Super-normal stimuli as essences

Super-normal stimuli indicate that animal species instinctively direct their evolution . That is, as we have seen individuals will select mates and offsring that are the strongest and healthiest following very specific cues. When these cues or stimuli are isolated they override the animal's "common sense" or more accurately reveal their lack of it.

For example, the male silver washed fritillary butterfly has evolved to pursue the fluttering brown and black wings of the female. But experiments show that what primarily excites this insect are simply the colours in motion, the female herself is somewhat secondary.

The biological significance is that the insect has evolved to see these colours in motion as indicators of fertility, and there is no apparent upper limit. This means that the butterfly will seek the most fertile female possible as indicated by the brightest and fastest moving colours.

What we are dealing with here is, for the butterfly, the visual 'essence' of its sexual drive. In humans one such essence for males is 'delicacy', and this may be an indicator of youthfulness, fertility and virginity.

The theme of 'delicacy' is a frequent subject of love poetry. A very powerful representation of it is given in E.E.Cummings' poem 'somewhere i have never travelled', presented below. Here the poet describes the overwhelming force of the fragile. I will not give any explication of it as it is straight forward, and any analysis would further undermine it. The poem featured in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).


somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e.cummings, 1931