In this reading Gosz presents the question of whether music comes from language, or language from music. “Even in it’s very origins, evolutionary theory is divided in how it considers music (and the visual arts) as derived from language (and the visual arts as forms of rehearsal for survival) or whether language is seen as an evolutionary outcome of musicality.” (p 30) While at first, either seems possible and this differentiation not of much consequence, the discussion that followed proved that this evolutionary distinction can lead to important discoveries about the role of art and artist. “If music is derived from language, so the argument goes, then music is fundamentally based on natural selection and served the purpose of self preservation. If on the contrary, language derives from music, then it may be that music and the arts are the product of sexual selection, the ability to attract a mate. At stake in this discussion, in other words, is the question whether music remains frivolous, part of sexual amusement, or a more serious and necessary rehearsal and preparation for what is life sustaining. Is music what we share with animals, an outcome of our animal heritage; or is it that which distinguishes the human from the animal?” (p30)
As Grosz points out sexual selection is beyond mere practical means for survival. It operates on excess, and often can not be defined in terms of it’s “ends or goals.” As Grosz states “In affirming the radical distinction between natural and sexual selection - that is, between skills and qualities that enable survival and those that enable courtship and pleasure, which sometimes overlap but commonly do not - Darwin introduced an excessiveness into the development and transformation of species.” Due to sexual selection, a more simplistic Darwinian theory, where the stronger survive as the weaker are eliminated, can not account for all evolutionary processes. The very acts that promote sexual selection are often in contradiction with those geared towards self preservation(e.g. the plumage of a peacock). It is only through this excessiveness that art can focus on sensation, and pleasure, free from the constraints of a mere survival based existence. As Grosz states “What music and the arts indicate is that (sexual) taste and erotic appeal are not reducible to the pragmatic world of survival, although ofcourse subject to its broad principle as a limit: they indicate that those living beings that “really live” that intensify life - for it’s own sake, for the sake of intensity or sensation- bring something new to the world, create something that has no other purpose than to intensify, to experience itself.”(p39)