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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear All,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It is a pity that we have not provided
sufficient discussion yet on the link between biological
capabilities (at least, in advanced mammals) and the emergence of
human aesthetic/artistic impulses.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I will make some crazy comments or bold
speculations, as you prefer. </div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">As was pointed weeks ago, in quite
different animal species there appears a clear preference for
shapes, colors, movements, compositions, etc. that show aesthetic
value for the human observer. Almost universally it is related to
mating, courtship and also to the rearing of the offspring.
Mammalian parenting, for instance, includes hormonal,
neurological, and social mechanisms with ad hoc forms of sound
& visual communication, lullabies, songs, etc. I referred days
ago to Manfred Clynes' sentic forms--quite easy to find in the way
mammals (and humans) produce their sounds and making "adorable" to
their creatures. It is a common trait of mammalian placental
clades (quite probably).</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Well, that stock of frequently
(neotenic) preferences for forms and sounds, and related emotions,
gets expanded along human evolution. Again, courtship, man-female
bonding, and child rearing are in the center. A term almost absent
from any discussions appears: "love". It is at the very nucleus of
our species survival. Yes. It creates a transcendent attachment to
your pair, to your children--and beyond. Falling in love is
something that in my opinion is not far from the complex that
generates the extreme forms of art, those of the very, very few
that have civilization consequences. Actually, that capability
would be distributed along a continuum, with most people unable to
feel or sense real or extreme artworks. But of course, the need
for the "extra trophic" keeps being almost universal on the human
sociotype, as I was arguing days ago regarding entertainment
industries, mass music, tourism, etc. --and this generates a
continuous stream of demi or pseudo arts. Well, they are needed
for social well being, presumably, certainly. They are arts too.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">And that was all!</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">With love--Pedro</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"> , El 21/01/2026 a las 1:16, Csáji
László Koppány escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAPeWkSWZNnb+GYyVb9D3gZbYuUiZap33sKH9B8Ym59KErgdFoQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">Dear John,
Marcus, Louis, Eric, Mark, and all FiS colleagues,</div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">We have
witnessed excellent argumentations that were both inspiring
and thought provking. I am grateful to participate.</div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">I circulate
around an easy question after all these considerations: how
the cellars' cognitive functions, self-cognition, and
consciousness relate to each other, and how "emotion" as a
factor links to them. Theoretically, all living creatures
differ from crystals, stones, fluid, or aeriform materials by
having a kind of "decision-making"--an ability of "willing"
that gives them a "plus". </div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">Nevertheless,
this ability is not an art form; it is just a differentia
specifica between living ones and those that exist without a
decision-making gift (capability). Art seems to be a step
further, which elevates the material environment to a level
that could be called "super-consciousness", or something like
that. Super-consciousness empowers us not only to shape the
world but to imagine it in another way, and create "new
realities"--in a way that would not be possible physically.</div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">This kind of
imagination--that exceeds the animals' "rationality"
(causability?), creativity, and communicative acts...</div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">Can we
specify--and how can we?--such a "plus" (I called it a "human
spark" in my initial paper), or is this evolutionary thesis
just a delusion?</div>
<div style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em">Cheers,</div>
<div> László </div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Mark Johnson <<a
href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a>>
ezt írta (időpont: 2026. jan. 19., H, 10:05):<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Yes! Thank you Joe!</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 at
08:33, <<a href="mailto:joe.brenner@bluewin.ch"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">joe.brenner@bluewin.ch</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span style="font-size:13pt">Dear John,</span> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif"> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span style="font-size:13pt">We have not talked to
each other recently, but I follow your work with
interest and wanted to applaud the last three lines
of your 19.1 note: ... </span><span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">"the
'logic' of the Cosmos. Symbiogenesis is the
mechanism by which life has acquired the logic of
the Cosmos. In other words there is a continuum from
the foundations of the Cosmos to life that is
