Neurofilosofía y Pensamiento Actual Neurophilosophy and Contemporary Thought

domingo, 20 de septiembre de 2026

Art as Agency: When Things Act Upon Us

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

A review of Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory by Alfred Gell (1998)

Introduction: the art that makes us act

What makes an image, an object, or a building move us, compel us to stop, provoke an emotion, or incite us to act? The traditional answer of Western aesthetics has been: beauty, form, symbolic meaning. The British anthropologist Alfred Gell (1945–1997) proposed a radically different answer in his posthumous work Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, published by Clarendon Press in 1998. For Gell, art is not fundamentally a vehicle of meaning nor an object of aesthetic contemplation, but a form of instrumental action: a means of influencing the thoughts and actions of others.

Gell died in January 1997, just a few months before the book saw the light. The text, which remained in a state of "work in progress" according to his editor, nevertheless constitutes one of the most influential legacies of the anthropology of art of the last quarter century. His proposal challenges the most deeply rooted conceptions of the discipline and forces us to rethink what art is, who produces it, and what effects it has on the social world.

This review explores the central ideas of Gell —agency, index, abduction, and the art nexus— and connects them with our research on the origin of art, the S/Y/C model, and Surgical Philosophy.

The critique of passive aesthetics: art as action

Gell starts from an uncomfortable observation for the anthropological and aesthetic tradition: existing theories adopt an overwhelmingly passive attitude towards art. Art is contemplated, interpreted, deciphered, but its capacity to do things in the world is not recognised. Against this passivity, Gell proposes an inversion: art is, above all, action. "Instead of symbolic communication, I place all the emphasis on agency, intention, causation, result, and transformation. I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than to encode symbolic propositions about it."

This reformulation has profound consequences. The anthropology of art should not concern itself with a special class of objects —those we call "beautiful" or "artistic"— but with a category of action: the making of things that influence others. Any object, in the appropriate context, can become an index of artistic agency. What defines art is not its form or its meaning, but its function within a system of social relations.

Agency and index: the fundamental concepts

Gell's theoretical edifice rests on two interconnected concepts: agency and index.

Agency is the capacity to initiate a series of events in the world, to cause effects, to influence the thought and action of others. In the context of art, agency does not reside solely in the human artist who creates the object. The objects themselves —paintings, sculptures, tattoos, idols— mediate and embody social agency. They are "things that act": not in a literal sense, as if they had intentions of their own, but in the sense that they participate in networks of social relations, acting as vehicles for the agency of their creators or users.

The index, in Gell's terminology (borrowed from the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce), is the object that mediates agency. An index is something that, in its mere existence and configuration, points towards something else: towards the artist who made it, towards the model it represents, towards the recipient who receives it. Gell argues that art objects are indexes of the agency of those who produced or used them. They are not symbolic signs that refer to conventional meanings; they are traces, vestiges, proofs of an action.

This distinction is crucial. Gell rejects the idea that art is fundamentally a symbol, in the Saussurean sense of an arbitrary sign that refers to a concept. Art does not "say" things; it "does" things. It does not communicate meanings; it produces effects. An idol is not a symbol of the deity; it is an instrument for acting upon the divine world. A tattoo is not an ornament; it is a mark that binds a person to a lineage, to a status, to a system of social obligations.

Abduction and the art nexus: how agency works

If art is action mediated by indexes, how exactly does this mediation work? Gell turns here to another Peircean concept: abduction. Abduction is the inferential process by which, from an index, we infer the agency that produced it. We see a footprint in the sand and deduce that someone walked there. We see a painting and deduce that someone painted it, with certain intentions, in certain circumstances.

For Gell, art operates precisely through this abduction of agency. The object leads us to infer an agency that transcends it: the artist, the model, the recipient. But abduction is not a mere logical deduction; it is a psychological process, often automatic and unconscious, that leads us to attribute agency to the object. Art "captures" our attention, "enchants" us (enchantment), makes us experience the object as if it had its own power.

Gell organises these relations into what he calls the art nexus: a network of relations between four terms: the artist (who produces the index), the index (the object), the prototype (what the index represents or evokes), and the recipient (who experiences the index). Combinations of these terms generate a series of "formulas" that describe the different types of artistic agency. The art nexus is thus an analytical tool for mapping the complex networks of agency that unfold around art objects.

The distributed person and the extended mind

Two final concepts complete Gell's theoretical edifice. The first is the distributed person: the idea that a person's agency is not limited to their body, but extends to the objects they produce, the marks they leave, the things that belong to them. An artist, in this sense, is distributed across their works; their agency continues to act through them long after their death.

The second is the extended mind: Gell suggests that art objects function as extensions of the mind, as external vehicles of cognition and agency. This idea, which anticipates contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, connects directly with our research on the origin of art and the role of external symbols in cognitive evolution.

Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

Gell's theory offers a conceptual framework that illuminates crucial aspects of the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C that forms the core of our research (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). His concepts of agency, index, and abduction allow us to reread prehistoric art not as a system of symbolic meanings, but as a device of social action.

The S (Survival) dimension manifests in the instrumental function of art that Gell emphasises. Art objects are, in many ethnographic contexts, tools of social survival: amulets that protect, masks that mediate with spirits, marks that ensure group belonging. Art is not a luxury; it is a technology for acting upon the world.

The Y (Symbolon) dimension requires qualification in light of Gell. For our thesis, symbolon is the act of recognition through shared codes. Gell, by rejecting the symbolic dimension of art, emphasises instead indexicality: the object as a trace of an agency. But both aspects are not mutually exclusive. The Gellian index can be the materialisation of symbolon: the object is the physical support through which symbolic agency is exercised. An idol not only acts; it is also recognised as the presence of the deity, and that recognition is a symbolic act.

The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the abduction of agency that the viewer performs. The art nexus, with its four terms, is a system that seeks coherence: the viewer integrates the index into a network of relations that give it meaning. The artist's agency, that of the prototype, that of the recipient, are articulated in a whole that transcends the mere materiality of the object. This integration is a form of wholeness: the object is understood as part of a broader system of action.

Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in Gell's work. It is not about accepting his rejection of aesthetics without more, but about recognising that his approach opens a field of analysis that traditional aesthetics had neglected: art as action, as agency, as power. At the same time, we must resist the temptation to reduce art to agency. The symbolic dimension, which Gell excludes, is also constitutive of artistic experience. Surgical Philosophy allows us to distinguish levels: the level of agency (what art does), the level of the symbol (what art means), and the level of experience (what art makes us feel). The three are irreducible to one another.

Critique and reception

Gell's work has generated intense debate. His critics, such as Howard Morphy, argue that his approach diverts attention from human agency by attributing agency to the objects themselves. The aesthetic and semantic properties that Gell excludes from his analysis are, for Morphy, integral to the understanding of art as a mode of action. Robert Layton maintains that Gell fails to explain the distinctive ways in which art objects extend the agency of their creators, and that his rejection of Saussurean semiotics is untenable.

Other critiques point to Gell's ethnographic bias, with his emphasis on Asia and the Pacific, and his scant attention to Western art. The internal coherence of his theory has also been questioned, especially regarding the relationship between agency and indexicality.

