Topics

• Mixtures
• Rationale
• Dance
• Sensory Bias
• Mixtures in Dance
• Downward Motion and Disorder
• Other Animal Dance Moves
• Downward Motion and Disorder in Culture
• Language
• Exciting Quality Assumptions
• Less Exciting Quality Assumptions
• List Description
• List of Cultural Mixtures
• Correspondence with Other Aesthetic Things
• Other Mixtures
• Roundness as Order
• Roundness Mixed With More Exciting Qualities
• Western Grebe Dance
• Dance of the Great Argus Pheasant
• Works Cited

Mixtures

The blending of simple, perceptually stimulating qualities like heat, fluidity, disorder, brightness, dynamism, upwardness, and outwardness with their less stimulating counterparts such as coldness, solidity, order, darkness, stasis, downwardness, and inwardness is often favored in idiomatic expressions. This leads us to expect similar preferences in the realm of aesthetic cultural phenomena—activities and creations pursued for enjoyment rather than functional necessity. If a set of psychological biases supports the evolution and continuity of such expressions in language, it is plausible that the same biases also drive the development of cultural artifacts and practices reflecting similar aesthetic structures. These may encompass gods, heroes, artistic works, architectural marvels, consumer goods, rituals, hobbies, games, sports, and more—essentially anything we engage in for non-utilitarian reasons.

Rationale

The motivation for compiling examples of idioms that mirror the mixtures of stimulating and less stimulating qualities stems from their inherent idiomatic nature, which inherently lacks rational sense. Another reason is the surprisingly vast number of such examples, suggesting a strong, universal psychological bias favoring these idioms over others. Moreover, these biases extend beyond mere opposites (like bright—dark or up—down) to include indirect opposites (such as bright—down or up—dark), indicating these biases are hardwired into our brain structure rather than learned through external observations.

These same considerations apply to the cultural phenomena that align with these mixtures, which are listed at the conclusion of this article. Their prevalence exceeds expectations, reflecting psychological biases that favor them, and illustrating our ambivalence toward the opposites involved, whether they are directly or indirectly contrasting.

Dance

The following sections delve into universal aspects of dance among humans and other species. Dance is particularly noteworthy for incorporating a wider array of mixtures than other aesthetic forms like painting or music, possibly due to its ability to vary across multiple dimensions. For instance, a song may mix order with randomness, but it cannot seamlessly blend upwardness with downwardness. Dance, however, can encompass all these mixtures, along with any indirect combinations of applicable qualities, such as downward disorder or upward stasis. Animals can exhibit a wide range of movements—including upward and downward motions, rapid or slow speeds, and varying degrees of randomness—while altering their apparent brightness or darkness through different body positions. By adjusting the rates or degrees of their movements, they can convey complex mixtures like up—static or down—dynamic.

The universality of perceptual mixtures and the biases that favor them in dance suggest that these elements are too pervasive and fundamental to be understood merely as adaptive behaviors or dismissed as random actions not worth investigating. The widespread inclination across the animal kingdom to engage in and enjoy dance remains an enigmatic phenomenon from a biological standpoint. Even species that do not typically dance in their natural habitats, such as gorillas, certain birds, dogs, and elephants, can be coaxed into dancing or enjoying music.

Sensory Bias

A straightforward explanation for the evolution of dance involves a universal sensory bias favoring the distinctive characteristics of dance compared to mundane animal movements. While the diversity of dance across humans and various animal species complicates any simplistic classification, it is reasonable to postulate that something fundamental distinguishes dance from other movement sequences. This recognition has persisted over significant portions of our evolutionary history, enabling both humans and other animals to identify dance as a unique form of expression.

