601
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_64
Chapter 64
Fundaments of Observation
and Melancholy
64.1 On the Origins and Novelty of Despair
In her essay on the origins of human artistic creativity, University of Oxford anatomist Gillian M. Morriss-Kay suggests that “Linking anatomy to the origins of art is
impossible”; that “Art does not exist in a vacuum but requires a social context, otherwise it is meaningless.”
1
While the conceptuality of artistic enterprise 30,000 years
ago exploited no known anatomical features independent of those available to
Paleolithic successors alive today, other cultural norms have most assuredly
changed, underscoring a statement in Jean-Paul Sartre’s first definitive clarification
of what he meant by existentialism. “…what can be said from the very beginning is
that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in
addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting and a
human subjectivity.”
2
A year after the release of his Existentialism, Sartre’s subsequent work The Psychology of Imagination examined a student of anatomy who
held to the contention that reality, its impressions, the emanations of an “intense
life” as experienced in short-term memory could be “more true than nature” “just as
a particularly significant portrait is said to be truer than its model.
3
We don’t know, nor did Sartre, what “more true than nature” might mean, but it
is a tease of both tragic and sublime dimensions that underscores the most rigorous
default in evolutionary theory. That is because there has been no direct evidence,
and little outright speculation in either science or the history of philosophy what a
new species, let alone a large omnivorous mammal, has to say, to think, to do. How
1 “The evolution of human artistic creativity,” by Gillian M. Morriss-Kay, The Journal of Anatomy,
J Anat. 2010 Feb; 216(2): 158–176., Published online 2009 Nov 6. doi: https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01160.x, PMCID: PMC2815939, PMID: 19900185.”
2 Existentialism, by Jean-Paul Sartre, Translated by Bernard Frechtman, Philosophical Library,
New York, 1947, p. 12.
3 The Psychology Of Imagination, by Jean-Paul Sartre, Translated from the French, Philosophical
Library New York, 1948, p. 53.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_64
Chapter 64
Fundaments of Observation
and Melancholy
64.1 On the Origins and Novelty of Despair
In her essay on the origins of human artistic creativity, University of Oxford anatomist Gillian M. Morriss-Kay suggests that “Linking anatomy to the origins of art is
impossible”; that “Art does not exist in a vacuum but requires a social context, otherwise it is meaningless.”
1
While the conceptuality of artistic enterprise 30,000 years
ago exploited no known anatomical features independent of those available to
Paleolithic successors alive today, other cultural norms have most assuredly
changed, underscoring a statement in Jean-Paul Sartre’s first definitive clarification
of what he meant by existentialism. “…what can be said from the very beginning is
that by existentialism we mean a doctrine which makes human life possible and, in
addition, declares that every truth and every action implies a human setting and a
human subjectivity.”
2
A year after the release of his Existentialism, Sartre’s subsequent work The Psychology of Imagination examined a student of anatomy who
held to the contention that reality, its impressions, the emanations of an “intense
life” as experienced in short-term memory could be “more true than nature” “just as
a particularly significant portrait is said to be truer than its model.
3
We don’t know, nor did Sartre, what “more true than nature” might mean, but it
is a tease of both tragic and sublime dimensions that underscores the most rigorous
default in evolutionary theory. That is because there has been no direct evidence,
and little outright speculation in either science or the history of philosophy what a
new species, let alone a large omnivorous mammal, has to say, to think, to do. How
1 “The evolution of human artistic creativity,” by Gillian M. Morriss-Kay, The Journal of Anatomy,
J Anat. 2010 Feb; 216(2): 158–176., Published online 2009 Nov 6. doi: https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01160.x, PMCID: PMC2815939, PMID: 19900185.”
2 Existentialism, by Jean-Paul Sartre, Translated by Bernard Frechtman, Philosophical Library,
New York, 1947, p. 12.
3 The Psychology Of Imagination, by Jean-Paul Sartre, Translated from the French, Philosophical
Library New York, 1948, p. 53.