Despite these critiques, the impact of Art and Agency has been profound. The book has reformulated the anthropology of art, inspired new research on materiality, agency, and power, and built bridges between anthropology, archaeology, art history, and philosophy.

Final considerations: art as action and as encounter

Alfred Gell's posthumous work is one of those rare contributions that transform a field by changing the questions we ask. His proposal to study art as agency, as index, as action, forces us to look at objects not only for what they represent or signify, but for what they do in the social world.

For our research on the origin of art, Gell's theory offers a valuable complement to the neuroscientific and philosophical perspectives we have explored. Art, in its origin, was not only a symbolic expression or an aesthetic response; it was also —and perhaps above all— a tool of social action. Cave paintings, body ornaments, ivory figurines: all of them were indexes of an agency that sought to influence the world, the spirits, the others.

But art is not only agency. It is also encounter. The abduction that Gell describes, that process by which we attribute agency to an object, is an act of recognition. And recognition is the essence of symbolon. Art objects speak to us because we recognise in them the presence of a subjectivity, an intention, a history. That presence is not only an effect of power; it is also an invitation to encounter. And in that encounter, art fulfils its deepest function: that of connecting the living with the living, the living with the dead, humans with the sacred.

Gell taught us to see art as action. We add: art is action because it is encounter. And encounter is, at its root, the fullest form of agency and of symbol.

References

Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Clarendon Press. https://philpapers.org/rec/GELAAA

Layton, R. (2003). Art and agency: A reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, *9*(3), 447–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00158

Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK

Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN

Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

Morphy, H. (2009). Art as a mode of action: Some problems with Gell's Art and Agency. Journal of Material Culture, *14*(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183508100006

Thomas, N. (1998). Foreword. In A. Gell, Art and agency: An anthropological theory (pp. vii–xiii). Clarendon Press.

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.

Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

El arte como agencia: cuando las cosas actúan sobre nosotros

Bernabé Mallo

Una reseña de Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory de Alfred Gell (1998)

Introducción: el arte que nos hace actuar

¿Qué hace que una imagen, un objeto o un edificio nos conmueva, nos obligue a detenernos, nos provoque una emoción o nos incite a actuar? La respuesta tradicional de la estética occidental ha sido: la belleza, la forma, el significado simbólico. El antropólogo británico Alfred Gell (1945–1997) propuso una respuesta radicalmente distinta en su obra póstuma Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, publicada por Clarendon Press en 1998. Para Gell, el arte no es fundamentalmente un vehículo de significado ni un objeto de contemplación estética, sino una forma de acción instrumental: un medio para influir en los pensamientos y acciones de los demás.

Gell falleció en enero de 1997, apenas unos meses antes de que el libro viera la luz. El texto, que quedó en un estado de "obra en progreso" según su editor, constituye no obstante uno de los legados más influyentes de la antropología del arte del último cuarto de siglo. Su propuesta desafía las concepciones más arraigadas de la disciplina y nos obliga a repensar qué es el arte, quién lo produce y qué efectos tiene sobre el mundo social.

Esta reseña explora las ideas centrales de Gell —la agencia, el índice, la abducción y el nexo del arte— y las conecta con nuestra investigación sobre el origen del arte, el modelo S/Y/C y la Filosofía Quirúrgica.

La crítica a la estética pasiva: el arte como acción

Gell parte de una constatación incómoda para la tradición antropológica y estética: las teorías existentes adoptan una actitud abrumadoramente pasiva frente al arte. El arte se contempla, se interpreta, se descifra, pero no se reconoce su capacidad de hacer cosas en el mundo. Frente a esta pasividad, Gell propone una inversión: el arte es, ante todo, acción. "En lugar de comunicación simbólica, pongo todo el énfasis en la agencia, la intención, la causación, el resultado y la transformación. Veo el arte como un sistema de acción, destinado a cambiar el mundo en lugar de codificar proposiciones simbólicas sobre él".

Esta reformulación tiene consecuencias profundas. La antropología del arte no debe ocuparse de una clase especial de objetos —aquellos que llamamos "bellos" o "artísticos"— sino de una categoría de acción: el hacer cosas que influyen en otros. Cualquier objeto, en el contexto adecuado, puede convertirse en un índice de agencia artística. Lo que define al arte no es su forma ni su significado, sino su función en un sistema de relaciones sociales.

Agencia e índice: los conceptos fundamentales

El edificio teórico de Gell se sostiene sobre dos conceptos interconectados: agencia e índice.

La agencia es la capacidad de iniciar una serie de eventos en el mundo, de causar efectos, de influir en el pensamiento y la acción de otros. En el contexto del arte, la agencia no reside únicamente en el artista humano que crea el objeto. Los objetos mismos —las pinturas, las esculturas, los tatuajes, los ídolos— median y encarnan la agencia social. Son "cosas que actúan": no en un sentido literal, como si tuvieran intenciones propias, sino en el sentido de que participan en redes de relaciones sociales, actuando como vehículos de la agencia de sus creadores o usuarios.

El índice, en la terminología de Gell (tomada de la semiótica de Charles Sanders Peirce), es el objeto que media la agencia. Un índice es algo que, en su mera existencia y configuración, señala hacia algo más: hacia el artista que lo hizo, hacia el modelo que representa, hacia el destinatario que lo recibe. Gell argumenta que los objetos de arte son índices de la agencia de quien los produjo o de quien los utiliza. No son signos simbólicos que remiten a significados convencionales; son huellas, vestigios, pruebas de una acción.

Esta distinción es crucial. Gell rechaza la idea de que el arte sea fundamentalmente un símbolo, en el sentido saussuriano de un signo arbitrario que remite a un concepto. El arte no "dice" cosas; "hace" cosas. No comunica significados; produce efectos. Un ídolo no es un símbolo de la deidad; es un instrumento para actuar sobre el mundo divino. Un tatuaje no es un adorno; es una marca que vincula a una persona con un linaje, con un estatus, con un sistema de obligaciones sociales.

La abducción y el nexo del arte: cómo funciona la agencia

Si el arte es acción mediada por índices, ¿cómo funciona exactamente esta mediación? Gell recurre aquí a otro concepto de Peirce: la abducción. La abducción es el proceso inferencial mediante el cual, a partir de un índice, inferimos la agencia que lo produjo. Vemos una huella en la arena y deducimos que alguien caminó por allí. Vemos una pintura y deducimos que alguien la pintó, con ciertas intenciones, en ciertas circunstancias.

Para Gell, el arte opera precisamente mediante esta abducción de la agencia. El objeto nos lleva a inferir una agencia que lo trasciende: el artista, el modelo, el destinatario. Pero la abducción no es una mera deducción lógica; es un proceso psicológico, a menudo automático e inconsciente, que nos lleva a atribuir agencia al objeto. El arte "captura" nuestra atención, nos "encanta" (enchantment), nos hace experimentar el objeto como si tuviera poder propio.

