Unidad Educativa Bilingüe Internacional Centro Educativo La Moderna

Name: Natasha Olarte Rodriguez

Subject: T.O.K

Topic: Darwinian Theory of Beauty - Essay

Teacher: Mercedes Delgado

Grade/Curse: 1st D

Date: 07/12/2022

DARWINIAN THEORY OF BEAUTY – ESSAY

Instructions: After watching the video, write an INDIVIDUAL reflection ESSAY of 3

paragraphs. 1st paragraph, you should expose the main IDEA of the video. 2nd paragraph, you

should write the different views of beauty according speaker (Darwin theory). Use some

examples and your words. 3rd paragraph, your conclusion and personal reflection about your

understanding of this video. Minimal 4 sentences.

The origin of what we call beauty comes from nature’s manifestations, which, through

evolution, has triggered a kind of attraction that incites us to make the best adaptive decision to

reproduce and survive. As time passes, this concept of beauty expands to many other areas; not

only to win a reproductive partner but to transmit emotions and new perspectives of what

surrounds us.
 There’s a diversity of views of beauty, and to understand them in depth the philosopher

Denis Dutton shares some definitions of it. He states that “beauty is an adaptive effect which we

extend and intensify in the creation and enjoyment of works of arts and entertainment” (2010).

What I can extract from his phrase is that we, humans, take these expressions from nature, from

the colorful sunset to the cry of a baby, and transform them into artworks to manifest our deep

thoughts and feelings and bring pleasure to the eye of the beholder. In the same way, the narrator

emphasizes that “beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance.” One of the best examples to get

this statement clear is the common taste that every person has in a particular kind of landscape; if

we had to imagine the ideal landscape, most of us would think of trees, a source of light or water,

the presence of animals, and maybe a path along the way. All these elements had importance in

the places we evolved. But definitively, what beauty truly means, according to Dutton, is that

“we find beauty in something done well.” From the peacock dance to gaining the peak hence

attention to Beethoven’s 9 symphony, skilled performances are instinctive tastes that stand out
th

from other actions and catch the viewer’s interest, and it’s the reason why life has prevailed.

In my personal opinion, anything that living beings do to demonstrate their abilities and

stand out from the rest will guarantee appreciation and choice over the less capable. Beauty is

not just something that looks superficially good, but something that shakes your insides, stirs

your heart and you want more of it. Beauty connotes people as superior or virtuous to have the

ability to achieve perfection from common or even impossible things. Finally, although each one

of us says that we have different tastes and perspectives on art forms, we all belong to the same

biological species as it evolved we invented new ways to express ourselves and compete for the

reproduction and survival of our race.

Bibliography:

Dutton, D. (2010). A Darwinian theory of beauty. TED. [YouTube Video]. In YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PktUzdnBqWI&ab_channel=TED

Garish, K. (2015). Artifact 2: What is Art? Uoregon.edu.

https://blogs.uoregon.edu/kaitlyngarish/artifact-2-what-is-art/#:~:text=Beauty%20is%20an

%20adaptive%20effect,and%20art%20is%20essentially%20everywhere.