WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.560 Poets are being peppered throughout this festal of ideas and I'm one and I'm giving you the making 2 00:00:09.560 --> 00:00:16.580 of a storyteller, acknowledging Primo Levi's collection in a search for roots of personal 3 00:00:16.580 --> 00:00:23.900 anthology and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. At the age of 16, 4 00:00:23.900 --> 00:00:33.860 a student, youngest, smallest, cleverest and the only Jew in this class is studying classics 5 00:00:33.860 --> 00:00:42.960 and no wonder for the son of a liberal Jewish Turin family in Mussolini's Italy might uncover 6 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:52.940 much in the stories of ancient Rome. Among poets, writers, historians, perhaps Virgil, Caesar, 7 00:00:53.100 --> 00:00:53.180 Peter, 8 00:00:53.560 --> 00:01:04.480 Seneca, even the work of the poet Lucretius, even De Rerum Natura. And in 1935 he finds in lectures, 9 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:13.240 perhaps in a library, call it chance, in English, concerning the nature of things, Lucretius's poem 10 00:01:13.240 --> 00:01:22.460 of the Greek atomists. Lectures given by a Nobel Prize winner, once the elder professor of 11 00:01:22.460 --> 00:01:22.760 mathematics. 12 00:01:23.560 --> 00:01:27.440 He was a great scholar, a great scholar of science, who taught far from Europe's centres of science 13 00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:37.740 and found joy in life and physics in Adelaide. Sir William Bragg had delivered those lectures 14 00:01:37.740 --> 00:01:47.860 in 1925 at the Royal Institution. A decade on, his words, in To See Atoms, offered this boy a way 15 00:01:47.860 --> 00:01:52.220 to explore the universe. He decides to be a chemist. 16 00:01:53.560 --> 00:02:14.860 He stroke in 17 00:02:14.860 --> 00:02:18.420 him when their chemist contracts scarlet fever. 18 00:02:21.020 --> 00:02:22.840 Forgotten, lying in the 19 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:26.760 sanitarium alone, he has not marched with his 20 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:30.220 compatriots to their deaths before the Russians arrive 21 00:02:31.060 --> 00:02:34.820 and he feels the guilt of still 22 00:02:34.820 --> 00:02:38.160 being alive. Auschwitz 23 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:42.920 will become his catalyst and a storyteller 24 00:02:42.920 --> 00:02:46.020 like Coleridge's ancient mariner 25 00:02:46.020 --> 00:02:50.480 will return to Italy feeling bound to tell 26 00:02:50.480 --> 00:02:53.180 again that ghastly tale. 27 00:02:54.480 --> 00:02:58.260 Other stories like the periodic table 28 00:02:58.260 --> 00:03:01.760 will bring chemist and storyteller together 29 00:03:01.760 --> 00:03:06.620 to give us, the general readers, the feelings for the 30 00:03:06.620 --> 00:03:10.620 human condition we need to have before 31 00:03:10.620 --> 00:03:11.400 he dies. 32 00:03:12.920 --> 00:03:16.100 In his search for roots, he leaves us four pathways. 33 00:03:17.920 --> 00:03:20.700 One offers the work of scientists 34 00:03:20.700 --> 00:03:24.640 whose writings may lead us to salvation 35 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:28.400 through knowledge. But for healing, 36 00:03:28.580 --> 00:03:32.780 however, he offers this pathway. 37 00:03:34.020 --> 00:03:36.740 One he has found in 38 00:03:36.740 --> 00:03:41.080 stories of Rabelais, the poems of Giuseppe Belli 39 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:42.900 and Carlo Porter, and the poems of the 40 00:04:12.920 --> 00:04:15.180 group of poets around town. Her latest book 41 00:04:15.180 --> 00:04:19.340 was launched by Robin Williams at the State Library in 2010. 42 00:04:19.620 --> 00:04:21.940 It's a collection called Challenging the Divide, 43 00:04:22.040 --> 00:04:25.360 Approaches to Science and Poetry. So her presence here is 44 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:28.660 particularly relevant to today's topic. 45 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:33.980 In it, scientists, including Peter Doherty, reveal their views of poetry 46 00:04:33.980 --> 00:04:37.880 in a number of poems, providing examples of responses in poetry 47 00:04:37.880 --> 00:04:39.740 to aspects of the sciences. 