Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution

A brilliant investigation of why nature is beautiful and how art has influenced science

'Rothenberg's passionate optimism - a belief in the beauty of nature, and vice versa - together with his elegant prose turns Survival of the Beautiful into an exhilarating and thought provoking trip' Sunday Telegraph

'The peacock's tail makes me sick,' Charles Darwin once said - not aesthetically, but because the theory of evolution as adaptation can't explain why nature is so beautiful. It took the concept of sexual selection for Darwin to explain the emergence of beauty, a process that has more to do with aesthetic taste than adaptive fitness.

Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have an innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.