Gell organiza estas relaciones en lo que denomina el nexo del arte (art nexus): un entramado de relaciones entre cuatro términos: el artista (quien produce el índice), el índice (el objeto), el prototipo (lo que el índice representa o evoca) y el receptor (quien experimenta el índice). Las combinaciones de estos términos generan una serie de "fórmulas" que describen los distintos tipos de agencia artística. El nexo del arte es, así, una herramienta analítica para mapear las complejas redes de agencia que se despliegan en torno a los objetos de arte.

La persona distribuida y la mente extendida

Dos conceptos finales completan el edificio teórico de Gell. El primero es la persona distribuida: la idea de que la agencia de una persona no se limita a su cuerpo, sino que se extiende a los objetos que produce, a las marcas que deja, a las cosas que le pertenecen. Un artista, en este sentido, se distribuye en sus obras; su agencia continúa actuando a través de ellas mucho después de su muerte.

El segundo es la mente extendida: Gell sugiere que los objetos de arte funcionan como extensiones de la mente, como vehículos externos de la cognición y la agencia. Esta idea, que anticipa debates contemporáneos en filosofía de la mente, conecta directamente con nuestra investigación sobre el origen del arte y el papel de los símbolos externos en la evolución cognitiva.

Conexión con la investigación sobre el origen del arte (S/Y/C)

La teoría de Gell ofrece un marco conceptual que ilumina aspectos cruciales de la Ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C que constituye el núcleo de nuestra investigación (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). Sus conceptos de agencia, índice y abducción permiten releer el arte prehistórico no como un sistema de significados simbólicos, sino como un dispositivo de acción social.

La dimensión S (Supervivencia) se manifiesta en la función instrumental del arte que Gell subraya. Los objetos de arte son, en muchos contextos etnográficos, herramientas de supervivencia social: amuletos que protegen, máscaras que median con los espíritus, marcas que aseguran la pertenencia al grupo. El arte no es un lujo; es una tecnología de acción sobre el mundo.

La dimensión Y (Symbolon) requiere una matización a la luz de Gell. Para nuestra tesis, el symbolon es el acto de reconocimiento mediante códigos compartidos. Gell, al rechazar la dimensión simbólica del arte, enfatiza en cambio la indexicalidad: el objeto como huella de una agencia. Pero ambos aspectos no son excluyentes. El índice gelliano puede ser la materialización del symbolon: el objeto es el soporte físico a través del cual se ejerce la agencia simbólica. Un ídolo no solo actúa; también es reconocido como la presencia de la deidad, y ese reconocimiento es un acto simbólico.

La dimensión C (Completitud) se manifiesta en la abducción de la agencia que el espectador realiza. El nexo del arte, con sus cuatro términos, es un sistema que busca la coherencia: el espectador integra el índice en una red de relaciones que le dan sentido. La agencia del artista, la del prototipo, la del receptor, se articulan en un todo que trasciende la mera materialidad del objeto. Esta integración es una forma de completitud: el objeto se comprende como parte de un sistema de acción más amplio.

La Filosofía Quirúrgica nos invita a aplicar un corte analítico preciso a la obra de Gell. No se trata de aceptar sin más su rechazo de la estética, sino de reconocer que su enfoque abre un campo de análisis que la estética tradicional había descuidado: el arte como acción, como agencia, como poder. Al mismo tiempo, debemos resistir la tentación de reducir el arte a la agencia. La dimensión simbólica, que Gell excluye, es también constitutiva de la experiencia artística. La Filosofía Quirúrgica nos permite distinguir niveles: el nivel de la agencia (lo que el arte hace), el nivel del símbolo (lo que el arte significa) y el nivel de la experiencia (lo que el arte nos hace sentir). Los tres son irreductibles entre sí.

Crítica y recepción

La obra de Gell ha generado un intenso debate. Sus críticos, como Howard Morphy, argumentan que su enfoque desvía la atención de la agencia humana al atribuir agencia a los objetos mismos. Las propiedades estéticas y semánticas que Gell excluye de su análisis son, para Morphy, integrales a la comprensión del arte como modo de acción. Robert Layton sostiene que Gell no logra explicar las formas distintivas en que los objetos artísticos extienden la agencia de sus creadores, y que su rechazo de la semiótica saussuriana es insostenible.

Otras críticas señalan el sesgo etnográfico de Gell, con su énfasis en Asia y el Pacífico, y su escasa atención al arte occidental. También se ha cuestionado la coherencia interna de su teoría, especialmente en lo que respecta a la relación entre agencia e indexicalidad.

A pesar de estas críticas, el impacto de Art and Agency ha sido profundo. El libro ha reformulado la antropología del arte, ha inspirado nuevas investigaciones sobre materialidad, agencia y poder, y ha tendido puentes entre la antropología, la arqueología, la historia del arte y la filosofía.

Consideraciones finales: el arte como acción y como encuentro

La obra póstuma de Alfred Gell es una de esas raras contribuciones que transforman un campo al cambiar las preguntas que nos hacemos. Su propuesta de estudiar el arte como agencia, como índice, como acción, nos obliga a mirar los objetos no solo por lo que representan o significan, sino por lo que hacen en el mundo social.

Para nuestra investigación sobre el origen del arte, la teoría de Gell ofrece un complemento valioso a las perspectivas neurocientíficas y filosóficas que hemos explorado. El arte, en su origen, no fue solo una expresión simbólica o una respuesta estética; fue también —y quizás sobre todo— una herramienta de acción social. Las pinturas rupestres, los adornos corporales, las figurillas de marfil: todos ellos fueron índices de una agencia que buscaba influir en el mundo, en los espíritus, en los otros.

Pero el arte no es solo agencia. Es también encuentro. La abducción que Gell describe, ese proceso por el cual atribuimos agencia a un objeto, es un acto de reconocimiento. Y el reconocimiento es la esencia del symbolon. Los objetos de arte nos hablan porque reconocemos en ellos la presencia de una subjetividad, de una intención, de una historia. Esa presencia no es solo un efecto de poder; es también una invitación al encuentro. Y en ese encuentro, el arte cumple su función más profunda: la de conectar a los vivos con los vivos, a los vivos con los muertos, a los humanos con lo sagrado.

Gell nos enseñó a ver el arte como acción. Nosotros añadimos: el arte es acción porque es encuentro. Y el encuentro es, en su raíz, la forma más plena de la agencia y del símbolo.

Referencias bibliográficas

Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Clarendon Press. https://philpapers.org/rec/GELAAA

Layton, R. (2003). Art and agency: A reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, *9*(3), 447–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.00158

Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Tesis doctoral, Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. Repositorio ADDI. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK

Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN

Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Versión Kindle]. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

Morphy, H. (2009). Art as a mode of action: Some problems with Gell's Art and Agency. Journal of Material Culture, *14*(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183508100006

Thomas, N. (1998). Foreword. En A. Gell, Art and agency: An anthropological theory (pp. vii–xiii). Clarendon Press.

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.

Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

viernes, 18 de septiembre de 2026

The Data Lens: How Artificial Intelligence Decomposes and Reassembles Art

Bernabé Mallo

A review of the article by Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou, and Bo Gao (2026): From Digitization to the AI Era: Digital Technology Trajectories in Fine-Art Creation

Introduction: when the machine learns to look

What happens when a machine tries to "see" the world? Not with eyes, but with an algorithm that fragments millions of images into tiny visual fragments, associates them with words, and learns to recombine them according to statistical patterns? The answer, which may sound like science fiction, is the basis of artistic creation with artificial intelligence.

