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From: cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Incest avoidance
Message-ID: <1991Apr9.140458.11450@lgc.com>
Date: 9 Apr 91 14:04:58 GMT
References: <1991Apr2.035304.11461@leland.Stanford.EDU> <21487@crg5.UUCP> <1991Apr5.213834.13967@informix.com>
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In article <1991Apr5.213834.13967@informix.com> herbach@informix.com (Martin Herbach) writes:
>Has any discussion appeared about the correlation of incest-avoidance
>and beauty-perception?  I am referring here to the perception of sexual
>attractiveness in humans.  I read recently of a study (sorry, no citation)
>showing that a "beautiful" feature (e.g. nose) is one with "average"
>characteristics.  Average in size, shape, position, etc., and average
>with respect to the population of the beholder.
>
>Could this be the incest-avoidance mechanism at work.  If quail are
>known to prefer cousins over siblings or strangers, could they be
>selecting "not-too-familiar but not-too-strange" with respect to
>whatever characteristics code for quailness? 
>
>It would seem that a biological explanation of beauty should be a big
>deal, but no one seems to have connected the two.  Anyone seen any
>such rantings in print?  Does this make sense to anyone else?  Do
>I need lithium?

Sexual selection is arguably the single most chal-
lenging topic in evolutionary biology.  Naturalists
incessantly dispute what it takes for a male echino-
derm (for example) to look good to a female echinoderm.

I'll recommend three approaches to the literature:
a.  start reading anything on "sexual selection" at
    a professional level.  It's an unusual week in 
    which at least one of *Nature* and *Science*
    fails to touch on the topic, and there are now
    a number of synthetic books available;
b.  pick up one of Desmond Morris's popularizations.
    He has a photograph book (*The Human Body*?)
    that's particular fun;
c.  G. Evelyn Hutchinson has written astutely and
    sparely on the subject, although he's probably
    considered dated.  I remember one wry observa-
    tion that, (in my paraphrase) "as beauty becomes
    more behavioral, its nexus shifts from male to
    female."  That's to be understood as a comment
    on the human condition.

Incest and its avoidance is one subtopic that appears
throughout the literature on sexual selection.
--

Cameron Laird				USA 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com (cl%lgc.com@uunet.uu.net)	USA 713-996-8546