The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller
Authors: Geoffrey Miller
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Brazilian fruits on market stalls. On a single day during a foray from Rio, Darwin caught no less than 68 species of beetle. His diaries record his "transports of pleasure
and the "chaos of delights" inspired by the jungle's baroque extravagance—"like a view in the Arabian Nights."
Darwin wanted an explanation for this rich array of diversity. Two decades before Darwin's trip, theologians such as William Paley had argued that God ornaments the world to inspire man's wonder and devotion. Darwin may have wondered why God would put tiny golden bugs in the heart of a sparsely populated jungle, a thousand miles from the nearest church. Were nature's ornaments really for our eyes only? Between the Beagle's voyage and his notebooks of 1838, Darwin had worked out the principle of evolution by natural selection. He realized that bugs must be golden for their own purposes, not to delight our eyes or to symbolize divine providence.
Animal ornaments must have evolved for some reason, but Darwin could not see how his new theory of natural selection could account for these seemingly useless luxuries. He had seen that many animals, especially males, have colorful plumage and melodious songs. These are often complex and costly traits. They usually have no apparent use in the animals' daily routine of feeding, fleeing, and fighting. The animals do not strive to display these ornaments to humans when we appear to need some spiritual inspiration. Instead, they display their beauty to the opposite sex. Usually, males display more. Peacocks spread their tails in front of peahens. In every European city, male pigeons harass female pigeons with relentless cooing and strutting. If the females go away, the male displays stop. If the female comes back, the males start again. Why?
Once his travels had confronted Darwin with the enigma of animal ornamentation, he could never take it for granted again. After his return, it seemed to him that English gardens were awash with peacocks. Their tails kept the problem in the forefront of
Darwin's mind, sometimes with nauseating effect. Darwin once confided to his son Francis that "The sight of a feather in a
peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" The peacocks seemed to mock Darwin's theory that natural selection shapes every trait to some purpose.
Science by Stealth
Darwin cured his peacock-nausea by developing the theory of sexual selection. We do not know exactly when or how he developed it, because historians of science have not tried very hard to find out. They have written at least a thousand times as much about the discovery of natural selection as they have about the discovery of sexual selection. Even today, there is only one good history of sexual selection theory—Helena Cronin's The Ant and the Peacock. But we do know this: at some point between the Beagle's voyage in the 1830s and the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin started to understand animal ornamentation. In that epoch-making book he felt comfortable enough about sexual selection to devote three pages to it, but not confident enough to give it a whole chapter.
From that acorn grew the oak: his 900-page, two-volume The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex of 1871. The title is misleading. Less than a third of the book—only 250 pages—concerns our descent from ape-like ancestors. The rest concentrates on sexual selection, including 500 pages on sexual selection in other animals, and 70 pages on sexual selection in human evolution. Darwin was no longer troubled by tiny gold bugs or peacock feathers. He considered his sexual selection idea to be so important that he featured it in the one book he was sure humans would read: his summary of the evidence for human evolution.
However, Darwin was a subtle and strategic writer, often hiding his intentions. His introduction to The Descent claimed that "The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is
and the "chaos of delights" inspired by the jungle's baroque extravagance—"like a view in the Arabian Nights."
Darwin wanted an explanation for this rich array of diversity. Two decades before Darwin's trip, theologians such as William Paley had argued that God ornaments the world to inspire man's wonder and devotion. Darwin may have wondered why God would put tiny golden bugs in the heart of a sparsely populated jungle, a thousand miles from the nearest church. Were nature's ornaments really for our eyes only? Between the Beagle's voyage and his notebooks of 1838, Darwin had worked out the principle of evolution by natural selection. He realized that bugs must be golden for their own purposes, not to delight our eyes or to symbolize divine providence.
Animal ornaments must have evolved for some reason, but Darwin could not see how his new theory of natural selection could account for these seemingly useless luxuries. He had seen that many animals, especially males, have colorful plumage and melodious songs. These are often complex and costly traits. They usually have no apparent use in the animals' daily routine of feeding, fleeing, and fighting. The animals do not strive to display these ornaments to humans when we appear to need some spiritual inspiration. Instead, they display their beauty to the opposite sex. Usually, males display more. Peacocks spread their tails in front of peahens. In every European city, male pigeons harass female pigeons with relentless cooing and strutting. If the females go away, the male displays stop. If the female comes back, the males start again. Why?
Once his travels had confronted Darwin with the enigma of animal ornamentation, he could never take it for granted again. After his return, it seemed to him that English gardens were awash with peacocks. Their tails kept the problem in the forefront of
Darwin's mind, sometimes with nauseating effect. Darwin once confided to his son Francis that "The sight of a feather in a
peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" The peacocks seemed to mock Darwin's theory that natural selection shapes every trait to some purpose.
Science by Stealth
Darwin cured his peacock-nausea by developing the theory of sexual selection. We do not know exactly when or how he developed it, because historians of science have not tried very hard to find out. They have written at least a thousand times as much about the discovery of natural selection as they have about the discovery of sexual selection. Even today, there is only one good history of sexual selection theory—Helena Cronin's The Ant and the Peacock. But we do know this: at some point between the Beagle's voyage in the 1830s and the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin started to understand animal ornamentation. In that epoch-making book he felt comfortable enough about sexual selection to devote three pages to it, but not confident enough to give it a whole chapter.
From that acorn grew the oak: his 900-page, two-volume The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex of 1871. The title is misleading. Less than a third of the book—only 250 pages—concerns our descent from ape-like ancestors. The rest concentrates on sexual selection, including 500 pages on sexual selection in other animals, and 70 pages on sexual selection in human evolution. Darwin was no longer troubled by tiny gold bugs or peacock feathers. He considered his sexual selection idea to be so important that he featured it in the one book he was sure humans would read: his summary of the evidence for human evolution.
However, Darwin was a subtle and strategic writer, often hiding his intentions. His introduction to The Descent claimed that "The sole object of this work is to consider, firstly, whether man, like every other species, is
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