The article by Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou, and Bo Gao, published in 2026 in the Asia Pacific Economic and Management Review, analyses precisely this transformation. The authors propose a historical journey through the three phases of digital artistic creation —from early digitisation to the emergence of generative AI— and offer a conceptual framework for understanding how technology is reconfiguring authorship, originality, and the distribution of art .

The central concept of their analysis is the "data lens" of AI. Unlike a camera, which captures the light of a real scene, AI fragments billions of pre-existing images into "visual tokens" and associates them with linguistic tokens (words). In this way, the machine "learns the visual language of the world" and, once trained, can move fluidly and autonomously across artistic movements, styles, and eras.

This process, as we shall see, not only redefines what it means to "create" art, but also raises profound questions about artistic agency, intellectual property, and the role of the artist in the era of algorithmic automation.

Three phases of digital artistic creation

Yang, Zou, and Gao propose a practice-based periodisation that distinguishes three phases in the evolution of digital technology applied to fine art . Each phase not only introduces new tools, but transforms the artist's relationship with their work and with the public.

Phase I (1980–2000): medium translation

The first phase, which the authors call "medium translation" , is characterised by the digitisation of traditional media. Images become files, and logical processes —programming— enter the artistic craft . During these two decades, digital tools functioned primarily as mechanisms for extending analogue practices.

However, even in this early phase, later debates about agency and automation were prefigured. As the authors note, "even when digital tools largely functioned as translation and extension mechanisms, they already prefigured later debates about agency and automation by embedding creativity in operational sequences and delegating parts of form-making to computational processes" . The artist was beginning to be, not only a creator of objects, but a designer of procedures.

Phase II (2000–2010): platformised networking

The second phase, "platformised networking" , is marked by the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media . The publication and circulation of works become continuous, low-threshold, and socially integrated. Art no longer circulates as an isolated object, but as a node within communicative circuits.

This phase, however, has a dark side. The platformisation of artistic creation subjects artists to regimes of visibility governed by algorithms, metrics, and interfaces that determine what is seen and what is ignored. The authors describe this as a "distributed curation regime" in which circulation is determined by compatibility with interfaces and performance in terms of engagement, rather than by artistic merit . The political economy of creative labour becomes explicit: platforms extract value from the unpaid work of creators, who provide content, attention, and behavioural data without equivalent control or compensation .

Phase III (2010–present): algorithmic autonomy

The third and current phase is that of "algorithmic autonomy" . It is defined by the rise of machine learning systems that can synthesise images and styles through statistical inference, shifting artistic creation from direct pixel manipulation toward model-mediated generation.

The authors analyse two key technical milestones: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which demonstrated that plausible synthetic images could be produced through adversarial learning, and diffusion models, which have since dominated the field for their ability to generate high-fidelity images and allow more flexible and controllable editing .

The crucial change, they note, is not only the improvement in image quality, but the relocation of creative labour. A visible portion of the artist's skill shifts toward specifying constraints, iterating instructions, testing variations, and curating results—activities that resemble direction, selection, and orchestration more than manual construction . The work of art emerges as a negotiated outcome of interaction with a probabilistic system.

The "data lens": how AI learns the visual language

The most suggestive concept in the article is the "data lens" of AI. Unlike the photographic camera, which captures the light of a real scene, AI does not see the world directly. Instead, it fragments billions of pre-existing images into "visual tokens" (minimal units of visual information) and associates them with "linguistic tokens" (words). In this way, the machine learns a "visual language of the world" that allows it, once trained, to move fluidly and autonomously across artistic movements, styles, and eras.

This process has profound implications. On the one hand, it allows unprecedented versatility: an AI model can generate an image in the style of Van Gogh, a hyperrealistic photograph, or a geometric abstraction with equal ease. On the other hand, it raises the question of what "originality" means when the system is trained on millions of existing works. As the authors note, the AI phase intensifies long-standing debates by redistributing artistic agency across instructions, model priorities, datasets, and post-selection .

Artistic agency thus becomes a distributed concept. It no longer resides solely in the artist, but is shared among:

Instructions (how the request is formulated).
Model priorities (what the algorithm is predisposed to produce).
Training data (which visual cultures are represented and how).
Post-selection (what is accepted, refined, and contextualised).

Technological humanism as a response

Faced with this scenario, Yang, Zou, and Gao propose a normative-analytical framework they call "technological humanism" . This approach sets out three conditions for responsible AI-mediated artistic creation:

Traceable delegation: the ability to follow and understand the decisions made by the system.
Situated cultural responsibility: the recognition that AI systems are not neutral, but reflect biases and cultural values.
Infrastructural transparency: the need for artists, educators, and museums to understand the technical and economic conditions under which generative systems operate.

Technological humanism is not a rejection of AI, but an invitation to use it with judgement, not to delegate to it decisions that require human discernment, and to maintain cultural integrity in the context of algorithmic production . The authors conclude their article with operational principles so that artists, educators, and museums can evaluate and sustain agency and cultural integrity under algorithmic production .

Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

The analysis by Yang, Zou, and Gao resonates with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). The "data lens" of AI and its implications for artistic creation can be reinterpreted in light of our three dimensions.

The S (Survival) dimension manifests in the dependence of AI systems on large datasets that reflect existing visual cultures. This dependence is not neutral: data incorporate biases, exclusions, and power relations. AI, by learning from this data, can perpetuate and amplify those inequalities. Technological humanism, by demanding transparency and cultural responsibility, is a way of attending to the survival of diverse artistic traditions in the face of algorithmic homogenisation.

The Y (Symbolon) dimension is central to the tokenisation process described by the authors. AI fragments images into visual tokens and associates them with linguistic tokens, creating a bridge between the visual and the verbal. But this symbolon —this act of recognition through shared codes— is profoundly different from the one performed by a human artist. The artist does not merely combine tokens, but inhabits symbols, charging them with personal and cultural meaning. AI, by contrast, manipulates symbols from the outside, without a lived experience to sustain them.

The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the process of selection and curation that the authors identify as a central part of the artist's work in the AI era. The artist working with generative models does not merely generate images, but selects, refines, and contextualises, seeking a coherent totality. But this wholeness is different from the one sought by the traditional artist: the human artist seeks to close a form from inner experience; the artist with AI seeks to close a process from interaction with a probabilistic system.

Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in the analysis by Yang, Zou, and Gao. It is not about rejecting AI or accepting it uncritically, but about distinguishing levels: the level of technical production (where AI is a powerful tool), the level of aesthetic experience (where AI cannot replace embodied subjectivity), and the level of cultural responsibility (where technological humanism offers an ethical framework). AI can be an ally in artistic creation, but it cannot occupy the place of the artist as a source of intentionality and meaning.

Final considerations: art as an encounter between the human and the algorithmic

The article by Yang, Zou, and Gao has the merit of offering a lucid and well-informed vision of the digital transformation of art. Its periodisation into three phases helps us understand that the emergence of AI is not an absolute rupture, but the continuation of a process that began with digitisation and intensified with platformisation. And its proposal for a technological humanism offers an ethical framework for navigating this new territory.