48 00:04:40.460 --> 00:04:42.900 Hello, I'm Robert Fideon from the University of London, and I'm a 49 00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:48.160 chair of the Festival of Ideas, and I'm very glad to see you all here 50 00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:51.940 this afternoon. I acknowledge that today we're gathered on the 51 00:04:51.940 --> 00:04:55.020 traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, 52 00:04:55.100 --> 00:04:57.820 as we so often do. 53 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:03.180 So, welcome to the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, today's session on the 54 00:05:03.180 --> 00:05:07.000 evolution of stories with Brian Boyd. A bit of housekeeping. 55 00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:12.340 Please switch your mobile phone to silent during the presentation. 56 00:05:12.340 --> 00:05:16.020 It should be silent because after all, those of you who know what Twitter is 57 00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:22.460 are very welcome to tweet ideas Adelaide, and the hashtag is 58 00:05:22.460 --> 00:05:29.060 hash AFOI, and tell the world how exciting Brian's presentation is. 59 00:05:31.220 --> 00:05:37.240 Today, we have the privilege of having Brian Boyd, the Distinguished 60 00:05:37.240 --> 00:05:41.780 Professor of English at the University of Auckland. He's worked in many 61 00:05:41.780 --> 00:05:47.120 comparative literatures. He's probably most prominent, most distinguished 62 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:52.060 as the biographer of Vladimir Nabokov, and also of the book about which 63 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:56.580 he'll be talking today, On the Origin of Stories, Evolution, Cognition 64 00:05:56.580 --> 00:06:06.740 and Fiction. He's also about to be the author of a book on Shakespeare's 65 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:11.760 sonnets, Evolution, Cognition and Lyric Verse, on the 66 00:06:11.780 --> 00:06:17.060 absence of stories. So that's a tailpiece to what's on here today. 67 00:06:20.440 --> 00:06:29.160 He's one of the most important people in the turn towards the cognitive turn 68 00:06:29.160 --> 00:06:35.460 in literary studies. We think of literature as the most artificial of arts, 69 00:06:35.700 --> 00:06:41.760 the most verbal, the most cerebral. It's often described, it's often described 70 00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:47.780 as decorative, as useless, as if it's not anything to do with the essential 71 00:06:47.780 --> 00:06:54.300 parts of what it is to be human. Now, literature is artificial, of course, 72 00:06:54.980 --> 00:07:00.980 but what if it is also an adaptation to our environment? What if narrative is a 73 00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:07.120 way of playing, of learning to survive, of working as groups, an adaptation to a 74 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:11.040 complex world that humans have peculiarly the capacity to do? 75 00:07:11.780 --> 00:07:16.800 So there's been a behavioural turn in many of the social sciences in recent decades. 76 00:07:16.940 --> 00:07:21.880 Psychology is populating everywhere in various respects and it's now influencing 77 00:07:21.880 --> 00:07:28.800 the humanities. Just a tiny bit from On the Origin of Stories, just on page four 78 00:07:28.800 --> 00:07:35.960 as it happens because I pathologically footnote, dolphin air art blurs the boundary 79 00:07:35.960 --> 00:07:41.600 between play and art and it is from play, widespread across the animal world, 80 00:07:41.780 --> 00:07:48.440 that I suggest art evolved in humans. Play and evolution and art and narrative 81 00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:53.980 are the things that Brian will be talking to us about in the next 50 minutes or so. 82 00:07:54.140 --> 00:07:54.900 Brian Boyd. 83 00:08:01.500 --> 00:08:06.360 Thank you Robert for the introduction and for the invitation to speak here in Adelaide 84 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:11.360 for the first time in a few years. It was a great pleasure to hear Erica's poem because 85 00:08:11.780 --> 00:08:16.700 I have taught Primo Levi's The Periodic Table in the course in literature and science. 86 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:18.340 It felt like home territory. 87 00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:25.460 Why do we spend so much of our time in story worlds, from pretend play and fairy tales 88 00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:31.840 to novels, comics, TV sitcoms and vampire series, movies from Hollywood to Bollywood 89 00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:35.540 and the stories in poems, song lyrics and computer games? 