full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty

Unscramble the Blue Letters


The other great pilpcinre of evolution is sexual sletcoein, and it oateerps very dftnlifreey. The peacock's magnificent tail is the most famous example of this. It did not evolve for natural svrviaul. In fact, it goes against natural survival. No, the peacock's tail results from the mtniag 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 idaes firmly in mind, we can say that the experience of btuaey is one of the ways that evolution has of anirsoug and sustaining interest or fascination, even obsession, in order to encourage us toward making the most adaptive dnesoiics for survival and reproduction. Beauty is nature's way of aticng 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.

Open Cloze


The other great _________ of evolution is sexual _________, and it ________ very ___________. The peacock's magnificent tail is the most famous example of this. It did not evolve for natural ________. In fact, it goes against natural survival. No, the peacock's tail results from the ______ 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 _____ firmly in mind, we can say that the experience of ______ is one of the ways that evolution has of ________ and sustaining interest or fascination, even obsession, in order to encourage us toward making the most adaptive _________ for survival and reproduction. Beauty is nature's way of ______ 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.

Solution


  1. differently
  2. principle
  3. survival
  4. ideas
  5. beauty
  6. operates
  7. selection
  8. acting
  9. arousing
  10. decisions
  11. mating

Original Text


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.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
hand axes 7
homo erectus 4
natural selection 3
natural beauty 2
cave paintings 2
natural survival 2
landscape shows 2
human beings 2
find beauty 2
acheulian hand 2
hand axe 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
acheulian hand axes 2

Important Words


  1. acting
  2. adaptive
  3. adaptively
  4. arousing
  5. baby
  6. beautiful
  7. beauty
  8. beneficial
  9. choices
  10. darwin
  11. decisions
  12. differently
  13. distance
  14. doubts
  15. eat
  16. encourage
  17. evolution
  18. evolve
  19. exert
  20. expect
  21. experience
  22. eyes
  23. fact
  24. familiar
  25. famous
  26. fascination
  27. firmly
  28. give
  29. great
  30. history
  31. ideas
  32. interest
  33. keeping
  34. kind
  35. landscape
  36. lover
  37. magnetism
  38. magnificent
  39. making
  40. mating
  41. mind
  42. natural
  43. obsession
  44. operates
  45. order
  46. peahen
  47. peahens
  48. pleasure
  49. principle
  50. push
  51. reproduction
  52. results
  53. selection
  54. sexual
  55. simply
  56. speak
  57. story
  58. survival
  59. sustaining
  60. tail
  61. trick
  62. ways
  63. women
  64. word