AI, like the "data lens" the authors describe, does not capture the light of a real scene, but fragments and recombines humanity's visual legacy. This allows it impressive versatility, but also strips it of connection with lived experience. Art, in its origin and in its function, is not merely a combination of forms, but an encounter between embodied subjectivities. AI can facilitate this encounter, but it cannot occupy the place of either pole.

Now, what would happen if we transferred this same scheme —digitisation, assimilation, reformulation— to the biological system that gave rise to art? If AI begins with the digitisation of pre-existing images, the original nervous system began with the digitisation of knowledge of its lived niche: the information necessary for the most fundamental thing, survival. That niche was then assimilated according to its own biases, shaped by the relationship with the natural environment and by its own biological functions, whose first imperative was survival and, later, other equally fundamental needs.

Finally, there would remain what we might call the "prehistoric AI" : that primordial neuronal function capable of reformulating and conceptualising, from the possibilities of the biological system itself, the interest of survival and the search for wholeness, in order to apply them to practice. Was that the artificial intelligence of the past? Was that the first embodied algorithm that allowed our species to create symbols, tools, and art? The question remains open.

And it is precisely this openness that defines our research. Contemporary AI offers us an unexpected mirror: by observing how it fragments, assimilates, and recombines humanity's visual legacy, we can better understand how the nervous system itself, tens of thousands of years ago, fragmented, assimilated, and recombined the world to create something radically new. Art, from Makapansgat to generative algorithms, remains the testimony of a single function: that of a system that needs to survive, to symbolise, and to achieve wholeness.

References

Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK

Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN

Yang, H., Zou, Y., & Gao, B. (2026). From digitization to the AI era: Digital technology trajectories in fine-art creation. Asia Pacific Economic and Management Review, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.62177/apemr.v3i1.1086

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.

Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

El lente de datos: cómo la inteligencia artificial descompone y recompone el arte

Bernabé Mallo

Una reseña del artículo de Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou y Bo Gao (2026): From Digitization to the AI Era: Digital Technology Trajectories in Fine-Art Creation

Introducción: cuando la máquina aprende a mirar

¿Qué ocurre cuando una máquina intenta "ver" el mundo? No con ojos, sino con un algoritmo que fragmenta millones de imágenes en minúsculos fragmentos visuales, los asocia con palabras y aprende a recombinarlos según patrones estadísticos. La respuesta, que puede sonar a ciencia ficción, es la base de la creación artística con inteligencia artificial.

El artículo de Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou y Bo Gao, publicado en 2026 en el Asia Pacific Economic and Management Review, analiza precisamente esta transformación. Los autores proponen un recorrido histórico por las tres fases de la creación artística digital —desde la digitalización inicial hasta la irrupción de la IA generativa— y ofrecen un marco conceptual para entender cómo la tecnología está reconfigurando la autoría, la originalidad y la distribución del arte .

El concepto central de su análisis es el del "lente de datos" de la IA. A diferencia de una cámara, que captura la luz de una escena real, la IA fragmenta miles de millones de imágenes preexistentes en "tokens visuales" y los asocia con tokens lingüísticos (palabras). De este modo, la máquina "aprende el lenguaje visual del mundo" y, una vez entrenada, puede moverse de manera fluida y autónoma entre corrientes artísticas, estilos y épocas.

Este proceso, como veremos, no solo redefine qué significa "crear" arte, sino que también plantea preguntas profundas sobre la agencia artística, la propiedad intelectual y el papel del artista en la era de la automatización algorítmica.

Tres fases de la creación artística digital

Yang, Zou y Gao proponen una periodización basada en la práctica que distingue tres fases en la evolución de la tecnología digital aplicada a las bellas artes . Cada fase no solo introduce nuevas herramientas, sino que transforma la relación del artista con su obra y con el público.

Fase I (1980–2000): la traducción del medio

La primera fase, que los autores denominan "medium translation" (traducción del medio), se caracteriza por la digitalización de los medios tradicionales. Las imágenes se convierten en archivos, y los procesos lógicos —la programación— entran en el oficio artístico . Durante estas dos décadas, las herramientas digitales funcionaron principalmente como mecanismos de extensión de las prácticas analógicas.

Sin embargo, incluso en esta fase temprana, se prefiguraban debates posteriores sobre la agencia y la automatización. Como señalan los autores, "incluso cuando las herramientas digitales funcionaban en gran medida como mecanismos de traducción y extensión, ya prefiguraban debates posteriores sobre la agencia y la automatización al incrustar la creatividad en secuencias operativas y delegar partes de la creación de formas en procesos computacionales" . El artista comenzaba a ser, no solo un creador de objetos, sino un diseñador de procedimientos.

Fase II (2000–2010): la plataforma y la participación

La segunda fase, "platformized networking" (redes de creación con plataformas), está marcada por la irrupción de la Web 2.0 y las redes sociales . La publicación y la circulación de obras se vuelven continuas, de bajo umbral y socialmente integradas. El arte ya no circula como objeto aislado, sino como nodo dentro de circuitos comunicativos.

Esta fase, sin embargo, tiene un reverso oscuro. La plataformización de la creación artística somete a los artistas a regímenes de visibilidad gobernados por algoritmos, métricas e interfaces que determinan qué se ve y qué se ignora. Los autores describen esto como un "régimen de curación distribuido" en el que la circulación está determinada por la compatibilidad con las interfaces y el rendimiento en términos de engagement, más que por el mérito artístico . La economía política del trabajo creativo se hace explícita: las plataformas extraen valor del trabajo gratuito de los creadores, que proporcionan contenido, atención y datos de comportamiento sin un control o compensación equivalente .

Fase III (2010–presente): la autonomía algorítmica

La tercera fase, la actual, es la de la "algorithmic autonomy" (autonomía algorítmica) . Está definida por el auge de los sistemas de aprendizaje automático que pueden sintetizar imágenes y estilos mediante inferencia estadística, desplazando la creación artística desde la manipulación directa de píxeles hacia la generación mediada por modelos.

Los autores analizan dos hitos técnicos clave: las Redes Generativas Antagónicas (GAN), que demostraron que era posible producir imágenes sintéticas plausibles mediante aprendizaje adversarial, y los modelos de difusión, que han dominado el campo posteriormente por su capacidad para generar imágenes de alta fidelidad y permitir ediciones más flexibles y controlables .

El cambio crucial, señalan, no es solo la mejora en la calidad de la imagen, sino la relocalización del trabajo creativo. Una parte visible de la habilidad del artista se desplaza hacia la especificación de restricciones, la iteración de instrucciones, el testeo de variaciones y la curación de resultados—actividades que se asemejan más a la dirección, la selección y la orquestación que a la construcción manual . La obra de arte emerge como un resultado negociado de la interacción con un sistema probabilístico.

