Utility vs Beauty: Darwin, Wallace and the Subsequent History of the Debate on Sexual Selection

Abstract

We examine the origins of the disagreement of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin regarding the significance and mechanism of sexual selection and relate this to differences in their views of human evolution, and of cognitive ability and esthetic sensibilities of various human and nonhuman populations. We trace subsequent versions of these differing views into the twentieth century, and the controversy between R.A. Fisher’s Darwinian “runaway” model of sexual selection by female choice (the “sexy son” model), and Wallacean models of sexual selection based on signs of greater fitness of males (the “healthy gene” hypothesis). Models derived from the latter, the “honest signal” and “handicap” models, are discussed, and we note that these different models, based on utility or beauty, are not necessarily mutually inconsistent.