Here, Gil Dodgen asks, how does Darwinism account for music? Oh, quite easily: It helps the musician spot the savannah with little Pavarottis, that is, to spread his selfish genes:
Natural selection is one thing, but the stronger, and more entertaining, basis for Dutton’s case for an evolutionary aesthetics is sexual selection, which Darwin explored in The Descent of Man. A clear tenor voice wouldn’t help Pleistocene man outrun a jaguar, but it might ingratiate him with the ladies — remember the guitarist on the stairs in Animal House? — allowing him to spread his genes widely and spot the savanna with little Pavarottis. Dutton describes the possession of artistic talent as “an ornamental capacity analogous to the peacock’s tail” — or to a florid vocabulary. These traits signal a certain robustness or intelligence, which are attractive qualities in a potential mate.
Remember that Darwinism is utterly impervious to reality, so there is no point in disclosing the fact that musical geniuses do not historically have any disproportionate number of children.
(It’s irrelevant that music can put people in a romantic mood. The score for numbers of kids is all that counts, if Darwin is to be believed.)
Darwinism doesn’t shed light on human behaviour, it merely interprets human behaviour according to Darwinism – a very different and much less useful exercise.