My Theory of Human Evolution (the Henry Rosenthal Pennant Collection)
Henry Rosenthal, the San-Francisco-based producer of the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston (the best movie ever made about mental illness), has a large collection of pennants. No sports teams, no schools, only North America — those are the rules. Hundreds of pennants. Most are for places (Mexico, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco). A few are for events (a Chicago trade show). “I’ve been collecting since early childhood,” Henry told me. “I made two pennants myself years ago, one for Joseph Albers and the other for Robert Rauschenberg.”
For years I wondered why people collect. By collect, I mean collect gift-like objects, such as frog figurines or erasers with pictures or stamps or refrigerator magnets or pennants. I understood it was enjoyable — you derive pleasure from your collection. It was the evolutionary reason I couldn’t figure out. When I eventually thought of my theory of human evolution — it is all about the growth and encouragement of occupational specialization — I realized this was one of the puzzles it solved.
Will Henry pay more than the average person for new and well-made pennants? Very likely. Will he appreciate an especially well-made pennant more than the rest of us? Undoubtedly. Like most collectors, Henry has placed the items of his collection side by side, making it easy to compare them and, I believe, promoting connoisseurship. Studying his collection — covering the walls and hanging from the ceiling of a large room — made me a connoisseur of pennants.
Collections increase the demand for finely-made things, helping their makers make a living and advance the state of their art, whatever it might be. that people collect all sorts of finely-made things encourages the growth of a wide range of technologies.
Incidentally, Henry is currently working on a movie about Tiny Tim. If you can’t wait for the movie, you can read a book it will be based on.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
[…] My Theory of Human Evolution (the Henry Rosenthal Pennant Collection) […]
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I heard that often men collect as children, don’t collect in their 20s/30s, then get back into collecting in middle age. I don’t know if this applies to women as well.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Seth, you are using group selection to explain the behavior. Mistake. You have to show how the behavior benefits the gene that causes the behavior. That it advances the state of the technical arts, helps artisans make a living or encourages occupational specialization do not explain how the gene’s frequency would increase.
November 17th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Richard, genes spread through populations that live together. The genes I am talking about helped perpetuate themselves because they provided advantages to the group of people who had them.
November 18th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
A mutation will “fixate” (spread) only if the male (female) who bears it has greater reproductive fitness than the other males (females) in the population that lives together. By helping the artisans in the population, the collector is aiding his competitors in the competition for sexual partners, so that cannot be why the mutation fixated.
You are making a very common mistake. Ask 100 evolutionary biologists and they will all tell you that. Don’t worry, you are in good company: Darwin persisted in the same error.
November 18th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
I believe a mutation can spread a considerable distance — for many generations and thru many people — even if it confers no advantage or even if it slightly reduces fitness. There is random spread, in other words. So people living close together tend to share mutations. A gene that produces a slight disadvantage to a single person among others who don’t share it can spread widely enough so that it reaches a group of people who collectively benefit from it. Call it a critical mass.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Let us say that it did happen that through genetic drift a collector mutation (”allele” would be a better word) spread to an entire group of humans living together, with the result that the group benefits. You have failed to explain why that mutation would persist to the present day. Since the allele confers no advantage to the individual, why would the descendents of the group not eventually drift the other way? Note that the fact that a group composed wholly or mainly of collectors has a reproductive advantage over other groups does not take away from the fact that within the advantaged group, collectors have no reproductive advantage over non-collecting group members.
Now let me stress that I tentatively agree with you that the tendency to collect things conferred a fitness advantage to humans in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. It is just your argument I disagree with, not your conclusion.
It might help for you to read http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/evolving-to-ext.html
and other posts by the same author.