El "lente de datos": cómo la IA aprende el lenguaje visual

El concepto más sugerente del artículo es el del "lente de datos" de la IA. A diferencia de la cámara fotográfica, que captura la luz de una escena real, la IA no ve el mundo directamente. En su lugar, fragmenta miles de millones de imágenes preexistentes en "tokens visuales" (unidades mínimas de información visual) y los asocia con "tokens lingüísticos" (palabras). De este modo, la máquina aprende un "lenguaje visual del mundo" que le permite, una vez entrenada, moverse de manera fluida y autónoma entre corrientes artísticas, estilos y épocas.

Este proceso tiene implicaciones profundas. Por un lado, permite una versatilidad sin precedentes: un modelo de IA puede generar una imagen en el estilo de Van Gogh, una fotografía hiperrealista o una abstracción geométrica con la misma facilidad. Por otro lado, plantea la pregunta de qué significa "originalidad" cuando el sistema se entrena con millones de obras existentes. Como señalan los autores, la fase de IA intensifica debates de larga data al redistribuir la agencia artística a través de instrucciones, prioridades del modelo, conjuntos de datos y selección posterior .

La agencia artística se vuelve, así, un concepto distribuido. Ya no reside únicamente en el artista, sino que se reparte entre:

Las instrucciones (cómo se formula la petición).
Las prioridades del modelo (lo que el algoritmo está predispuesto a producir).
Los datos de entrenamiento (qué culturas visuales están representadas y cómo).
La selección posterior (qué se acepta, se refina y se contextualiza).

El humanismo tecnológico como respuesta

Ante este escenario, Yang, Zou y Gao proponen un marco normativo-analítico al que denominan "humanismo tecnológico" . Este enfoque sitúa tres condiciones para una creación artística responsable mediada por IA:

Delegación rastreable: la capacidad de seguir y comprender las decisiones tomadas por el sistema.
Responsabilidad cultural situada: el reconocimiento de que los sistemas de IA no son neutrales, sino que reflejan sesgos y valores culturales.
Transparencia infraestructural: la necesidad de que los artistas, educadores y museos comprendan las condiciones técnicas y económicas en las que operan los sistemas generativos.

El humanismo tecnológico no es un rechazo de la IA, sino una invitación a usarla con criterio, a no delegar en ella decisiones que requieren juicio humano, a mantener la integridad cultural en el contexto de la producción algorítmica . Los autores concluyen su artículo con principios operativos para que artistas, educadores y museos puedan evaluar y sostener la agencia y la integridad cultural bajo la producción algorítmica .

Conexión con la investigación sobre el origen del arte (S/Y/C)

El análisis de Yang, Zou y Gao resuena con la investigación que venimos desarrollando sobre el modelo S/Y/C del funcionamiento neuronal y la Ley de coherencia biológica (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). El "lente de datos" de la IA y sus implicaciones para la creación artística pueden reinterpretarse a la luz de nuestras tres dimensiones.

La dimensión S (Supervivencia) se manifiesta en la dependencia de los sistemas de IA de grandes conjuntos de datos que reflejan las culturas visuales existentes. Esta dependencia no es neutral: los datos incorporan sesgos, exclusiones y relaciones de poder. La IA, al aprender de estos datos, puede perpetuar y amplificar esas desigualdades. El humanismo tecnológico, al exigir transparencia y responsabilidad cultural, es una forma de atender a la supervivencia de las diversas tradiciones artísticas frente a la homogeneización algorítmica.

La dimensión Y (Symbolon) es central en el proceso de tokenización que describen los autores. La IA fragmenta las imágenes en tokens visuales y los asocia con tokens lingüísticos, creando un puente entre lo visual y lo verbal. Pero este symbolon —este acto de reconocimiento mediante códigos compartidos— es profundamente diferente del que realiza un artista humano. El artista no solo combina tokens, sino que habita los símbolos, los carga de significado personal y cultural. La IA, por el contrario, manipula símbolos desde fuera, sin una experiencia vivida que los sostenga.

La dimensión C (Completitud) se manifiesta en el proceso de selección y curación que los autores identifican como parte central del trabajo del artista en la era de la IA. El artista que trabaja con modelos generativos no solo genera imágenes, sino que selecciona, refina y contextualiza, buscando una totalidad coherente. Pero esta completitud es diferente de la que busca el artista tradicional: el artista humano busca cerrar una forma desde la experiencia interna; el artista con IA busca cerrar un proceso desde la interacción con un sistema probabilístico.

La Filosofía Quirúrgica nos invita a aplicar un corte analítico preciso al análisis de Yang, Zou y Gao. No se trata de rechazar la IA ni de aceptarla acríticamente, sino de distinguir niveles: el nivel de la producción técnica (donde la IA es una herramienta poderosa), el nivel de la experiencia estética (donde la IA no puede reemplazar la subjetividad encarnada) y el nivel de la responsabilidad cultural (donde el humanismo tecnológico ofrece un marco ético). La IA puede ser una aliada en la creación artística, pero no puede ocupar el lugar del artista como fuente de intencionalidad y significado.

Consideraciones finales: el arte como encuentro entre lo humano y lo algorítmico

El artículo de Yang, Zou y Gao tiene el mérito de ofrecer una visión lúcida y bien informada de la transformación digital del arte. Su periodización en tres fases ayuda a entender que la irrupción de la IA no es una ruptura absoluta, sino la continuación de un proceso que comenzó con la digitalización y se intensificó con la plataformización. Y su propuesta de un humanismo tecnológico ofrece un marco ético para navegar este nuevo territorio.

La IA, como el "lente de datos" que describen los autores, no captura la luz de una escena real, sino que fragmenta y recombina el legado visual de la humanidad. Esto le permite una versatilidad impresionante, pero también la despoja de la conexión con la experiencia vivida. El arte, en su origen y en su función, no es solo combinación de formas, sino encuentro entre subjetividades encarnadas. La IA puede facilitar este encuentro, pero no puede ocupar el lugar de ninguno de los dos polos.

Ahora bien, ¿qué ocurriría si trasladáramos este mismo esquema —digitalización, asimilación, reformulación— al sistema biológico que dio origen al arte? Si la IA comienza con la digitalización de imágenes preexistentes, el sistema nervioso originario comenzó con la digitalización del conocimiento de su nicho vivencial: la información necesaria para lo más fundamental, sobrevivir. Ese nicho fue después asimilado en función de sesgos propios, moldeados por la relación con el entorno natural y por las propias funciones biológicas, cuyo primer imperativo era la supervivencia y, más tarde, otras necesidades igualmente fundamentales.

Por último, quedaría lo que podríamos llamar la "IA de la prehistoria" : aquella función neuronal primigenia capaz de reformular y conceptualizar, a partir de las posibilidades del propio sistema biológico, el interés de supervivencia y la búsqueda de completitud, para aplicarlas a la práctica. ¿Fue esa la inteligencia artificial del pasado? ¿Fue ese el primer algoritmo encarnado que permitió a nuestra especie crear símbolos, herramientas y arte? La pregunta queda abierta.

Y es precisamente esa apertura la que define nuestra investigación. La IA contemporánea nos ofrece un espejo inesperado: al observar cómo fragmenta, asimila y recombina el legado visual de la humanidad, podemos comprender mejor cómo el propio sistema nervioso, hace decenas de miles de años, fragmentó, asimiló y recombinó el mundo para crear algo radicalmente nuevo. El arte, desde Makapansgat hasta los algoritmos generativos, sigue siendo el testimonio de una misma función: la de un sistema que necesita sobrevivir, simbolizar y completar sentidos.