90 00:08:36.420 --> 00:08:41.620 Wouldn't you expect a successful species, as we think we are, to spend its time 91 00:08:41.780 --> 00:08:47.460 focusing on what's true in the world? Why does a species that derives so many of its 92 00:08:47.460 --> 00:08:53.680 advantages from mastering information have a compulsion to spend time engaged in fiction, 93 00:08:53.860 --> 00:08:58.300 distracting ourselves with information we know to be untrue? 94 00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:07.000 Of course we derive pleasure from stories, but we also get pleasure from ice cream and fresh butter. 95 00:09:07.940 --> 00:09:11.300 Explaining why we enjoy such treats by answering, 96 00:09:11.780 --> 00:09:14.800 because they're delicious, only takes us around in circles. 97 00:09:17.300 --> 00:09:21.660 Dung beetles find delicious the taste and smell of dung. 98 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:27.380 We need to explain why we find pleasing the pleasures we happen to have. 99 00:09:27.600 --> 00:09:33.520 To a dung beetle, or to any species but our own, our taste for stories would be perverse. 100 00:09:35.300 --> 00:09:39.400 The philosopher Kwame Antony Apia recently observed, 101 00:09:39.400 --> 00:09:45.640 in the humanities we're always engaged in illuminating the present by drawing on the past. 102 00:09:45.960 --> 00:09:49.500 It's the only way to make a future worth hoping for. 103 00:09:51.080 --> 00:09:56.480 I want to suggest that we can enrich the future of literary studies as of psychology and neuroscience 104 00:09:57.400 --> 00:10:03.060 by drawing on the deep past unearthed by the only comprehensive explanation we have for life, 105 00:10:03.260 --> 00:10:04.560 the theory of evolution. 106 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:09.380 In 1859, in On the Origin of Species, 107 00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:14.060 Darwin explained the variety of life on Earth in terms of natural selection. 108 00:10:14.900 --> 00:10:20.780 His explanation has been confirmed and deepened in ways even he could never have anticipated. 109 00:10:21.580 --> 00:10:27.040 In a world of finite resources, nature selects relentlessly over the generations 110 00:10:27.040 --> 00:10:32.520 in favour of those heritable variations that offer some advantage, however small, 111 00:10:32.760 --> 00:10:34.960 in terms of survival and reproduction. 112 00:10:36.060 --> 00:10:39.380 Over time, these variations consolidate and evolve, 113 00:10:39.380 --> 00:10:43.920 and turn into adaptations as bodily or behavioural features entrenched in a species 114 00:10:43.920 --> 00:10:48.220 because of the advantages that they offer for survival or reproduction. 115 00:10:51.200 --> 00:10:55.320 Nature selects stringently, weighing benefits against costs. 116 00:10:57.060 --> 00:11:01.380 Storytelling is comparatively cheap, except that it takes a good deal of time 117 00:11:01.380 --> 00:11:05.540 and a little energy to invent, tell and listen to stories. 118 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.720 But we could use that time for activities 119 00:11:08.720 --> 00:11:10.640 with immediate biological advantage, 120 00:11:11.060 --> 00:11:15.820 like gathering resources or competing with others for resources already stockpiled. 121 00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:23.100 The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins notes that if building dams were not beneficial to beavers, 122 00:11:23.340 --> 00:11:27.180 beavers with less inclination to pursue such a useless activity 123 00:11:27.720 --> 00:11:30.560 would have outbred those who wasted energy this way. 124 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:35.360 But since dam building persists, it must offer beavers benefits. 125 00:11:35.740 --> 00:11:37.100 In the same way, 126 00:11:37.100 --> 00:11:41.360 if fiction offered no benefits in terms of reproductive success, 127 00:11:41.840 --> 00:11:45.560 those of us with less inclination to engage in it would thrive, 128 00:11:45.740 --> 00:11:48.820 and fiction would fade away as a human behaviour. 129 00:11:49.760 --> 00:11:51.200 Manifestly, it hasn't. 130 00:11:51.380 --> 00:11:53.420 What benefits does it offer? 131 00:11:55.800 --> 00:12:00.640 Before I offer an answer to that, let me allay some fears. 