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Man's Rage for Chaos: Biology, Behavior, and the Arts
The techniques of poetry, music, painting, and architecture are carefully and lucidly analyzed to demonstrate how precisely those techniques violate the profound demand of the mind for order. Order is man's freedom; but the rage for order creates its own limits on that freedom. Art, the author maintains, enables man to fight that rage, which destroys what it would create. Only the rage for chaos can balance the rage for order.
339 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1980
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February 23, 2026
The argument is as follows:
1. Art is not created out of a desire to create order, which is an old assumption of art theorists.
This seems an easy statement to prove, but Peckham undercuts his argument with straw men and sloppy logic. He gives only one concrete example in the first chapter to back this up - the first ten lines of "Paradise Lost" aren't in Iambic Pentameter. THERE! Proved it. LOL.
That said, I feel I can definitely argue that there are many things that are more ordered than art. An actuarial table, say. I'm okay with just taking as given that order != art
2. Art is the product of the behavior of making art, and is made for the behavior of perceiving art, both of these are social roles.
Okay. Not too exciting there. Didn't need 100 pages to reach that conclusion, but weirdly, he goes off on a long tangent on symbols. To wit:
3. Art contains meaning (a semantic component) and form (a formal component) which are independent.
He explains this with a marvelous straw man - if the form of art was related to the meaning, every song with the words "I love you" in it would have the exact same notes associated with the phrase. WOW. How about, oh... would have some measurable quantity in common?
He then, very weirdly after that, insists that there ARE "primary signs" which are universal in all arts, and even gives us a little table. For example, an unstressed syllable in poetry, a downward pitch in music, horizontal lines in painting and horizontal areas in architecture are all "Feminine" or "accepting"
I can't make this up. He spends a hundred pages railing about how it's stupid to think that meaning and form are related, then he ends with "Except how I say so."
4. I can apply my theories above to my extensive knowledge of 17th century art.
Delightfully full of Very Opinionated Opinions and quite a few just plain wrong statements thrown out like bam!
5. The thing that ties all art together is "discordance" or "chaos" sometimes called "Creativity."
... however don't use "Creativity" that's jargon and alienating and all about being snobby... better use my much more clear, un-jargony term "non-fuctional stylistic dynamism"
6. Therefore, the evolutionary behavior that art serves is: rehearsal for the unknown.
... ooohkay. I feel like... he could have written a different book to establish this theory instead of just throwing it down in some poetic language about how we could not survive without art because it shows us we don't know what we're doing.
I really enjoyed reading this, but not for the reasons it was written. It's like a fossil record of the worst kind of academic curmudgeon, who uses whatever field he studies as a bludgeon to flatten down egos so his looks bigger. Untangling his convoluted academic words and finding their lack of meaning was surprisingly comedic.
1. Art is not created out of a desire to create order, which is an old assumption of art theorists.
This seems an easy statement to prove, but Peckham undercuts his argument with straw men and sloppy logic. He gives only one concrete example in the first chapter to back this up - the first ten lines of "Paradise Lost" aren't in Iambic Pentameter. THERE! Proved it. LOL.
That said, I feel I can definitely argue that there are many things that are more ordered than art. An actuarial table, say. I'm okay with just taking as given that order != art
2. Art is the product of the behavior of making art, and is made for the behavior of perceiving art, both of these are social roles.
Okay. Not too exciting there. Didn't need 100 pages to reach that conclusion, but weirdly, he goes off on a long tangent on symbols. To wit:
3. Art contains meaning (a semantic component) and form (a formal component) which are independent.
He explains this with a marvelous straw man - if the form of art was related to the meaning, every song with the words "I love you" in it would have the exact same notes associated with the phrase. WOW. How about, oh... would have some measurable quantity in common?
He then, very weirdly after that, insists that there ARE "primary signs" which are universal in all arts, and even gives us a little table. For example, an unstressed syllable in poetry, a downward pitch in music, horizontal lines in painting and horizontal areas in architecture are all "Feminine" or "accepting"
I can't make this up. He spends a hundred pages railing about how it's stupid to think that meaning and form are related, then he ends with "Except how I say so."
4. I can apply my theories above to my extensive knowledge of 17th century art.
Delightfully full of Very Opinionated Opinions and quite a few just plain wrong statements thrown out like bam!
5. The thing that ties all art together is "discordance" or "chaos" sometimes called "Creativity."
... however don't use "Creativity" that's jargon and alienating and all about being snobby... better use my much more clear, un-jargony term "non-fuctional stylistic dynamism"
6. Therefore, the evolutionary behavior that art serves is: rehearsal for the unknown.
... ooohkay. I feel like... he could have written a different book to establish this theory instead of just throwing it down in some poetic language about how we could not survive without art because it shows us we don't know what we're doing.
I really enjoyed reading this, but not for the reasons it was written. It's like a fossil record of the worst kind of academic curmudgeon, who uses whatever field he studies as a bludgeon to flatten down egos so his looks bigger. Untangling his convoluted academic words and finding their lack of meaning was surprisingly comedic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review