Mixtures in Dance

Dance characteristically combines dynamic motion with stasis, fast movements with slower ones, and disorderly, unpredictable motions with orderly, repetitive movements. Each quality alternates with its opposite in a complex manner throughout the performance, suggesting that the contradictions they represent are central to our aesthetic appreciation. These elements can be depicted as a set of mixtures of simple, directly opposite qualities:

• Dynamic — static
• Disorder — order
• Regular — random
• Asymmetric — symmetric
• Up — down
• Out — in

These direct opposites are just the beginning; many possible indirect mixtures also define dance. For instance, a dancer often exhibits more motion in the lower body, such as the legs, compared to the upper body, which remains relatively still, as seen in styles like Salsa, the moonwalk, and tap dancing. Notably, there is often an increased presence of asymmetry and randomness (considered forms of disorder) in downward and central motions during dance compared to everyday animal movements.

Downward Motion and Disorder

The dive-bombing dance of bald eagles demonstrates an appreciation for downward and disorderly motion, where the ground serves as less of a constraint than it does for terrestrial dancers. This behavior, like many others observed in animal courtship rituals, illustrates that biases favoring downward disorder were established long before human evolution, making the existence of numerous human cultural parallels unsurprising.

The video illustrates how eagles grasp one another's claws and plummet towards the ground while spinning chaotically during courtship. The details of this activity do not appear adaptive from a survival standpoint, nor do they serve as effective signals to potential mates about health or genetic superiority. There are far simpler ways for an eagle to showcase its strength without engaging in such risky antics, suggesting that enjoyment is a motivation behind this behavior. This notion aligns with the similar preferences shared between humans and other animals regarding attractions to songs, vibrant colors, and certain shapes.

Eagle dancing is intentionally both downward and disorderly. While they could fall without spinning, they opt for the latter. Rather than remaining stationary and merely touching each other, they combine contact with chaotic, rapid downward motion. Recreational skydiving among humans demonstrates a similar pursuit of fun, often accompanied by unconventional expressions of commitment, such as marriage. Interestingly, the phrase "falling in love" evokes a sense of descent, even though love itself does not inherently involve falling.

A preexisting bias for the perceptual contradictions inherent in dance explains its continuity, as evidenced by adolescent eagles practicing the behavior. Human enjoyment of activities like skydiving, high diving, and roller coasters suggests that rapid downward motion is universally appealing to animals, regardless of its adaptive significance.

Other Animal Dance Moves

The red-capped manakin performs a moonwalk, keeping its upper body stable while rapidly scuttling backward along a branch. This showcases both downward dynamism and upward stasis, as well as the mixture of bright—down, where the bird lowers its bright red cap, creating a visual effect that makes its pitch-black body appear elevated.

Other avian species also exhibit dynamic, chaotic movements. The sharptail grouse and ostriches incorporate lowering their bodies while engaging in energetic motions, while the wire-crested thorntail hummingbird hovers in front of a female, swinging its tail feathers in a semi-chaotic display while maintaining a steady upper body. Couple dances in grebes also exemplify this, as they run across the water side by side, creating chaotic splashes while keeping their upper bodies as steady as possible.

The flame bowerbird exhibits rapid, chaotic movements during the downward phase of its dance, juxtaposed with careful, slow movements during the upward phase. Additionally, the bird moves its darkest wing feathers more quickly than its brighter body parts, illustrating the mixture of dynamic—dark.

Instances of downward disorder and dynamism can also be seen during the mating rituals of hammerhead sharks, which include a freefalling phase akin to that of eagles. The consistent presence of these mixtures among birds and other species—despite their distant evolutionary relationship to humans—suggests a shared aesthetic foundation in cultural expressions.

Downward Motion and Disorder in Culture

Dance shares certain basic similarities with other human pleasures, such as the dynamic movement seen in dresses, the fluidity of long hair, and the asymmetrical nature of curtsies. Activities such as slides—especially water slides—downhill skiing, bungee jumping, and even playful interactions like footsie or rolling dice, resonate with the mixtures prevalent in dance.

Expressions of downward motion and disorder can also be traced in children's rhymes like “London Bridge is Falling Down” and “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” as well as cautionary tales like “Humpty Dumpty.”

