Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

Note too that the adaptive roles for art we’ve considered—sharpening innovation and strengthening social bonds—work in tandem. Innovation is the foot soldier of creativity. Group cohesion is the army of implementation. Success in the relentless battle for survival requires both: creative ideas that are successfully implemented. That the arts stand at the nexus of the two suggests an adaptive role beyond the mere pushing of pleasure buttons. Sure, it’s possible that the arts are an adaptively inconsequential yet profoundly pleasing by-product of a large brain hosting a creative mind, but to many researchers that gives insufficient heed to art’s capacity to sculpt our engagement with reality. Brian Boyd has made this point succinctly: “By refining and strengthening our sociality, by making us readier to use the resources of the imagination, and by raising our confidence in shaping life on our own terms, art fundamentally alters our relation to our world.”