Reading Gulliver’s Travels, and became interested in whether the people caricatured in Laputa resemble a real personality type.

1. Their heads were all inclined either left or right.
2. They are so deep in intense thought, mostly of mathematics, they they can neither speak nor hear. The wealthiest have a “flapper”, a servant with a balloon on a stick, who touches the balloon to their mouth when they need to speak and to their ear when they need to hear. Also to their eyes when on walks to stop them walking into lampposts.
3. They like their food cut into geometrical figures, equilateral triangle, rhombus, cycloid, cone, cylinder, and into the shape of musical instruments, fiddle, flute, oboe, harp.
4. They love astronomy, the zodiac, the tropics, polar circles, and have their clothes decorated with stars, suns and moons as well as musical instruments.
5. Making clothes starts with measuring a persons height with a sextant and also with ruler and compass, then taking other geometrical measurements. But the clothes frequently fit terribly because of an error in calculation.
6. Their houses are very ill-built, without a right angle anywhere, because they despise practical construction.
7. Although dexterous with pencil and paper they are exceedingly clumsy and awkward in other actions.
8. In practical matters, such as politics, they are very bad reasoners and vehemently give to opposition, unless they happen to be of the same opinion, which is seldom the case.
9. They are neither imaginative nor inventive.
10. They sometimes play in an orchestra on musical instruments for three hours without intermission.
11. They have a fear of distant catastrophes, such as the Sun dying or the Earth being hit by a comet. They are so perpetually alarmed by catastrophes like these that they cannot sleep well or enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
12. Their wives and daughters have contempt for them and wish to escape.

By the way, I like the way that the flying island of Laputa manages to levitate and move. These days we call it mag-lev. Not bad for a prediction in the year 1726, but somewhat underestimates the force of gravity.

Sounds like they probably have OCD, but I’m not sure how they can be so musical and at the same time unimaginative and uninventive.

Bubblecar said:

Sounds like they probably have OCD, but I’m not sure how they can be so musical and at the same time unimaginative and uninventive.

Music is all maths.

Well no, music can be represented arithmetically, but as an experience usually has little or nothing to do with maths.

I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

Lyrics, on the other hand, are feelings. But the music is maths.

As a composer and musician, I’m going to have to disagree :)

The structure of music is easy to model arithmetically, but so is the structure of many things. It doesn’t tell us anything much about the typical human experience of music, which tends to be sensual and emotional.

Being picky…you are talking about the interpretation of the music. The music itself is intensely mathematical.

buffy said:

Being picky…you are talking about the interpretation of the music. The music itself is intensely mathematical.

Not really. It’s just easy to model it that way, because of rhythm & pitch etc.

has anyone read the secret power of music by david tame?

CrazyNeutrino said:

has anyone read the secret power of music by david tame?

No, but a Google of it doesn’t sound promising :)

Looks a bit pseudo-sciencey.

buffy said:

I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

I am with you on this. Deaf people can write and play music by maths alone.

roughbarked said:

buffy said:

I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

I am with you on this. Deaf people can write and play music by maths alone.

if you take away humans from the equation

there would be no music

music can express emotions

and emotions are driven by chemicals

72 emotions on wikipedia

The music of the spheres?

But I’m pruning roses….got sidetracked from the Buddleias.

CrazyNeutrino said:

roughbarked said:

buffy said:

I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

I am with you on this. Deaf people can write and play music by maths alone.

if you take away humans from the equation

there would be no music

music can express emotions

and emotions are driven by chemicals

72 emotions on wikipedia

Nice To Be Here
(Ray Thomas)

Nice to be here hope you agree
Lying in the sun
Lovely weather, must climb a tree
The show has just begun

All the leaves start swaying
To the breeze that’s playing
On a thousand violins
And the bees are humming
To a frog sat strumming
On a guitar with only one string

I can see them they can’t see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them they can’t see me
Much to my delight

And it seems worth noting
Water rats were boating
As a lark began to sing
The sounds kept coming
With Jack Rabbit loudly drumming
On the side of a biscuit tin

I can see them they can’t see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them they can’t see me
Much to my delight

Silver minnows were devising
Water ballet so surprising
A mouse played a daffodil
A mole came up blinking
Underneath an owl who’s thinking
How he came to be sat on a hill

I can see them they can’t see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them they can’t see me
Much to my delight

I know you won’t believe me
But I’m certain that I did see
A mouse playing daffodil
All the band was really jumping
With Jack Rabbit in there thumping
I found that I couldn’t sit still
I just had to make it with them
Cause they played my kind of rhythm
And the bees hummed in harmony
And the owl played his oboe
Then the frog’s guitar solo
It was all just too much for me

I know you won’t believe me
But I’m certain that I did see
A mouse playing daffodil
All the band was really jumping
With Jack Rabbit in there thumping
I found that I couldn’t sit still
…

You might say, metaphorically, that anything that’s easy to model mathematically is “all maths” but it’s not actually true. For example, it’s easy to convert a city skyline into a musical score but you don’t hear anyone claiming that city skylines are “all maths”. It’s a simple case of confusing the modelling tools for the real thing.

Bubblecar said:

You might say, metaphorically, that anything that’s easy to model mathematically is “all maths” but it’s not actually true. For example, it’s easy to convert a city skyline into a musical score but you don’t hear anyone claiming that city skylines are “all maths”. It’s a simple case of confusing the modelling tools for the real thing.