132 00:12:00.900 --> 00:12:05.560 Some people recoil from applying evolution to human nature and behaviour, 133 00:12:05.560 --> 00:12:09.160 even if they recognise that we have to draw on evolution 134 00:12:09.160 --> 00:12:12.040 to explain everything else about life on Earth. 135 00:12:12.880 --> 00:12:16.940 Those who assume evolution cannot be relevant to human minds 136 00:12:17.560 --> 00:12:21.700 generally fear that it must suggest our minds are fixed by our past. 137 00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:24.080 But that's far from being the case. 138 00:12:24.400 --> 00:12:29.020 Evolution is a story of change and of adaptation to environments, 139 00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:33.880 and it's shaped us in particular to be flexible, to be ultra-social, 140 00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:35.540 to be ultra-coagulant. 141 00:12:35.560 --> 00:12:37.000 Ultra-cultural. 142 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:41.800 The fear that evolution means fixed in old ways 143 00:12:41.800 --> 00:12:46.460 reflects the false old oppositions of biology versus culture, 144 00:12:46.700 --> 00:12:48.780 or nature versus nurture. 145 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:53.240 Culture, in fact, is not opposed to biology, but part of it. 146 00:12:53.620 --> 00:12:57.180 Culture just doesn't exist outside biological organisms. 147 00:12:57.520 --> 00:13:00.640 As far as I know, there are no rocks, rivers, clouds, 148 00:13:00.820 --> 00:13:03.480 or even lifeless planets with culture. 149 00:13:03.740 --> 00:13:05.540 And culture doesn't exist outside of biology. 150 00:13:05.560 --> 00:13:06.320 It exists only in humans. 151 00:13:06.560 --> 00:13:09.220 There are traditions, dialects, and fashions 152 00:13:09.220 --> 00:13:12.600 in three distinct mammal and bird lineages. 153 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:19.620 I'll make a case for art and fiction that has evolved dispositions 154 00:13:21.320 --> 00:13:23.220 in the human mind, 155 00:13:23.320 --> 00:13:26.700 and that case depends very much on the mind's plasticity, 156 00:13:27.520 --> 00:13:31.420 its ability to be reshaped through repeat-focused engagement 157 00:13:31.420 --> 00:13:34.520 with art in general and fiction in particular. 158 00:13:35.200 --> 00:13:40.100 Evolution pre-shaped our minds to be particularly reshapable 159 00:13:40.100 --> 00:13:44.040 by human experience, including the experience of art. 160 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:52.120 It's no puzzle at all why we tell true stories. 161 00:13:52.400 --> 00:13:55.680 If we can comprehend events, and if we have language, 162 00:13:55.880 --> 00:13:57.720 and if we're highly social animals, 163 00:13:57.980 --> 00:14:00.160 then, without needing to add anything else, 164 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:01.780 we will tell true stories. 165 00:14:02.920 --> 00:14:04.940 Chimpanzees monitor each other intensely, 166 00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:08.240 and one chimp will even bring to the attention of another 167 00:14:08.240 --> 00:14:12.280 the fact that this male and that female are copulating behind that tree. 168 00:14:13.900 --> 00:14:17.860 Biologists see humans as not just social like chimps, 169 00:14:17.880 --> 00:14:19.500 but uniquely ultra-social. 170 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:22.720 We have even more reasons than chimps 171 00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:24.880 to want to know who's doing what to whom. 172 00:14:26.160 --> 00:14:31.380 And with true narrative, we can also point who has done you-know-what to whom, 173 00:14:31.380 --> 00:14:35.000 who has done this or that successfully, and where and how. 174 00:14:37.720 --> 00:14:43.120 The compulsion for fiction certainly depends on prior capacities for true narrative, 175 00:14:43.180 --> 00:14:45.840 as I tease out on the origin of stories. 176 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:50.760 On capacities shared to some extent by many species for event comprehension, 177 00:14:51.560 --> 00:14:55.600 and on capacities shared by fewer species for event recall, 178 00:14:55.940 --> 00:14:59.480 and on capacities shared to a still more limited extent, 179 00:14:59.580 --> 00:15:01.360 and by still fewer species, 180 00:15:01.380 --> 00:15:02.960 for event representation. 