Language

In language, popular idiomatic expressions mirror the downward dynamism and disorder found in dance:

“Crackdown,” “breakdown,” “break it down,” “break a leg,” “shake a leg,” “downward spiral,” “dropkick,” “drop a bombshell,” “down and dirty,” “free-falling,” “the rundown,” “swing low,” “downplay,” “play it down,” “live it down,” “race to the bottom,” “winding down,” and “fell swoop.”

These phrases evoke concepts of cracking, breaking, shaking, and spiraling, allowing us to derive linguistic structures that can be categorized and studied for insights into animal cognition.

A person fluent in English might still struggle to grasp the meanings of these idioms, as their components do not directly relate to their intended messages. This illustrates the inherent mystery of idioms, akin to the complexities of dance, suggesting they arise from similar aesthetic motivations rather than a purely practical linguistic framework.

If dance and idioms stem from the same psychological biases, then we should also find idioms structured around reverse mixtures, which indeed appear frequently:

“A tall order,” “upright,” “above the law,” “fly straight,” “measure up,” “straight as the crow flies,” “overrule,” “straight up,” “straighten up,” “shape up,” “clean up,” “a match made in heaven,” “over my dead body,” “waiting in the wings,” “jump right in,” “slow on the uptake,” “wouldn’t lose sleep over,” “dead cat bounce,” and “rest up.”

This assumes associations of tallness, elevation, and cleanliness with upwardness and order, while concepts of stillness and waiting correspond to static qualities.

The other common indirect mixtures in dance, including inwardness with motion and disorder, as well as direct mixtures like dynamic—static, disorder—static, and up—down, also have numerous analogous idioms in various languages, suggesting that these expressions are akin to linguistic dances.

Exciting Quality Assumptions

The framework for the ensuing list is built on the psychological associations of heat with fire, fluidity with liquids, disorder with destruction, brightness with light, dynamism with motion, upwardness with elevation, and outwardness with projection.

Less Exciting Quality Assumptions

Conversely, coldness relates to ice, solidness to rigid materials, order to symmetry, darkness to absence of light, stasis to stillness, downwardness to reduction in elevation, and inwardness to closeness or cavities.

List Description

The various combinations of exciting and less exciting qualities are summarized below, with examples and current counts of aesthetic phenomena corresponding to each mixture. Some cultural expressions exhibit multiple mixtures, while others lack representation altogether.

The mixture disorder—down currently leads in count due to its ease of achievement, while other mixtures, such as hot—static, have no current examples, possibly due to limited opportunities for those qualities to coexist or varying levels of cultural significance.

Mixtures of direct opposites are marked with an asterisk, revealing that indirect mixtures—those animals cannot perceive as opposites—are equally represented, indicating our innate attraction to these patterns as a side effect of brain structure.

