To consider art and story in evolutionary terms we have to decide whether they are biological adaptations: are they features that natural selection has designed into humans over time because they led to higher rates of survival and reproduction? I argue in a book I’ve recently written, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction, that art and storytelling are adaptations. These behaviors are species-wide, engaged in spontaneously by all normal individuals and spontaneously encouraged in infants by their parents.For me, one of those functions is to understand the difference implied in the word "play" which contrasts with and compliments the necessary work of scientific knowledge. Science deals with facts, cataloging and cross-referencing, seeking out and correcting error. Art is something different. It is an open-ended argument about the meaning of patterns. It is an attempt to replicate the way the mind looks at patterns, connects one idea to the next, and draws conclusions. And as the word "play" suggests it can be a game, something done at leisure, something that is rehearsed and performed, something without a goal or end. A pleasure in itself.
Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern. Just as communication exists in many species, even in bacteria, and human language derives from but redirects animal communication along many unforeseen new routes, so play exists in many species, but the unique cognitive play of human art redirects it in new ways and to new functions.
And it is this capacity for art to transcend the everyday considerations of life, to take us out of our own head-space, and open us up to a world of possibilities beyond necessity, that is its greatest value.
