, the hand axes are consciously cleverly crafted. Competently made hand axes indicated desirable personal qualities -- intelligence, fine motor control, planning ability, conscientiousness and sometimes access to rare materials. Over tens of thousands of generations, such skills increased the status of those who displayed them and gained a reproductive advantage over the less capable. You know, it's an old line, but it has been shown to work -- "Why don't you come up to my cave, so I can show you my hand axes?"
這些年代久遠 我是指,他們歷史非常久遠,陌生 但同時 我們卻也感到十分熟悉 這些工藝品的用途是什麼? 最合理可能的答案 是他們基本上是 目前已知年代最為古老的藝術品 實用工具轉變成 非常吸引人的藝術品 就其美麗的形狀 與其精湛的工藝 這些斧頭在人類的歷史上 留下演化進步的印記 工具使之合於運用 是達爾文學派稱之的合適性 也就是說,這代表 一種表現,展示行為 就像孔雀開屏 另外,不像頭髮或是羽毛 這手斧是有目的性地 刻意精密製作 製作合適的斧頭 其中展現出美好的人性: 智能,精細動作控制 計畫的能力 勤奮 與獲得特殊材料的能力 經過數萬個世代交替 如此精湛的技術提高了 製作者的地位 及比起其他無技能者 較具有生殖交配的優勢 有句古諺 現在聽來仍是相當正確 『入吾洞穴,獻君觀其手杖』
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Except, of course, what's interesting about this is that we can't be sure how that idea was conveyed, because the Homo erectus that made these objects did not have language. It's hard to grasp, but it's an incredible fact. This object was made by a hominid ancestor, Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, between 50,000 and 100,000 years before language. Stretching over a million years, the hand axe tradition is the longest artistic tradition in human and proto-human history. By the end of the hand axe epic, Homo sapiens -- as they were then called, finally -- were doubtless finding new ways to amuse and amaze each other by, who knows, telling jokes, storytelling, dancing, or hairstyling. Yes, hairstyling -- I insist on that.
當然,有趣的還有 我們無法確定這概念是如何形成的 因為製作這些物件的 直立猿人 尚未使用語言 所以使得這很難去了解 這了不起的事實 這物件是由 人類的祖先 直立猿人或非洲匠人所製作的 是大約在語言發明前的 五十至十萬年以前 斧頭傳統 時間橫跨超越一百萬年 是人類與原始人類歷史上 時間最長的藝術傳統 到了斧頭年代的尾聲,進入所謂的 現代人時代 人類終於開始尋找新方法 來娛樂彼此,讓對方欣賞 以說笑話 故事,跳舞或是髮型等的方法 沒錯,是頭髮造型,我堅持用這個詞
For us moderns, virtuoso technique is used to create imaginary worlds in fiction and in movies, to express intense emotions with music, painting and dance. But still, one fundamental trait of the ancestral personality persists in our aesthetic cravings: the beauty we find in skilled performances. From Lascaux to the Louvre to Carnegie Hall, human beings have a permanent innate taste for virtuoso displays in the arts. We find beauty in something done well.
對我們現代人來說 工藝技術 是用來打造小說裡或是電影裡的 想像國度 透過音樂,繪畫與舞蹈 來表達心中的強烈情感 但是 這仍有一個非常根本的性質 早在我們祖先的身上便具有的 對藝術渴忘的堅持: 那些我們在 技藝表演中所發現的美麗 從 Lascaux壁畫到羅浮宮 到卡內基音樂廳 人類 有著與生俱來 追求精湛工藝的美感 我們認為的美 是指手藝精湛
So the next time you pass a jewelry shop window displaying a beautifully cut teardrop-shaped stone, don't be so sure it's just your culture telling you that that sparkling jewel is beautiful. Your distant ancestors loved that shape and found beauty in the skill needed to make it, even before they could put their love into words. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No, it's deep in our minds. It's a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky, will be with us and our descendants for as long as the human race exists.
所以下回當你走過珠寶店的櫥窗 展示著完美切割 淚珠型的寶石 別太過肯定 那是你的文化教育你 那顆閃閃發亮的珠寶是美的表徵 你的遠古祖先早已能欣賞 喜愛其製造工藝 早在他們有能力 把熱情付諸於文字之前 所以美僅僅止於觀者的眼裡? 不,它早已深根地固埋於我們之中 那是一份禮物,由我們擁有智能技術 與豐富情感的遠古祖先 所傳遞下來的 我們對圖畫所產生的強烈反應 將情感化成藝術 能體會音樂及夜空的美好 自人類誕生的那一刻 這些美好都將與我們同在
Thank you.
謝謝
(Applause)
(掌聲)