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 The Strange Order of Things (2017) and its implications for understanding
the origin of Art
Introduction: Why do we create art?
For centuries, philosophers and art theorists have tried to answer a seemingly simple question: why do human beings create art? The answers have varied —for pleasure, for imitation of nature, for emotional expression, for the pursuit of beauty, for the need to communicate the ineffable. However, none of these explanations has managed to answer a deeper question: what biological need does art satisfy?
Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damásio has proposed a radically novel answer in his work The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feelings, and the Origin of Cultures (originally published in English in 2017). His thesis is surprising and, at the same time, profoundly convincing: art was not born as a pastime or an evolutionary accident, but as an absolute biological necessity in the service of homeostasis.
What is homeostasis and why is it key to understanding art?
Homeostasis is, in its classical definition, the set of processes by which living organisms maintain their internal balance —temperature, pH, glucose levels, blood pressure— in the face of environmental variations. But Damásio goes much further. For him, homeostasis is not just a physiological self-regulatory mechanism, but the fundamental organising principle of all life, from bacteria to the most complex human cultures.
"Homeostasis", writes Damásio, "is the force that ensures that life regulates itself within a range that is not only compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species". In other words, we do not just want to survive: we want to prosper, flourish, transcend.
Damásio's conceptual leap consists of extending this homeostatic principle from the purely biological domain to the cultural domain. Just as the body regulates its temperature to stay alive, the mind regulates its affective states through the creation of objects, practices, and ideas that we call culture. Art, music, literature, religion, philosophy, science, and technology are, ultimately, homeostatic instruments.
Feelings as the Mental Representatives of Homeostasis
To understand how cultural homeostasis operates, António Damásio introduces a central principle: feelings are the mental representatives and spokespersons of homeostasis within the conscious mind. Feelings are not mere epiphenomena, secondary effects, or ornaments of mental life. Instead, they are fundamental biological signals and mental images that inform us in real time about the state of our vital regulation.
When we experience well-being or pleasure, the organism indicates—through a coordinated internal chemistry—that we are in a favorable homeostatic state of efficiency and health. Conversely, when we feel pain, sadness, or distress, the brain warns us that something threatens our equilibrium and survival. This simple evolutionary logic—seeking what expands life and avoiding what damages it—has guided the evolution of living organisms for billions of years.
What makes human beings unique is that we have learned to externalize and expand this regulation through cultural homeostasis. We do not merely react biologically to fear, grief, or awe; we construct rituals to conjure them. We create elegies, funerary sculptures, philosophies, justice systems, and cosmologies to respond collectively to those biological alarms.
Art, science, and culture, from this neurobiological perspective, are authentic homeostatic technologies. They are refined tools developed by our minds to regulate our own affective states, process loss, celebrate social cohesion, and, ultimately, pursue not just basic survival, but a state of flourishing well-being.
The neurobiological evidence: the brain that narrates and feels
Research by Damásio and his team at the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California has provided fascinating empirical evidence of this fundamental human capacity. In recent experiments, it has been shown that the human brain possesses a narrative neuronal architecture —sets of brain structures, especially the Default Mode Network— that respond similarly to stories told in different languages.
This means that the capacity to construct narratives is not a cultural addition, but a fundamental characteristic of human brain architecture. Human beings do not just tell stories: they are made to tell stories, because stories are the vehicle through which we process our emotional experiences and regulate our homeostatic balance.
The work of art —a cave painting, a symphony, a novel, a poem— is nothing other than an externalisation of this internal narrative process. When the cave painter painted a bison in Altamira, he was not simply decorating a wall: he was projecting his inner world, his fears and hopes, his experiences of hunting and survival, onto a tangible image that allowed him to process and regulate his affective states.
Art as a homeostatic instrument
Perhaps the most powerful formulation of this theory is the following: art functions as an instrument of biological regulation. Just as drugs act on biochemical processes to restore physiological balance, artistic experiences act on neural and affective processes to restore psychological and social balance.