List of Cultural Mixtures

• Hot — cold* (4: Dante’s devil, hot fudge sundaes, fried ice cream, the hot and cold game)
• Hot — solid (3: hot stone massage, the hot potato game, Burning Man)
• Hot — order (0)
• Hot — dark (3: coffee, tea, hot chocolate, bonfire night rituals)
• Hot — static (3: flame decals, funeral pyres, sunbathing)
• Hot — down (6: walking on hot coals, fire jumping, carrying pregnant women over burning coals in China, the fire dance Anastenaria, the floor is lava game, Phlegethon)
• Hot — in (5: fire swallowing, fire theft, jack o’lanterns, bathhouses, fire-breathing dragons)
• Fluid — cold (4: cold drinks, milkshakes, slushies, ice baths)
• Fluid — solid* (14: iced drinks, soup, dry cereal, clay, play dough, toy slime, chewing gum, sand, fountains, underwater sculpture, rain chains, lava lamps, chewing gum, ice cream, Odin’s ring Draupnir, Shield of Evalach, ceromancy)
• Fluid — order (2: water walls, the Sea of Tranquility)
• Fluid — dark (4: the Yin Yang symbol, calligraphy, the Zen ens? circle, Coke)
• Fluid — static (6: flowers, decorative floral patterns, floral carvings in architecture, water burials, feeding wine to the dead in Rome, the Dead Sea Scrolls)
• Fluid — down (12: libation, water skiing, jet skiing, surfing, water slides, water walls, dunk tanks, Gatorade showers, decorative ponds, libation, white water rafting, the Cisterns of Copenhagen)
• Fluid — in (4: kissing, blood oaths, water fights, drinking the blood of Christ)
• Disorder — cold (1: snowball fights)
• Disorder — solid (16: demolition derby, piñatas, nutcrackers, breaking bread, art of kintsugi, robot combat, shooting clay pigeons, christening with wine bottles, piggy banks, dish breaking in Germany, instrument destruction in concerts, graffiti, food throwing in babies)
• Disorder — order* (9: music, dance, games, sports, jigsaw puzzles, Conway’s Game of Life, kaleidoscopes, Rubik’s Cubes)
• Disorder — dark (3: tattoos, Halloween, haunted houses)
• Disorder — static (2: tattoos, surrealist painting)
• Disorder — down (24: dancing, stadium sports, the moonwalk, wrestling, falling down as a joke, tackling in American football, YoYo tricks, skateboard tricks, Olympic diving, 52 card pickup, Tetris, Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, mud wrestling, belly flops, head-banging, smashing guitars on stages, monster trucks running over cars, flirtatious handkerchief dropping, curtsy, Twister, jumping in puddles, white water rafting, coin tossing, dice rolling, confetti, scattering flower petals at weddings)
• Disorder — in (7: mazes, Pandora’s box, witch’s cauldrons, thumb wars, fencing, kaleidoscopes, art of kintsugi)
• Bright — cold (6: vanilla ice cream, Snow White, snowmen, Christmas lights, Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)
• Bright — solid (10: jewels, jewelry, trophies, medals, pearls, gold, silver, belt buckles, gold teeth, alchemy)
• Bright — order (1: lasers)
• Bright — dark* (12: mood lighting, mood rings, glow in the dark objects, black lights, Lite-Brite, makeup, flags, motley jester attire, playing cards, Spiderman, Superman, The Smurfs, priests)
• Bright — static (3: flowers, gold, Day of the Dead)
• Bright — down (11: red carpets, the Yellow Brick Road, automotive underglow, shoes with lights, sidewalk chalk drawings, shiny shoes, flying saucer transporter beams, kneeling to present a ring, scattering flower petals at weddings, buried treasure, Cinderella’s glass slippers, hells)
• Bright — in (6: pumpkin lanterns, ties, red doors, Japanese lanterns, Christmas presents, Christmas stockings)
• Dynamic — cold (2: ice skating, hockey)
• Dynamic — solid (16: pinball, bowling, baseball, cricket, billiards, air hockey, action figures, Transformers, puppets, car racing, PEZ dispensers, spinning tops, wind-up toys, Slinky’s, Matchbox cars)
• Dynamic — order (2: Rubik’s Cube, Mario Bros.)
• Dynamic — dark (3: witches, Dracula, Knight Rider)
• Dynamic — static* (9: dance, song, yoga, stop motion animation, zombies, ghosts, Malagasy dancing with the dead, push puppets, Gumby, steadfast)
• Dynamic — down (23: skydiving, high diving, sledding, downhill skiing, bungee jumping, drop towers, slam dunks, spiking a volleyball, spiking footballs, dribbling a basketball, snow angels, stadium sports, foot tapping, tap dancing, the moonwalk, table football, pinball, Sit ‘n Spin, Spokey Dokeys, Corn Poppers, Koi ponds, Chinese jump rope, board games, card games, limbo)
• Dynamic — in (10: couple dances, kaleidoscopes, the pat-a-cake game, four square, dodgeball, music boxes, snow globes, handshakes, kissing, sex)
• Up — cold (3: ice sculptures, ice palaces, snowmen)
• Up — solid (9: cairns, pyramids, Stonehenge, monoliths, weight lifting, throwing teeth on the roof in Greece, Lego’s, raising glasses, witch’s brooms)
• Up — order (1: pyramids)
• Up — dark (2: top hats, witches)
• Up — static (4: moonwalking, tree burial, sky burial, gravestones)
• Up — down* (8: jumping on beds, trampolines, Yo-yos, dribbling in basketball, swinging, baby bouncers, teeter-totters, roller coasters)
• Up — in (9: shooting a basket in basketball, kicking a field goal in football, a hole in one in golf, children’s playground tunnels, treehouses, high fives, anal probes by aliens, skee-ball, Santa’s sleigh, flying chariots)
• Out — cold (1: throwing snow)
• Out — solid (6: skipping stones, hitting balls, throwing balls, Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, tooth fairy’s carrying teeth away, throwing horseshoes, axe throwing)
• Out — order (2: target shooting, horseshoes)
• Out — dark (1: tuxedos)
• Out — static (1: sexual bondage)
• Out — down (1: billiards)
• Out — in* (11: darts, baseball, field goals, skee ball, tennis, passing a football, golf, boomerangs, Thor’s Hammer Mjölnir, sex).

