Denis Dutton, philosopher, author and founder of Arts and Letters Daily, passed away this week at 66-years-old.

The LA Times has a moving tribute to Dutton, a philosophy professor and author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. In the TED video embedded above, Dutton outlined his theory with the help of animator.

Here’s more about the video: “TED collaborates with animator Andrew Park to illustrate Denis Dutton’s provocative theory on beauty — that art, music and other beautiful things, far from being simply “in the eye of the beholder,” are a core part of human nature with deep evolutionary origins.”