181 00:15:03.880 --> 00:15:09.060 But only humans seem to have a unique species-wide capacity and compulsion 182 00:15:09.060 --> 00:15:11.680 for event invention, 183 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:14.020 from pretend play onwards. 184 00:15:16.360 --> 00:15:20.220 But if true narrative can impart invaluable information, 185 00:15:20.680 --> 00:15:23.980 how in a world of unsparing biological competition 186 00:15:23.980 --> 00:15:27.840 could a successful species afford an unflagging appetite 187 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:30.440 for stories we know to be untrue? 188 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:38.400 To answer that, I think we have to explain why we expend time and resources 189 00:15:38.400 --> 00:15:42.980 across cultures, epics, classes, life stages, and intellectual levels 190 00:15:42.980 --> 00:15:45.200 on the arts in all their forms. 191 00:15:45.480 --> 00:15:48.320 Music, dance, design, and stories. 192 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:53.980 I say this because it seems highly likely that the art of fiction 193 00:15:53.980 --> 00:15:57.300 was the last of the major kinds of art to emerge. 194 00:15:59.940 --> 00:16:01.180 Analogues of fiction. 195 00:16:01.380 --> 00:16:03.920 Music and dance exist in many species, 196 00:16:04.100 --> 00:16:08.160 in birds, in intelligent non-primates like whales and dolphins, 197 00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:11.440 in primates like gibbons and chimpanzees. 198 00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:14.280 Chanting and rhythmic movement, 199 00:16:14.380 --> 00:16:16.740 and perhaps rhythmic stick or rock banging, 200 00:16:16.940 --> 00:16:21.420 in other words, forms of proto-song, proto-dance, and proto-drumming, 201 00:16:21.500 --> 00:16:23.880 seem to stretch back millions of years. 202 00:16:24.760 --> 00:16:30.440 And the earliest signs of the visual arts and hominins date back hundreds of thousands of years. 203 00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:33.860 Many are surely in stone hand axes, 204 00:16:33.940 --> 00:16:37.600 which date from almost two million years ago to a hundred thousand years ago, 205 00:16:37.800 --> 00:16:42.480 have been found in impractical sizes, too large or too small to be used, 206 00:16:42.580 --> 00:16:45.080 or with an unnecessary degree of symmetry. 207 00:16:45.840 --> 00:16:49.560 And these impractically sized or over-refined hand axes 208 00:16:49.560 --> 00:16:53.500 don't show the usual microscopic signs of wear and tear, 209 00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:57.760 as if they'd been painstakingly shaped for purely ornamental reasons. 210 00:17:00.520 --> 00:17:01.080 Ochre. 211 00:17:01.380 --> 00:17:05.960 Seems to have been mined for human bodily adornment for perhaps 240,000 years. 212 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:09.380 Although the matter is far from being decided, 213 00:17:09.660 --> 00:17:12.800 a full modern language adequate for telling stories 214 00:17:13.380 --> 00:17:16.720 seems to date back only a hundred thousand years or so, 215 00:17:16.900 --> 00:17:18.520 or half as long again. 216 00:17:19.340 --> 00:17:23.820 Other proto-arts had probably been developing for hundreds of thousands of years 217 00:17:24.380 --> 00:17:26.180 before the first full-scale fictions. 218 00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:31.260 Why did the arts become established across human cultures? 219 00:17:31.380 --> 00:17:32.200 And life stages? 220 00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:37.000 In On the Origin of Stories, 221 00:17:37.260 --> 00:17:40.200 I try to offer a comprehensive explanation for the arts, 222 00:17:40.340 --> 00:17:41.760 especially the art of fiction. 223 00:17:42.580 --> 00:17:44.900 Art, I argue, is a kind of high play. 224 00:17:46.040 --> 00:17:48.220 Play occurs in all mammals. 225 00:17:48.360 --> 00:17:49.480 These are rats, 226 00:17:50.900 --> 00:17:53.520 which look much more endearing when they're playing, don't they? 227 00:17:55.040 --> 00:17:59.840 And the person who works with these rats is Jaak Pantsep, 228 00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:01.360 who says, 229 00:18:01.380 --> 00:18:06.740 they emit a high-pitched squeal that's too high for ordinary human audition, 230 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:09.280 but can be replayed by tape, 231 00:18:09.420 --> 00:18:11.400 and it seems analogous to human laughter. 