expressed in art."</span> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif"> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">The
image it evoked was that of my sculptor father,
Michael Brenner, making a bust of me at age 10 in
his studio in New York. He danced around his easel
in a frenzy <em>(frénésie) </em>, chopping away at
the emerging marble head, sweating and grunting. Art
comes more easily to many, but I suggest that its
becoming is always partly unconscious, an expression
of the energetic foundations of existence.</span> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif"> </div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">Cheers,</span>
</div>
<div
style="font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">Joe</span>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>------but ---- Message d'origine ----------</div>
<div>De : JOHN TORDAY <<a
href="mailto:jtorday@ucla.edu" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">jtorday@ucla.edu</a>></div>
<div>À : fis <<a href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">fis@listas.unizar.es</a>></div>
<div>Date : 17.01.2026 22:58 CET</div>
<div>Sujet : [Fis] What is Art?</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div dir="ltr"> <span style="font-size:large">Dear
FIS, I am of the opinion that art is an expression
of consciousness, raising the question Art as to
what consciousness is? I fell down this 'rabbit
hole' twenty years ago, having performed a series
of experiments to understand how and why
Parathyroid Hormone-related Protein (PTHrP) is
necessary for the formation of alveoli in the lung
(<span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif">Rubin
LP, Kovacs CS, De Paepe ME, Tsai SW, Torday JS,
Kronenberg HM. Arrested pulmonary alveolar
cytodifferentiation and defective surfactant
synthesis in mice missing the gene for
parathyroid hormone-related protein. Dev Dyn.
2004 Jun;230(2):278-89)? The duplication of the
PTHrP Receptor gene during the water-land
transition amplified all of the vertebrate
physiologic adaptations to land- lungs, kidneys,
skeleton, skin- and since PTHrP is a
stretch-sensitive gene, I tested the hypothesis
that PTHrP mediated the vertebrate adaptation to
the force of gravity. If cells are exposed to
zero gravity they lose their differentiated
phenotypes (i.e. they devolve), and when yeast
are exposed to zero gravity they cannot conduct
a calcium flux, meaning that they are
unconscious. Moreover, human consciousness has
been driven by bipedalism (</span><span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif">Torday
JS. A central theory of biology. Med Hypotheses.
2015 Jul;85(1):49-57)</span><span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif">,
freeing our forelimbs for tool making, including
language as a tool, and locomotion. Importantly,
both language and locomotion are under control
by the FoxP2 gene, so that positive selection
pressure for FoxP2 would have coordinately
stimulated language and locomotion, expressed
through our hands and minds as art of all kinds-
literature, painting, sculpture, music- in other
words, art is a manifestation of our need to
communicate with our environment and with other
humans.</span></span>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large"> </span>
</div>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">Furthermore,
all of the above is due to the evolution of
homeostatic control of energy due to
Symbiogenesis (Sagan, 1967), or the assimilation
of factors in the environment that threaten
homeostasis, including the elements in the
Cosmos, the latter being an exaptation (Gould
and Vrba, 1982) of Stellar Nucleosynthesis
(Hoyle, 1946), or the serial chemical reaction
of hydrogen and helium to form the stars, the
elements being their byproducts in the exact
order of their atomic masses as thec</span> </div>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">Your
comments and criticisms are welcomed.</span> </div>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large"> </span>
</div>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large">Best,
John</span> </div>
<div> <span
style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:BlinkMacSystemFont,-apple-system,"Segoe UI",Roboto,Oxygen,Ubuntu,Cantarell,"Fira Sans","Droid Sans","Helvetica Neue",sans-serif;font-size:large"> </span>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
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<div><br clear="all">
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">Dr. Mark William Johnson<br>
<div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Faculty of
Biology, Medicine and Health</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of
Manchester</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br>
</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Department of Science
Education</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of Copenhagen</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><br>
</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">Department of Eye and
Vision Science (honorary)</div>
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34)">University of Liverpool</div>
Phone: 07786 064505<br>
Email: <a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a><br>
Blog: <a
href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sy7jan0S4s1YFJpHuN4D-sV3gAfrxhhzBQF7S5MiBU45idZ4yPypxUsX1z9vO1PzMfnDub5JA9QC0iwpcgYHY1M$"
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<pre wrap="" class="moz-quote-pre">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
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