Correspondence with Other Aesthetic Things

The mixtures identified in this list frequently appear in art, literature, film, and other aesthetic forms, at rates far exceeding those expected without psychological biases favoring their creation and selection. The presence of these mixtures in various artistic expressions, including dance, was anticipated based on their linguistic counterparts. Interestingly, they also manifest in surrealistic writing, hallucinations, and dreams, a phenomenon that raises questions since there is no clear rationale for unreal perceptions being aesthetically appealing. The list could easily be expanded with examples from these domains.

Other Mixtures

The qualities and mixtures discussed here are not exclusive to cultural expressions. High and low-pitched sounds, as well as spiky versus round shapes, also contribute to the aesthetic appeal. The interplay of multiplicity with singularity holds intrinsic fascination, with one aspect of each duality generally more stimulating than its counterpart. High-pitched sounds, spikiness, and multiplicity tend to be the more exciting elements. However, excitement does not equate to beauty, which is better understood as a complex interplay of exciting and less exciting attributes. While pitch and multiplicity will be explored in subsequent discussions, roundness is included here due to its close association with order.

Roundness as Order

Humans exhibit strong affinities for disorder, as evidenced by the chaotic nature of narratives in literature, games, and other cultural phenomena. This attraction extends to round objects such as spheres, circles, and balls. There is a universal inclination to blend roundness with heat, fluidity, disorder, brightness, motion, upwardness, outwardness, as well as high-pitched sounds, multiplicity, and its direct opposites—length, flatness, and spikiness. If roundness indeed correlates with order, we should find numerous instances where it aesthetically combines with more stimulating qualities.

Roundness Mixed With More Exciting Qualities

• Hot — round (3: rings of fire, roasting marshmallows, hot potato)
• Fluid — round (5: the Zen ens? circle, the Greek River Okeanos, water balloons, bubbles, bubble baths)
• Disorder — round (6: Picasso, plasma balls, pinball, tetherball, racketball, roller derby, Madballs)
• Bright — round (11: balloons, Easter eggs, rings, halos, crowns, lollipops, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Christmas tree ornaments, crystal balls, pearls, Pac-Man)
• Dynamic — round (12: bowling, yo-yos, juggling, hula hoops, spinning tops, carousels, Ferris wheels, roulette, Magic 8-Balls, bobbleheads, tire swings, rubber punch balls)
• Up — round (20: disco balls, baseballs, basketballs, domes, bubbles, balloons, snowmen, hats, PEZ dispensers, lollipops, cotton candy, Times Square Ball Drop, Christmas tree ornaments, halos, Atlas holding up the Earth, neck elongation, wheelies, bubbles in wine, flying saucers, picking up pennies for good luck, handheld fans, decorative peacocks, bindis)
• Out — round (5: snowballs, bowling, baseball, soccer, pinball)
• High-pitch — round (1: clown noses, baby rattles)
• Multiple — round (11: the Olympic Rings, polka dots, billiards, marbles, checkers, Christmas tree ornaments, juggling, coin collections, poker chips, cookies, gumball machines)
• Long — round (5: Zen ens?, Celtic crosses, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, scepters, lollipops, Tinkertoys)
• Flat — round (3: frisbees, flower petals, chips)
• Spiky — round (5: crowns, bonsai trees, Chia Pets, Koosh balls, Mr. Potato Head)

This list could be further enriched with numerous examples of aesthetically selected phenomena, including elements of animal courtship rituals. The more elaborate the ritual, the clearer these mixtures become.

