Our appreciation of a sunset is in part because of our analytical faculties. Beauty is a quick way of measuring the rightness of a thing - for example, in people, we correlate beauty with physical health. Instead of assessing every single attribute, we roll it together into one measure - that of beauty. Sunsets are beautiful because they resemble the savanna of the Pleistocene epoch, where you were safe back at camp at the last light before the dangerous night arrived.

Appreciating sunsets

Asked by: Aaron Hacon, NorwichThere’s a nugget of truth behind ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’, because red sunsets are associated with settled high pressure systems that don’t wash all the dust out of the lower atmosphere, and high pressure tends to mean fine weather.But it would be a stretch to say that our appreciation of sunsets is a genetic weather-forecasting mechanism. Rather, we have <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/evolution/" dir="ltr">evolved</a> an aesthetic sense as part of the wider analytical faculties of our brain. Far from being skin deep, ‘beauty’ is a shorthand way of measuring the fundamental ‘rightness’ of a thing. In people for example, the attributes we find beautiful generally correlate quite well with physical health or reproductive ability. Instead of evaluating all these different attributes independently, they all get rolled into a single measure: beauty.The philosopher Dennis Dutton has suggested that the open rolling plains with occasional trees, that are so often represented in landscape art, are beautiful to us because they resemble the savanna of the Pleistocene epoch, when Homo erectus was first developing an aesthetic sense. Red sunsets would have been a familiar part of these landscapes and in an era when night was the most dangerous time, making sure you were safely back at camp to appreciate the last dying gasp of the day was probably especially important.Subscribe to <a href="https://www.buysubscriptions.com/print/bbc-focus-magazine-subscription?_medium=brandsite&amp;utm_source=sciencefocus.com&amp;utm_Brand&amp;utm_content=other-links&amp;utm_term=Article" rel="noopener noreferrer" dir="ltr">BBC Focus magazine</a> for fascinating new Q&amp;As every month and follow <a href="https://twitter.com/sciencefocusQA" rel="noopener noreferrer" dir="ltr">@sciencefocusQA</a> on Twitter for your daily dose of fun science facts.

Though a cinematic sunset may have little impact on our survival today, there is an evolutionary benefit to us evaluating and appreciating 'beauty'.

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Asked by: Aaron Hacon, Norwich

There’s a nugget of truth behind ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’, because red sunsets are associated with settled high pressure systems that don’t wash all the dust out of the lower atmosphere, and high pressure tends to mean fine weather.

But it would be a stretch to say that our appreciation of sunsets is a genetic weather-forecasting mechanism. Rather, we have <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/evolution/">evolved </a>an aesthetic sense as part of the wider analytical faculties of our brain. Far from being skin deep, ‘beauty’ is a shorthand way of measuring the fundamental ‘rightness’ of a thing. In people for example, the attributes we find beautiful generally correlate quite well with physical health or reproductive ability. Instead of evaluating all these different attributes independently, they all get rolled into a single measure: beauty.

The philosopher Dennis Dutton has suggested that the open rolling plains with occasional trees, that are so often represented in landscape art, are beautiful to us because they resemble the savanna of the Pleistocene epoch, when Homo erectus was first developing an aesthetic sense. Red sunsets would have been a familiar part of these landscapes and in an era when night was the most dangerous time, making sure you were safely back at camp to appreciate the last dying gasp of the day was probably especially important.

Subscribe to <a href="https://www.buysubscriptions.com/print/bbc-focus-magazine-subscription?_medium=brandsite&utm_source=sciencefocus.com&utm_Brand&utm_content=other-links&utm_term=Article">BBC Focus magazine </a>for fascinating new Q&As every month and follow <a href="https://twitter.com/sciencefocusQA">@sciencefocusQA </a>on Twitter for your daily dose of fun science facts.

What evolutionary advantage is there in finding a sunset beautiful?

Appreciating sunsets

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