A paradigmatic example is music. Listening to a melancholic piece when we are sad is not a masochistic act: it is a form of homeostasis. Music allows us to feel our emotion from a safe distance, process it, shape it, and finally integrate it into our life experience. Cheerful music, on the other hand, does not just express joy: it induces it, regulating our affective state upward.
The same applies to the visual arts, literature, theatre, and dance. All of them are affective technologies that we have developed to modulate our homeostatic state, to process suffering and enhance well-being, to connect with others and build community ties.
The social dimension: art, empathy, and group cohesion
Damásio does not limit himself to considering individual homeostasis. Social homeostasis is equally fundamental. Human beings are deeply social animals, and our homeostatic balance depends on our inclusion in groups, our capacity for cooperation, and the quality of our affective bonds.
Art plays a crucial role in this social homeostasis. Community celebrations, shared rituals, collective narratives —myths, epics, traditions— are technologies of group cohesion that synchronise the affective states of members of a community, generating trust, cooperation, and a sense of belonging.
The neurologist has identified specific neural mechanisms underlying this social dimension. Oxytocin and vasopressin, neurotransmitters involved in social bonding and pair formation, are released during shared aesthetic experiences. Art literally connects us with others, modulating our neurochemistry to facilitate empathy and cooperation.
The critique of "Descartes' error" revisited
Damásio is famous for his critique of "Descartes' error": the radical separation between mind and body, reason and emotion. In his earlier work, Descartes' Error (1994), he argued that human rationality depends crucially on emotions. In The Strange Order of Things, he takes this critique one step further.
The "error" he now combats is the belief that culture —including art, philosophy, and science— is the exclusive product of disembodied reason. Damásio demonstrates that feelings and emotions are not obstacles to cultural creation, but its main engine. We do not create art despite our emotions, but because of them. Art is the highest expression of our biological need to regulate ourselves affectively.
This perspective has radical implications for the philosophy of art. If art is a homeostatic instrument, then its value resides not only in its formal beauty or its capacity to represent reality, but in its biological function: helping human beings survive, prosper, and find meaning in a chaotic and uncertain world.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
This theory of Damásio resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence.
The S (Survival) dimension of our model finds its biological foundation in Damásian homeostasis: every aesthetic experience, however elevated it may seem, is rooted in mechanisms of vital regulation that ensure the persistence of the organism.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension —the capacity to create and share symbols as an act of recognition— corresponds to the human capacity to externalise homeostatic states into objects, images, and narratives. Art does not only express emotions: it symbolises them, makes them communicable and shareable.
The C (Wholeness) dimension —the drive toward totality and coherence— finds its equivalent in the homeostatic pursuit of balance and flourishing. Beauty is not merely formal pleasure; it is the subjective experience of an achieved homeostatic state, of a successful integration of parts into a coherent whole.
Damásio thus offers a robust empirical and theoretical basis for our hypothesis: art is not a cultural luxury, but an expression of the single function of the nervous system, which needs to survive (S), symbolise (Y), and achieve wholeness (C) to maintain its biological coherence.
Final considerations: art as testimony of the living
Damásio's theory invites us to abandon the old dichotomy between nature and culture. Art is neither purely biological nor purely cultural: it is the crossroads where both domains meet and enhance each other.
Art, like medicine, philosophy, or science, is a homeostatic response to the challenges of human existence. It is born from pain and seeks relief; born from loss and seeks transcendence; born from solitude and seeks connection; born from chaos and seeks form.
Understanding this does not diminish the mystery of art, but deepens it. Because if art is an instrument of homeostatic regulation, then creating and contemplating art is not an escape from life, but the most human way of living it. It is the way we have found, after millions of years of evolution, to feel at home in a universe that was not made for us.
References (APA7)
Damasio, A. (2018). The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. Vintage. (Original work published 2017)
Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2016). Making minds and cultures: The neurobiology of storytelling and art. In The Strange Order of Things (pp. 293-318). Pantheon Books.
López Mallo, J. 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
https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eu
López Mallo, J. 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. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
López Mallo, J. 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. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1
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
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