Western Grebe Dance

The initial image of the grebes illustrates the mixture of bright—round within a complex courtship display, which also encompasses fluid—down, disorder—down, dynamic—down, up—static, and up—round. The bright—down and up—dark qualities refer to the coloration of their bodies, while bright—solid pertains to their beaks.

Dance of the Great Argus Pheasant

“Together, the elements of the male display culminate in a sensory experience of astonishing complexity—a pulsating, shimmering hemisphere of three hundred vertically illuminated golden spheres that seem to float in mid-air against a backdrop of feathered speckles, dots, and swirls.” — Richard O. Prum, The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us (2017)

The great Argus pheasant stands out for its elaborate courtship display, often cited as one of the most intricate in the animal kingdom (Prum 2017). It exemplifies various mixtures, including dynamic—round, bright—round, and multiple—round.

During the frontal-movement display, the male creates a dark, partially domed space adorned with eye-like ocelli, which distribute color and pattern across the area. As with many aesthetically selected features, these ocelli are not perfectly round but rather slightly elongated, often resembling egg shapes. Countershading creates a three-dimensional illusion (Prum 2017):

> “I refer to these golden patches as ‘spheres’ because they are exquisitely and subtly counter-shaded, as if painted by a master artist, producing a stunning optical illusion of depth. The golden center is framed by a dark outline, creating the impression of a shadow, while a bright white crescent suggests a specular highlight, akin to the sheen of a glossy apple.”

The bright roundness is a common aesthetic strategy, evident in various species, including flowers, fruits, and peacock spider displays. Female Argus pheasants exhibit a similar preference for the bright—round mixture. Prum (2017) notes that Darwin observed the illumination of the male's ocelli:

> “As Darwin noted, the color shading on each sphere is precisely oriented so that when the secondary feathers are suspended above and around the female in the giant cone, they produce the startling impression that the golden spheres are three-dimensional objects suspended in space and illuminated from above.”

The display of the Argus pheasant closely resembles that of the peacock, despite its evolutionary development in wing feathers rather than tail feathers. Both displays are characterized by erect, upward, and outward features adorned with multiple round shapes interspersed among longer, darker elements.

Similar to the peacock, the Argus pheasant enhances the visual impact of the ocelli by rapidly vibrating its wings, creating an illusion of motion. Prum references William Beebe’s A Monograph of the Pheasants (1990):

> “I believe the mesmerizing coloration, the intricate illusion of the ocelli, and the rhythmic shivering of the feathers, which creates the illusion of rotation, are all lost on the indifferent female.”

Beebe, after years of studying pheasants, concluded that their beauty was unappreciated, citing the disinterest of a female observing a male's display. Prum counters this perspective, asserting that it is expected behavior; the female's apparent indifference reflects her discerning selection process over millennia, which has driven the evolution of the male’s stunning display:

> “While the female Argus may appear dispassionate during the male's performance, her selective mating choices, developed over millions of years, have fostered the coevolution of the male's dazzling display of shimmering golden spheres.”

Works Cited

Beebe, William. A Monograph of the Pheasants. Dover Publications, 1990. Berlyne, D. E. Aesthetics and Psychobiology. Meredith, 1971. Prum, Richard O. “The Lande–Kirkpatrick Mechanism is the Null Model of Evolution by Intersexual Selection: Implications for Meaning, Honesty, and Design in Intersexual Signals.” Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution 64.11 (2010): 3085–3100. Soupault, Philippe, and Breton, André. The Magnetic Fields. London, Atlas Press, 1985.