Art and Design

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the birth of figurative art marked a significant shift in our species’ ability to represent the world around us, and presumably, a step forward in our capacity for conscious awareness. The ability to draw a familiar object such as a cat or dog develops so naturally in children that it is easy to forget what a remarkable human capacity this is. For unlike tool use, spoken language, or perhaps even the capacity to make music, which may all have evolutionary precedents in the actions or sounds made by other species, the ability to draw appears to have no relationship to anything found in the rest of the animal kingdom. And certainly for the view presented in this book of the uniqueness of human conscious awareness, the ability of humans to both produce and appreciate visual art is something that deserves a wider discussion. In particular, abstract symbols, mathematical systems, planning diagrams, and other forms that constitute visual art, can all be viewed as further examples of the 'cultural tools' that shape our minds besides language.