Nature and Art

I am quite sure that many of you, my dear readers, have on at least one occasion ventured outside and had your auditory senses greeted by an orchestra of bird song. Perhaps some of you even thought it to be pretty. But did you ever consider that this may be Art?

Dewey would, and the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, may well believe it, too, given his extensive work tracing emotions and mental faculties within the animal kingdom. Art. It's in nature, and it's in OUR nature.

If we work from the assumption that Art is in our nature... why, then, would Dewey boldly declare it to be "the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity?" Under that assumption, wouldn't art merely be an expression of our nature, our link to the animal kingdom, far removed from the intellectual capacity that sets us apart from apes or pigs or dogs?

Art may be in our nature. We may see it in the songs of birds, the dams of beavers, the dens of foxes. But in nature, art appears only in forms that are already inherent to the creature in question. With humans, Art manifests itself in new and unexpected ways. Humans use their mental capacities to create new Art, new worlds, new experiences. They form Art in a way a bird never could. Coupled with the conscious self-reflection that is inherent only to humans (at least to our limited yet ever-expanding knowledge), the limits that Art can achieve... do not exist.

And therein lies the hidden nature of Art. It is unconfined, free, ever-expanding. Thus, Art truly is "the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity."