<div dir="ltr">Dear Pedro,<div><br></div><div>You bring up crucially important points about art as embodying shared aesthetic forms (Clynes); art as nourishment (extra-trophic), and the taking in and metabolization of aesthetic nutrients as a matter of biological capability - not all aesthetic nutrients can be absorbed by all organisms. Among humans there is selectivity based on capability and taste (or the lack of taste), which occurs on a spectrum from high art (extreme art) to unexceptional mass productions of demi/pseudo art. You end your commentary appropriately noting that such nourishment may be essential for social wellbeing. I agree that wellbeing, art and love belong intimately together, as you emphasize. I think what you are trying to say is provocative and very valuable, but let me nitpick on that a bit, if I may. </div><div><br></div><div>As a student of wellbeing, I hold it as self-evident that the individual is the primal unit of wellbeing, and I have yet to make the cognitive leap from individual wellbeing to social wellbeing, but I imagine that your reference to social wellbeing is actually to the social context within which individual wellbeing is potentially realized, rather than the experience of wellbeing itself. That would keep us on the same page. You see, my prejudiced view of <i>social</i> wellbeing is that it is a particular kind of discourse, a technology of persuasion and oftentimes a coercive language game, whose primary function in groups is putting people in their place and teaching them lessons - socialization, in other words: For example, " if Paul does not agree with this academic committee's notion of wellbeing, Paul should not be regarded as one of us. Paul must produce and accept the kinds of aesthetic nutrients that this committee approves. We are one."</div><div><br></div><div>Above all, the collective cannot experience any particular aesthetic form on an individual's behalf. Socialization makes collectives happy, by fiat. You see, there is that which the self-identified communist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani calls, " The warmth of collectivism." That warmth is probably an expansive, love-like feeling inside Mamdani, which may be catalyzed by visions of happy masses singing the praises of the collective, where everyone is of academically endorsed race, gender and moral sentiments. </div><div><br></div><div>Love ostensibly begins in neoteny, and expands into the social domain, where it can be harnessed as a persuasive technology for political, religious or simply sadistic purposes. Mamdani's idea of the warmth of collectivism brings to my mind Hitler's ovens at Auschwitz and the hell that Mao's cultural revolution put Chinese intellectuals through. I am also reminded of the unspeakable plight of artists and composers in the Soviet Union, not to speak of the countless exploitative love cults throughout history.</div><div><br></div><div>Nevertheless, love is the perfect correlate of art, in a fundamental sense. Although art does occur in contractive and hateful contexts such as the exuberant manufacture of brutal postmodern ugliness in universities, I choose to regard that kind of academically inspired art as inauthentic - as art in name only. There is no wellbeing in it. The most productive conversations about art that I can imagine involve the notion of art as expanding individual potentials and accumulating surpluses of rich and fulfilling personal experiences - spiritual wealth. </div><div><br></div><div>Having said that, we must ask what is human potential and what makes an experience rich and fulfilling? I have much to say about that, but I've said enough. Science might quickly retort, as a reflex, that what makes an experience rich and fulfilling is natural selection. Academic literature is replete with rather infantile mannerisms on how to deflect the conversation from the personal interior to impersonal explanations. It is the quintessential mark of academia to silence and cancel interiors - especially of " the right people."</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Paul</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 12:34 PM Pedro C. Marijuán <<a href="mailto:pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com">pedroc.marijuan@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<div>Dear All,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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>I will make some crazy comments or bold
speculations, as you prefer. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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><br>
</div>
<div>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><br>
</div>
<div>And that was all!</div>
<div>With love--Pedro</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> , El 21/01/2026 a las 1:16, Csáji
László Koppány escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<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">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Mark Johnson <<a href="mailto:johnsonmwj1@gmail.com" target="_blank">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-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color: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">joe.brenner@bluewin.ch</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color: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">jtorday@ucla.edu</a>></div>
<div>À : fis <<a href="mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es" target="_blank">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">johnsonmwj1@gmail.com</a><br>
Blog: <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sy7jan0S4s1YFJpHuN4D-sV3gAfrxhhzBQF7S5MiBU45idZ4yPypxUsX1z9vO1PzMfnDub5JA9QC0iwpcgYHY1M$" target="_blank">http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com</a></div>
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