232 00:18:11.940 --> 00:18:14.120 And they like being, 233 00:18:14.280 --> 00:18:15.880 they like tickling each other, 234 00:18:16.020 --> 00:18:17.560 and they like being tickled by him. 235 00:18:17.780 --> 00:18:20.280 He can tickle them for half an hour and they'll still want more. 236 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:25.860 So, play occurs in all mammals where it's been looked for, 237 00:18:25.920 --> 00:18:27.540 in birds and even in octopi, 238 00:18:27.640 --> 00:18:29.840 the most intelligent of invertebrates. 239 00:18:29.840 --> 00:18:31.820 For good evolutionary reasons, 240 00:18:32.100 --> 00:18:36.160 animals normally try to exert the least effort to accomplish their goals. 241 00:18:36.640 --> 00:18:38.500 Animals conserve resources, 242 00:18:38.840 --> 00:18:40.380 except in play, 243 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:43.860 where they, and we, happily expend energy. 244 00:18:44.520 --> 00:18:45.180 Why? 245 00:18:47.440 --> 00:18:51.560 The amount of play in a species correlates with its flexibility of behaviour. 246 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:54.880 Flexibility of behaviour solves the problem 247 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:58.140 of coping with unpredictable, complex circumstances, 248 00:18:58.420 --> 00:18:59.820 of coping with, if not with, 249 00:18:59.840 --> 00:19:00.780 of planning for uncertainty. 250 00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:04.460 So, by definition, it cannot be automatically, 251 00:19:04.680 --> 00:19:06.100 genetically programmed. 252 00:19:06.620 --> 00:19:10.420 A flexible behaviour has to be learned to maximise flexibility. 253 00:19:11.140 --> 00:19:13.500 If a behaviour is hardwired, 254 00:19:13.660 --> 00:19:17.140 there'd be no point in exercising it in a way as expensive, 255 00:19:17.200 --> 00:19:20.500 in energy and risk, as play. 256 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:23.200 But if there is room for flexibility, 257 00:19:23.600 --> 00:19:28.600 then individuals who can improve their execution of complicated behaviours, 258 00:19:28.600 --> 00:19:31.780 and their judgement of situations in which they're needed, 259 00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:33.060 will fare better. 260 00:19:34.200 --> 00:19:36.000 This is especially the case 261 00:19:37.100 --> 00:19:40.260 in critical behaviours such as flight or fight. 262 00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:42.880 If, in secure situations, 263 00:19:43.220 --> 00:19:47.160 animals practise the behaviours that make the greatest life and death difference, 264 00:19:47.480 --> 00:19:49.060 they can then perform better, 265 00:19:49.140 --> 00:19:51.320 and with more context sensitivity, 266 00:19:51.580 --> 00:19:53.600 in moments of high urgency. 267 00:19:57.140 --> 00:20:03.260 Recent work on brain plasticity shows that brains can be rewired incrementally 268 00:20:03.260 --> 00:20:04.940 through repeated activity, 269 00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:07.080 so long as it engages full attention. 270 00:20:07.940 --> 00:20:11.100 For that reason, play has developed in many species, 271 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:13.900 especially those like birds and mammals, 272 00:20:14.060 --> 00:20:17.460 that enjoy the security that parental care provides. 273 00:20:18.780 --> 00:20:22.700 Over generations, the motivation to practise has evolved 274 00:20:22.700 --> 00:20:23.580 and strengthened the ability to practice. 275 00:20:23.580 --> 00:20:26.380 This has been strengthened until play became compulsive, 276 00:20:26.560 --> 00:20:28.680 self-rewarding, irresistible. 277 00:20:29.760 --> 00:20:33.660 Sheer, present pleasure overcomes the natural bias 278 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:35.580 toward minimising effort, 279 00:20:35.800 --> 00:20:38.700 and ensures that animals refine their control 280 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:42.320 and expand their options in urgent situations. 281 00:20:43.300 --> 00:20:46.520 The forms of play most popular in other animals, 282 00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:47.320 and even ourselves, 283 00:20:47.820 --> 00:20:52.680 are chasing or racing, flight, and rough and tumble, fight. 284 00:20:52.900 --> 00:20:53.560 And, in the case of play, 285 00:20:53.580 --> 00:20:56.100 and because we have the longest childhood of any species, 286 00:20:56.520 --> 00:20:58.660 play is particularly important for us, 287 00:20:58.760 --> 00:21:01.340 because we can now produce food surpluses 288 00:21:01.340 --> 00:21:04.120 and live in settlements safe from predation. 