I’ve been reading an interesting book recently:  The Evolution of Beauty by Richard O. Prum.  It’s a science book, not theology, but it resonates with my spirituality.

The author is an ornithologist interested in explaining the extravagant diversity in the appearance and mating behaviors of birds.  His theory, based on a mostly neglected idea of Darwin’s, is that animal traits can evolve due to the ability of (some) animals to choose their mates, and that an animal’s choice of mate can be influenced by purely aesthetic criteria.

That is, sometimes a female bird will choose a mate because he looks like he has good genes, or promises to be a good provider, but those display signals are insufficient to explain all of the ornamentation and behaviors observed in nature.  So Darwin, and Prum, theorize that sometimes a bird will choose a mate merely because he looks pleasing.  Sometimes a bird’s feathers, or colors, or song, or hopping dance, don’t serve any further purpose except to be beautiful and therefore attractive to a fellow creature capable of perceiving the beauty.

The next generation then has a tendency for even more beautiful displays and for greater encouragement to be even more exuberant, until, eventually, in some species, you end up with ornamentation and mating behavior that is far from the optimum for success in the environment, but has become required for attracting a mate.

Prum’s theory depends on the notion that a quality that we think of as human, the ability to appreciate beauty, extends to other animals and birds.  This notion grants animals and birds an interior life of aesthetic taste (“I like that!) and aesthetic judgment (“Looks good to me!”).  Although the sense of what constitutes beauty is still genetically determined, the act of choosing makes animals and birds agents in their own evolution, and points their evolution toward beauty.

Evolution, of course, doesn’t have a direction.  Humans aren’t more evolved than apes.  The current state of any species is simply the best fit for the current environment.

But what if, spiritually, there was a direction?  Theodore Parker spoke about the long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.  What if we were going somewhere?  Somewhere better?  To justice, perhaps.  Or to “world community”.  To enlightenment.  To universal salvation.  Or perhaps, to beauty.