Statistics XXIV: Neoteny

While surfing some sourpuss film critic's HP 6 blog, I found this in the comments:

If you're over the age of 20 and dig HP without an accompanying child, you're engaging in aesthetic regression.

My first thought was to wonder whether aesthetic regression is linear or not. Later I wondered whether such an engagement might be illegal or immoral. I guess the author's point is supposed to be that an aesthetic regressor is enjoying things as a child might, and that he intended the comment as a slam.

Stephen Jay Gould used to emphasize the role of neoteny - retaining childlike characteristics beyond normal childhood - in evolution, and especially in human evolution. It seems plausible that art and science are each consequences of human neoteny. Einstein attributed his revolutionary insights into relativity to the fact that he, as an adult, was still sorting out basic notions of space and time that most people dispensed with in early childhood. The artist story teller is again playing a game that every child, but few adults, engage in.

So I won't take offense at being accused of "aesthetic regression." I will just take it as a complement to my scientific and artistic orientation.

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