289 00:21:04.760 --> 00:21:07.020 Children have still more scope for play 290 00:21:07.580 --> 00:21:08.900 than the young of any other animals. 291 00:21:11.880 --> 00:21:15.220 Other animals thrive by their physical strength and speed. 292 00:21:16.100 --> 00:21:17.640 We humans, uniquely, 293 00:21:18.580 --> 00:21:20.860 gain most of our advantages over other species, 294 00:21:21.060 --> 00:21:23.120 and even over one another, 295 00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:24.480 not from physical, 296 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:26.400 but from mental strength and speed. 297 00:21:26.760 --> 00:21:30.520 We're alone in our cognitive niche. 298 00:21:31.260 --> 00:21:33.400 Information matters for any species, 299 00:21:33.660 --> 00:21:36.980 but for no others is it so decisive as for ours. 300 00:21:39.240 --> 00:21:41.320 Just as animals, including humans, 301 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:44.380 refine flexible physical skills through play, 302 00:21:45.120 --> 00:21:48.840 humans uniquely, naturally, compulsively, 303 00:21:48.940 --> 00:21:51.900 refine their most important cognitive skills 304 00:21:51.900 --> 00:21:55.320 through art, through cognitive play with pattern, 305 00:21:56.780 --> 00:21:59.620 in their most important information modes, 306 00:22:00.040 --> 00:22:03.340 in sight, in sound, and in social information. 307 00:22:04.100 --> 00:22:05.820 In the particular art of fiction, 308 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:07.500 from pretend play onwards, 309 00:22:07.780 --> 00:22:10.820 we learn to understand events and to shift perspectives 310 00:22:10.820 --> 00:22:12.800 at a faster clip than otherwise, 311 00:22:12.920 --> 00:22:17.000 to enjoy simulations of a wide range of social situations, 312 00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:19.620 and to generate a wider range of options. 313 00:22:21.320 --> 00:22:22.740 For any species, 314 00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:26.760 information can be handled efficiently in real time. 315 00:22:27.280 --> 00:22:30.580 It leads to the rapid real-time inferences 316 00:22:30.580 --> 00:22:32.120 that can guide action, 317 00:22:32.280 --> 00:22:34.960 only when it falls into patterns 318 00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:39.040 of the kinds that species naturally recognise. 319 00:22:40.140 --> 00:22:42.160 Detecting patterns within information 320 00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:46.980 enables minds to understand their environment efficiently. 321 00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:49.600 All animals, 322 00:22:49.620 --> 00:22:51.920 and animals seem to prefer patterned information 323 00:22:52.620 --> 00:22:54.860 over more chaotic information arrays, 324 00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:57.340 especially the particular kinds of patterns 325 00:22:57.340 --> 00:23:00.540 that can yield rapid, rich inferences for their species. 326 00:23:01.660 --> 00:23:04.360 But because we particularly crave information, 327 00:23:04.640 --> 00:23:07.140 because we have a much more open-ended curiosity 328 00:23:07.140 --> 00:23:08.360 than other animals, 329 00:23:08.600 --> 00:23:12.320 we have a wide and an intense appetite for pattern, 330 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:14.920 for clear information, crisp outlines, 331 00:23:15.420 --> 00:23:17.800 bold colours, clear-pitched sounds. 332 00:23:17.800 --> 00:23:20.960 We therefore find beauty in flowers or butterflies, 333 00:23:21.760 --> 00:23:24.760 paintings or photographs, birdsong or music. 334 00:23:25.040 --> 00:23:28.520 We find pattern beautiful even in things we don't recognise, 335 00:23:29.460 --> 00:23:33.000 like images of electron flow up at the top left, 336 00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:36.860 or light diffraction at minute scales in the bottom middle. 337 00:23:37.520 --> 00:23:41.140 That's a knotweed pollen at the top centre, 338 00:23:41.400 --> 00:23:44.240 and a nebula to the left. 339 00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:47.780 All combinations of these things 340 00:23:47.780 --> 00:23:50.160 are the associations of familiar patterns and the unforeseen. 