Referencias bibliográficas

Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK

Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.

Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

jueves, 10 de septiembre de 2026

When Fire Taught Us to Create: The Natural Kiln Hypothesis and the Origin of Pottery

Bernabé Mallo

A review of Amos Frumkin's study (2026) in Geomorphology: Late Quaternary fire-induced erosion, impacts and innovations in the southern Levant

Introduction: catastrophe as teacher

Can a catastrophe teach a species to create? Can the fire that destroys also reveal? This is the question running through the study by Amos Frumkin, geomorphologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published in 2026 in the journal Geomorphology . The work proposes a bold hypothesis: that the great fires that devastated the southern Levant some 9,500 years ago may have inspired the invention of pottery in the Neolithic.

Frumkin's proposal, called the "natural kiln hypothesis" , holds that the Neolithic communities inhabiting the Jordan Valley would have observed how natural fires hardened exposed clay. That casual observation —seeing earth transformed by fire into something hard and permanent— would have provided the basic idea for reproducing the process intentionally . Pottery, one of the most important technologies in human history, may have been born from imitating what nature had already shown.

Observation alone, however, explains nothing. A biological system does not adopt an innovation simply because it has seen it. It adopts it when it perceives a tangible benefit for its own survival, when it has a nervous system capable of processing that advantage, and when there is an imperative need driving its material application. Pottery did not impose itself because someone contemplated hardened clay, but because at some point that hardened clay became the answer to a problem that urgently needed solving. What was that problem? What did those first potters see in the earth transformed by fire? The question remains open, and it is, perhaps, the most interesting one in the entire study.

The setting: fires, erosion, and the creation of a new landscape

To understand Frumkin's hypothesis, it is necessary to reconstruct the environmental setting in which this discovery would have occurred. The study compares two periods separated by more than a hundred thousand years: the last interglacial, known as MIS 5e (approximately 129,000 to 116,000 years before the present), and the early Holocene (between 11,000 and 7,000 years ago) .

In both intervals, the geological records show the same sequence: episodes of extensive fires followed by pronounced erosion. Microscopic charcoal particles preserved in sediments from ancient lakes —such as Lake Hula and the Dead Sea— show peaks of igneous activity, while chemical signatures preserved in cave formations reveal substantial losses of vegetation and soil . During the early Holocene, the most intense episode would have occurred between 9,500 and 8,200 years before the present .

The disappearance of vegetation cover left soils unprotected against rain and runoff. The red earth, rich in clay and known as terra rossa, was washed down from the slopes and deposited in large quantities in the depressions of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea . Far from turning these areas into uninhabitable spaces, the process generated new environments of high fertility where farming communities found land suitable for cultivation. The large Neolithic settlements —such as Sha'ar Hagolan, Jericho, Netiv Hagdud, and Gilgal— became increasingly concentrated on these redeposited soils, which favoured residential stability and the development of sedentary societies .

As Frumkin notes, "a forest fire is usually perceived only as a catastrophe, but the alteration of the environment can also expose populations to new materials and possibilities" . The catastrophe, paradoxically, created the conditions for an innovation.

The natural kiln hypothesis: from accident to intention

Frumkin's hypothesis rests on a fundamental technical fact: clay undergoes irreversible transformations when heated between 500 and 700 °C . At these temperatures, the material loses its plasticity and acquires permanent hardness. A sufficiently intense forest fire, capable of reaching these temperatures in the soil, could produce small quantities of naturally fired clay .

The proposal suggests that the inhabitants of the Jordan Valley may have found fragments of clay transformed by the heat of natural fires which, after cooling, displayed an unknown hardness and durability . That casual observation would have provided the basic idea for the intentional firing of clay. But, as we have noted, observation is not enough. For the discovery to be completed, other factors had to converge: a nervous system capable of processing the advantage of that material, and an imperative need for its practical application.

The hypothesis rests on earlier petrographic research demonstrating that the pottery of the Yarmukian period, found in the Jordan Valley, was made with redeposited terra rossa clay, the same material accumulated near the settlements as a consequence of erosion from nearby hills . That is, the Neolithic potters used precisely the type of clay that the fires had brought to their doorsteps.

This detail is significant because it connects the raw material of pottery with the environmental event that, according to the hypothesis, would have inspired its firing. The sequence would be as follows: fires wash clay down into the valleys; communities observe how that clay hardens under the heat of new fires; someone understands that the process can be deliberately reproduced and that the result has a value that until then had not been exploited. Only then is pottery truly born .

Nature's control experiment: MIS 5e

One of the most fascinating aspects of Frumkin's study is the use of a natural experiment to test his hypothesis. During the last interglacial (MIS 5e), more than 100,000 years ago, the southern Levant experienced environmental conditions similar to those of the early Holocene: large fires, loss of vegetation, severe erosion, and clay accumulation in the valleys .

Yet pottery was not invented. This fact is crucial to Frumkin's hypothesis. If the environmental factor had been sufficient, pottery should also have appeared in MIS 5e. But it did not. Why?

The answer, according to Frumkin, lies in the social and cognitive preconditions. The Middle Palaeolithic communities inhabiting the region 100,000 years ago had no agriculture, did not live in permanent settlements, and did not possess the technological organisation or accumulated experience of later Neolithic societies . The landscape could offer the clue, but someone had to be prepared to understand it.

As the study notes, "MIS 5e effectively functions as a natural control experiment, with similar conditions but a different cognitive and social context, which is why pottery was not invented" . This argument reinforces the idea that technological innovation is not merely an automatic response to the environment, but requires a mind prepared to recognise and exploit the opportunities the environment presents. And it requires, moreover, a need that makes that opportunity urgent.

What the first potters saw: the question that remains open

If we accept that observation is not enough, that it takes a tangible benefit, a nervous system capable of processing it, and an imperative need, then we must ask ourselves: what concrete need could have driven the invention of pottery? What did those prehistoric entrepreneurs of the Levant see in the clay hardened by fire?

We can speculate with several possibilities. Perhaps they saw the opportunity to store water and food in airtight containers, resistant to rodents and humidity, in a context of growing sedentism where harvests had to be preserved for months. Perhaps they saw the possibility of cooking foods that had previously been difficult to digest, thereby transforming the diet and improving nutrition. Perhaps they saw a way to transport liquids easily, expanding the radius of action of communities. Or perhaps they saw all of this at once, or something entirely different that we, from our distance of nine thousand years, cannot even imagine.

What we can affirm is that the need was not the same for everyone. The Middle Palaeolithic communities saw the same hardened clay, but did nothing with it, because their way of life did not require ceramic containers. Neolithic communities, by contrast, needed to store agricultural surpluses, transport water to settlements, cook foods that had previously been eaten raw. Pottery was not born from observation, but from the encounter between observation and a need that observation alone could not satisfy.

The question, therefore, is not only what they saw, but what they needed to see for what they were seeing to acquire meaning. And that question leads us to a deeper issue about the nature of human innovation: to what extent does the environment determine what we invent, and to what extent do we ourselves, with our needs and our capacities, decide what the environment offers us?

