Some light-hearted reading at https://www.classicalarchives.com/newsletter/archive/20200906.htm

“Music is said to be the common language of humanity. But is it something particular to our species or could extraterrestrial beings also have music?

The ability to hear can be a life saver for organisms that live in cluttered environments (e.g., forests) where sight lines are short. You might hear danger before you see it.

For humans, being sensitive to sound has permitted language, which is perhaps hearing’s greatest app. Indeed, language is so useful for disseminating information that we can assert its existence among the cosmos’ brainier beings. Convergent evolution makes the case.

But music?

There seem to be three general suggestions to explain our tuneful natures. The first is that, frankly, music is a superfluous artifact of other abilities, such as understanding speech. Because we have sophisticated systems to hear and interpret verbal communication, we also like certain rhythms and tonal sequences. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote that music is “auditory cheesecake” – a pleasurable artifact. You enjoy music because you can.

A second idea is that music arose because it was a social glue that helped our ancestors bond with one another and with a group. Song-and-dance displays are useful for keeping kith and kin together, and perhaps intimidating others. You like music because if your predecessors didn’t, they would have been obliterated by another tribe that was more cohesive.

A third idea is derivative from the ideas of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico who argues that music’s utility is to signal “fitness” to potential mates. If a male has musical talents, that’s a useful mechanism for giving females insight into your genome. To play an instrument, to sing, or even tell a joke demands complex neurological performance. Evolution has tuned females to read such displays as indicating genomic health, and a favorable prospect for any eventual offspring. (As an aside, this theory has the ancillary benefit of providing a provocative explanation for why 25,000 teenage women stormed a theater in Times Square when Frank Sinatra appeared there in 1944.)

mollwollfumble said:

Some light-hearted reading at https://www.classicalarchives.com/newsletter/archive/20200906.htm

“Music is said to be the common language of humanity. But is it something particular to our species or could extraterrestrial beings also have music?

The ability to hear can be a life saver for organisms that live in cluttered environments (e.g., forests) where sight lines are short. You might hear danger before you see it.

For humans, being sensitive to sound has permitted language, which is perhaps hearing’s greatest app. Indeed, language is so useful for disseminating information that we can assert its existence among the cosmos’ brainier beings. Convergent evolution makes the case.

But music?

There seem to be three general suggestions to explain our tuneful natures. The first is that, frankly, music is a superfluous artifact of other abilities, such as understanding speech. Because we have sophisticated systems to hear and interpret verbal communication, we also like certain rhythms and tonal sequences. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote that music is “auditory cheesecake” – a pleasurable artifact. You enjoy music because you can.

A second idea is that music arose because it was a social glue that helped our ancestors bond with one another and with a group. Song-and-dance displays are useful for keeping kith and kin together, and perhaps intimidating others. You like music because if your predecessors didn’t, they would have been obliterated by another tribe that was more cohesive.

A third idea is derivative from the ideas of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico who argues that music’s utility is to signal “fitness” to potential mates. If a male has musical talents, that’s a useful mechanism for giving females insight into your genome. To play an instrument, to sing, or even tell a joke demands complex neurological performance. Evolution has tuned females to read such displays as indicating genomic health, and a favorable prospect for any eventual offspring. (As an aside, this theory has the ancillary benefit of providing a provocative explanation for why 25,000 teenage women stormed a theater in Times Square when Frank Sinatra appeared there in 1944.)

Why not all three?

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Some light-hearted reading at https://www.classicalarchives.com/newsletter/archive/20200906.htm

“Music is said to be the common language of humanity. But is it something particular to our species or could extraterrestrial beings also have music?

The ability to hear can be a life saver for organisms that live in cluttered environments (e.g., forests) where sight lines are short. You might hear danger before you see it.

For humans, being sensitive to sound has permitted language, which is perhaps hearing’s greatest app. Indeed, language is so useful for disseminating information that we can assert its existence among the cosmos’ brainier beings. Convergent evolution makes the case.

But music?

There seem to be three general suggestions to explain our tuneful natures. The first is that, frankly, music is a superfluous artifact of other abilities, such as understanding speech. Because we have sophisticated systems to hear and interpret verbal communication, we also like certain rhythms and tonal sequences. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote that music is “auditory cheesecake” – a pleasurable artifact. You enjoy music because you can.

A second idea is that music arose because it was a social glue that helped our ancestors bond with one another and with a group. Song-and-dance displays are useful for keeping kith and kin together, and perhaps intimidating others. You like music because if your predecessors didn’t, they would have been obliterated by another tribe that was more cohesive.

A third idea is derivative from the ideas of Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico who argues that music’s utility is to signal “fitness” to potential mates. If a male has musical talents, that’s a useful mechanism for giving females insight into your genome. To play an instrument, to sing, or even tell a joke demands complex neurological performance. Evolution has tuned females to read such displays as indicating genomic health, and a favorable prospect for any eventual offspring. (As an aside, this theory has the ancillary benefit of providing a provocative explanation for why 25,000 teenage women stormed a theater in Times Square when Frank Sinatra appeared there in 1944.)

Why not all three?

Can’t see a problem with that.

mollwollfumble said:

If a male has musical talents, that’s a useful mechanism for giving females insight into your genome. To play an instrument, to sing, or even tell a joke demands complex neurological performance. Evolution has tuned females to read such displays as indicating genomic health, and a favorable prospect for any eventual offspring.

I used to know a lady who’d had a series of marriages to musicians.

I don’t think she’d be entirely in agreement with the last sentence of the above paragraph.

If they were different musicians, then maybe the problem was not the musicians’.

Michael V said:

If they were different musicians, then maybe the problem was not the musicians’.

She was/is a very nice lady. That could have been her problem – she’s too nice. Let herself be persuaded that she was just what this bloke needs, and then found out, more than once, that she was just convenient for him. She had to leave, in at least one instanc, in the face of ‘sincere’ pleas for her to stay, give him one more chance.

She gave up looking, eventually, whether they were musicians or not.

>Indeed, language is so useful for disseminating information

I read that ….language is so useful for dissembling….., initially, then my more generous sentiments turned up, and the background argument continues with the internal press agent

on the subject music, capacity for it’s largely an accident, though selected for, gifts elevate mate choice, you know i’m gifted and deflecting opportunities to copulate and recombine DNA all the time

on a more serious note, much as any seriousness is possible this morning from me, the reality is a lot of humans are largely ungifted, which in the age of exceptionalism to say that makes me the antichrist, and I am the antichrist that way, in my head i’m pointing north-east across the pacific ocean

modest giftedness is much better, far less trouble, in fact the gift of modesty could be an increasingly scarce attribute, depreciating

there are lots of gifts from recombining DNA, it’s a wonderful thing, then during gestation and possibly extending well into any examples early twenties there’s the neural unfolding, which isn’t all tightly encoded then decoded by DNA replication processes (organism expression, structure), though somewhat high-fidelity just a couple a drinks by a mother during early stages of pregnancy can change an individuals life, or malnutrition, disease, life is full of gifts, waiting, to make a home in the replicator, to try and test, like I said a wonderful thing

subject music, all sorts of things have rhythm, just walking and your heart beat both have rhythm, even the way you counterbalance with arms while walking

there’s rhythms in day and night, moods, mental states (sleep, the diurnal business), in the seasons

a lot of bird sounds seem to me musical

so, music has structure, the brain looks for structure, and the whatever that resulted in the structure are mechanisms, and mechanisms are interesting things, sometimes more a denotation (attribution of structure that is a mechanism), a conceptual tool, often mostly a work of abstraction, for the purpose of abstraction