341 00:23:51.480 --> 00:23:52.380 Brian Eno. 342 00:23:53.640 --> 00:23:55.440 Unlike other animals, therefore, 343 00:23:55.640 --> 00:23:57.400 we not only chase and tussle, 344 00:23:57.500 --> 00:23:58.900 we not only play physically, 345 00:23:59.080 --> 00:24:01.020 but we also play cognitively. 346 00:24:01.360 --> 00:24:05.400 Art, I suggest, is open-ended cognitive play with pattern, 347 00:24:05.520 --> 00:24:07.640 with patterns of intersecting patterns 348 00:24:07.640 --> 00:24:10.860 in the information modes that matter most to us. 349 00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:12.640 Sight in the visual arts, 350 00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:14.100 sound, especially in music, 351 00:24:14.200 --> 00:24:16.140 and in our ultra-social species, 352 00:24:16.140 --> 00:24:18.340 social information in fiction. 353 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:23.860 Let me take another path to the same end point. 354 00:24:24.560 --> 00:24:29.540 New evolutionary solutions themselves often spawn new problems. 355 00:24:30.060 --> 00:24:34.200 When our brains, our weapons, and our cooperative hunting techniques 356 00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:36.700 allowed us to become super predators, 357 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:38.940 to dominate our environments 358 00:24:38.940 --> 00:24:40.760 and earn the food we needed 359 00:24:40.760 --> 00:24:43.360 in much less time than our waking hours, 360 00:24:43.560 --> 00:24:46.120 we didn't solve the problem of science, 361 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:46.700 or spare time, 362 00:24:46.960 --> 00:24:48.540 like other top predators, 363 00:24:48.760 --> 00:24:51.320 like lions, tigers, or bears, 364 00:24:52.140 --> 00:24:54.860 by sleeping the extra hours away to conserve energy. 365 00:24:57.180 --> 00:24:58.440 Even at rest, 366 00:24:58.580 --> 00:25:02.000 our large brains consume a high proportion of our energy, 367 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:04.500 and since they offer us most of our advantages 368 00:25:05.140 --> 00:25:07.000 against other species and other individuals, 369 00:25:07.300 --> 00:25:09.940 we benefit not from resting them as much as possible, 370 00:25:10.040 --> 00:25:12.360 but from developing them as much as possible 371 00:25:12.360 --> 00:25:14.540 in times of security and leisure. 372 00:25:16.140 --> 00:25:18.300 Even to the extent of having festivals of ideas. 373 00:25:19.160 --> 00:25:22.780 But we don't naturally do what might be good for us in future, 374 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:24.280 unless we enjoy it now. 375 00:25:24.700 --> 00:25:26.160 Art as cognitive play, 376 00:25:27.140 --> 00:25:31.240 appealing to our appetite for potentially meaningful patterned information, 377 00:25:31.740 --> 00:25:36.380 engages our minds in a self-rewarding and therefore self-motivating way. 378 00:25:37.640 --> 00:25:39.000 Pleasurable, compulsive, 379 00:25:40.560 --> 00:25:41.720 high intensity, 380 00:25:41.920 --> 00:25:44.480 and often repeated, like all play. 381 00:25:48.220 --> 00:25:50.660 Minds, as recent neuroscience has discovered, 382 00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:51.640 can be plastic. 383 00:25:51.820 --> 00:25:53.260 They can be reshaped. 384 00:25:54.140 --> 00:25:55.640 But not easily or rapidly, 385 00:25:55.820 --> 00:25:59.560 as we know from learning a new language later in life. 386 00:26:00.340 --> 00:26:03.860 It takes much repetition and focused attention, 387 00:26:04.080 --> 00:26:07.900 as first some new neural connections are made, 388 00:26:08.060 --> 00:26:09.960 then more on top of those, 389 00:26:10.140 --> 00:26:12.200 and still more on top of those. 390 00:26:13.320 --> 00:26:15.940 As the most successful connections strengthen, 391 00:26:15.940 --> 00:26:19.340 mental processing becomes more efficient 392 00:26:19.340 --> 00:26:21.780 until the whole network is established 393 00:26:21.780 --> 00:26:25.960 and increasingly efficiently tuned and fast-tracked. 394 00:26:27.980 --> 00:26:31.940 Play can reshape minds to become more efficient and flexible, 395 00:26:32.100 --> 00:26:33.860 in particular kinds of response, 396 00:26:34.160 --> 00:26:36.400 because it's compulsively self-rewarding. 397 00:26:36.480 --> 00:26:38.640 We take part in it again and again, 398 00:26:38.820 --> 00:26:40.520 our minds fully focused. 399 00:26:40.860 --> 00:26:44.660 So too, the uniquely human cognitive play of art, 400 00:26:44.800 --> 00:26:45.920 including art, 401 00:26:45.940 --> 00:26:47.060