Palaeoanthropsychobiological view refers to the view which considers art as a human’s inherent biological or universal characteristic including human being’s history, societies and the idea that art belong to the term of emotion and psychology. The term of palaeoanthropsychobiological is firstly put forward by an American anthropologist named Ellen Dissanayake. And the term palaeoanthropsychobiological comes into being because of her experience of living abroad for 15 years. As Ellen Dissanayake has lived in many countries like Nigeria, Madagascar, Sri Lanka and India, she found that the culture of these countries is quit different from American culture. Moreover, she also found that the attitudes and meaning of art and culture for the people in these countries is extremely different from American. Therefore, she made some research on art according to her experience and released What is Art for?, which is very important to the development of art in the world.
Dissanayake refers the phrase of “making special” to one of the universal of human and the most important part of the term Behavior of Art. And “making special” is some behaviors of human which related to ritual and plan and art. According to Dissanayake’s palaeoanthropsychobiological, art is one human being’s inherent universal characteristic. Therefore, “making special” can accord with Dissanayake’s definition of palaeoanthropsychobiological and is the reflection of palaeoanthropsychobiological.
According to Dissanayake, the word “art” was first put forward by Greek in the medieval times. But the meaning of “art” is different from the meaning now. In medieval times, renaissance have great impact on the world in many factors including culture and politics. As the articles of renaissance emphasize natural science instead of God, art at that time refers to some subjects of harmony, beauty and so on by using some standard which is like craftsman. And the eighteenth century is an important period for the development of art. In the eighteenth century, talents of different fields get together to communicate and then “modernity” came to the world. And many important changes have great influence on the development of art, including the secularization of the society, the development of science, the interpersonal and the social changes, the great attention on reason and politics (pg. 17). Modernism begin to appear with the “aesthetics” widen the area of art. And the Romantic Rebellion is a great emancipation for people because the people are tend to be more free, regardless of the authority, custom and tradition. And people have more freedom to do whatever they want to do. And fairness and objectivity are encouraged by critical analysis and reason which has been emphasized in the eighteen century.