A reading from the S/Y/C model

Frumkin's study offers a concrete case in which the functioning of the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C that forms the core of our research can be observed (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). The three dimensions of our thesis unfold here with uncommon clarity.

The S (Survival) dimension manifests in the relationship between environmental catastrophe and human adaptation. Fires destroyed the landscape, but also created new conditions of fertility that attracted Neolithic communities. Pottery, once adopted, improved the capacity to store food and liquids, to cook and ferment products, contributing directly to survival and population growth . The invention was not a luxury, but an adaptive response to a transformed environment. But, we insist, it was not enough for the environment to offer the opportunity: someone had to perceive in it an advantage for survival.

The Y (Symbolon) dimension manifests in the act of recognition underlying the invention. Neolithic potters did not merely see hardened clay: they recognised in it a possibility. They established a connection between what they observed (clay transformed by fire) and what they could do (reproduce the process). This act of recognition is essentially symbolic: it implies the capacity to see beyond the immediate, to establish an analogy between the observed past and the possible future. Symbolon, in its etymological sense of "act of recognition through shared codes", manifests here as the capacity to read the environment and translate that reading into technical action.

The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the culmination of the process. Pottery is not only a useful object; it is a finished object, which has passed through a complete sequence of transformations to reach its final form. The drive toward wholeness —the need to close a cycle, to give coherence to matter— is the same that guides the artist when finishing a work. The invention of pottery represents, in this sense, a milestone in the history of function C: the human capacity to transform materials into permanent objects, endowed with form and meaning. And wholeness, in this case, is fulfilled when the object not only exists, but serves something the biological system needs.

Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in Frumkin's hypothesis. It is not about accepting it as established truth —the author himself insists that it is a hypothesis requiring empirical validation — nor rejecting it as speculative. It is about recognising that it offers a plausible model of how observation of the environment, the need for survival, and symbolic capacity combine to produce technological innovation. The environmental catastrophe was not the cause of the invention, but its catalyst: it created the material conditions (clay in the valleys) and the cognitive opportunity (visible hardened clay) for a prepared mind to make the leap. But the leap only occurred when a need appeared that made that opportunity valuable.

Final considerations: the lesson of fire

Amos Frumkin's study reminds us of something fundamental about human creativity: we do not invent in a vacuum. The invention of pottery was not an act of isolated genius, but the result of a complex interaction between the environment, need, and the capacity to recognise possibilities. The fires of the Levant did not "teach" anyone to make pottery, but they did create the conditions for someone, at some point, to see in hardened clay a promise of permanence.

But that promise was only fulfilled when it coincided with a need. Observation, by itself, is sterile. The biological system does not adopt an innovation because it sees it, but because it suits it. And it suits it when that innovation solves a problem that survival poses. Pottery was not born from fire, but from the encounter between fire, clay, and a community that needed something it did not yet have.

This perspective also illuminates our research on the origin of art. Art, like pottery, was not born from sudden inspiration, but from the confluence of biological, cognitive, and environmental factors. The human nervous system, with its single S/Y/C function, is designed to recognise patterns, attribute meaning, and seek wholeness. But that function is only activated and unfolds when the environment presents an opportunity and when a need makes it relevant. A stone shaped like a face, clay hardened by fire, a cave wall suggesting the shape of an animal: all of them are opportunities waiting for a need to turn them into something more.

The lesson of fire is, perhaps, the lesson of all human creation: catastrophe can be creative, and innovation emerges when the prepared mind finds, in the opportunity the world offers, the answer to a need it did not yet know it had. From Neolithic pottery to artificial intelligence algorithms, the history of our species is the history of that encounter between environment, need, and imagination.

References

Frumkin, A. (2026). Late Quaternary fire-induced erosion, impacts and innovations in the southern Levant. Geomorphology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2026.109916

Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK

Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN

Weiner, S. (2010). Reconstructing pyrotechnological processes. In Microarchaeology: Beyond the visible archaeological record (pp. 165–206). Cambridge University Press.

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.

Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

domingo, 20 de septiembre de 2026

Art as Agency: When Things Act Upon Us

Bernabé Mallo

A review of Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory by Alfred Gell (1998)

Introduction: the art that makes us act

The critique of passive aesthetics: art as action

Agency and index: the fundamental concepts

Abduction and the art nexus: how agency works

The distributed person and the extended mind

Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

Critique and reception

Final considerations: art as action and as encounter

References

Enlaces / Links

El arte como agencia: cuando las cosas actúan sobre nosotros

Bernabé Mallo

Una reseña de Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory de Alfred Gell (1998)

Introducción: el arte que nos hace actuar

La crítica a la estética pasiva: el arte como acción

Agencia e índice: los conceptos fundamentales

La abducción y el nexo del arte: cómo funciona la agencia

La persona distribuida y la mente extendida

Conexión con la investigación sobre el origen del arte (S/Y/C)

Crítica y recepción

Consideraciones finales: el arte como acción y como encuentro

Referencias bibliográficas

Enlaces / Links

viernes, 18 de septiembre de 2026

The Data Lens: How Artificial Intelligence Decomposes and Reassembles Art

Bernabé Mallo

A review of the article by Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou, and Bo Gao (2026): From Digitization to the AI Era: Digital Technology Trajectories in Fine-Art Creation

Introduction: when the machine learns to look

Three phases of digital artistic creation

Phase I (1980–2000): medium translation

Phase II (2000–2010): platformised networking

Phase III (2010–present): algorithmic autonomy

The "data lens": how AI learns the visual language

Technological humanism as a response

Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

Final considerations: art as an encounter between the human and the algorithmic

References

Enlaces / Links

El lente de datos: cómo la inteligencia artificial descompone y recompone el arte

Bernabé Mallo

Una reseña del artículo de Hu Yang, Yunxian Zou y Bo Gao (2026): From Digitization to the AI Era: Digital Technology Trajectories in Fine-Art Creation

Introducción: cuando la máquina aprende a mirar

Tres fases de la creación artística digital

Fase I (1980–2000): la traducción del medio

Fase II (2000–2010): la plataforma y la participación

Fase III (2010–presente): la autonomía algorítmica

El "lente de datos": cómo la IA aprende el lenguaje visual

El humanismo tecnológico como respuesta

Conexión con la investigación sobre el origen del arte (S/Y/C)

Consideraciones finales: el arte como encuentro entre lo humano y lo algorítmico

Referencias bibliográficas

Enlaces / Links

jueves, 10 de septiembre de 2026

When Fire Taught Us to Create: The Natural Kiln Hypothesis and the Origin of Pottery

Bernabé Mallo

A review of Amos Frumkin's study (2026) in Geomorphology: Late Quaternary fire-induced erosion, impacts and innovations in the southern Levant

Introduction: catastrophe as teacher

The setting: fires, erosion, and the creation of a new landscape

The natural kiln hypothesis: from accident to intention

Nature's control experiment: MIS 5e

What the first potters saw: the question that remains open

A reading from the S/Y/C model

Final considerations: the lesson of fire

References

Enlaces / Links

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