Depends upon how you need to read it, which may also include lack of sight.

// I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

+1

SCIENCE said:

// I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

+1

Aye, if you choose to think of it unrealistically. Which I don’t :)

The reality is: music is all mathematics.

Any more to it, is what ‘u’r’ putting onto it ‘urself: to keep things real, ‘u need to separate the two.

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

// I disagree. It is all maths. If you choose to think of it that way.

+1

Aye, if you choose to think of it unrealistically. Which I don’t :)

What is wrong with listening to the music of maths?

>The reality is: music is all mathematics.

No. The reality is that it’s a human cultural experience involving the creative use of sounds via various sound-producing devices. The sounds thereby produced can be modelled mathematically (although in regard to some music, only with difficulty), but those who then confuse the mathematical models with the music itself are either naïve or mystical neo-platonists etc.

I have ‘v’s2s’v’ so fortunately for all of’u, I’l keep it brief.

/* What is wrong with listening to the music of maths? */

Nothing, technically, but it is possible that some dudes out there consider it wrong. Or at least unimaginative and uninventive.

I would note that there are real people who indulge in music and are unimaginative and uninventive.

I’no’ this is no SCIENCE forum but we have a situation that some have proposed would need explanation. We have a simple explanation that works, but we could also reject the explanation because we want to believe in something more complicated. I’v’ made my choice.

/* No. The reality is that it’s a human cultural experience involving the creative use of sounds via various sound-producing devices. The sounds thereby produced can be modelled mathematically (although in regard to some music, only with difficulty), but those who then confuse the mathematical models with the music itself are either naïve or mystical neo-platonists etc. */

‘u’r’ right, this is a semantics forum. I could choose to define music as ‘u have tried to here, but then it would not seem to fit with the phenomenon that was previously put forth as needing explanation. Instead, we could recognise that this attempted definition of music is a confusion of the real mathematical model that is music, with the additional human cultural response to music: which is naive or mystical superstition.

My final word: Music can be modelled (or mapped) by means of musical scores, which are just a kind of graph. But so can virtually everything else in the universe, in the appropriate kinds of graphs. But we don’t claim that everything in the universe is “all maths” unless we’re neo-platonists, who are happy to dispense with reality and exalt the graphs. So there’s really no sensible reason to claim that music is “all maths”, unless you’re being unhelpfully metaphorical or mystical.

buffy said:

The music of the spheres?

That phrase is used by Swift in his description of the musicians of Laputa.

Leaving music out of the equation, then. Is this a genuine personality type?

1. Their heads were all inclined either left or right.
2. They are so deep in intense thought, mostly of mathematics, they they can neither speak nor hear. The wealthiest have a “flapper”, a servant with a balloon on a stick, who touches the balloon to their mouth when they need to speak and to their ear when they need to hear. Also to their eyes when on walks to stop them walking into lampposts.
3. They like their food cut into geometrical figures, equilateral triangle, rhombus, cycloid, cone, cylinder.
4. They love astronomy, the zodiac, the tropics, polar circles, and have their clothes decorated with stars, suns and moons.
5. Making clothes starts with measuring a persons height with a sextant and also with ruler and compass, then taking other geometrical measurements. But the clothes frequently fit terribly because of an error in calculation.
6. Their houses are very ill-built, without a right angle anywhere, because they despise practical construction.
7. Although dexterous with pencil and paper they are exceedingly clumsy and awkward in other actions.
8. In practical matters, such as politics, they are very bad reasoners and vehemently give to opposition, unless they happen to be of the same opinion, which is seldom the case.
9. They are neither imaginative nor inventive.
11. They have a fear of distant catastrophes, such as the Sun dying or the Earth being hit by a comet. They are so perpetually alarmed by catastrophes like these that they cannot sleep well or enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
12. Their wives and daughters have contempt for them and wish to escape.

Would that description fit any particular mathematicians of circa 1700? People like for example Blaise Pascal, John Wallis, Giordano Vitale, Philippe de La Hire, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Giovanni Ceva, Giovanni Gerolamo Saccheri, the Bernoullis, Abraham de Moivre, Christian Goldbach, Leonhard Euler? Or modern scientists or mathematicians?

I don’t know but it sounds kinda like ancient Babylon.

And my last final word :)

>Instead, we could recognise that this attempted definition of music is a confusion of the real mathematical model that is music<

Only if we were wanting to evade reality.

We’re distinguishing here between music as an abstract structure and music as a human cognitive experience. The former is a description of what music looks like when crudely mapped, the latter is the reason that music exists. As I’ve said, all “structures” can be mathematically modelled. In reply to buffy I qualified my perspective as that of a composer and musician, because in those roles I’m very much aware that the experience of creating music is largely intuitive, informed by aesthetic and emotional responses, not mathematical considerations. The resulting sounds can be mathematically mapped, but that in itself tells us nothing about music as a human cognitive activity/experience. I’m sure that the human cognitive experience of music could also be mathematically modelled, if our models could achieve a high enough level of complexity, but again, the models would tell you nothing about what this experience is actually like as an experience. And music only exists because of what it’s like as a human experience.

>>In reply to buffy I qualified my perspective as that of a composer and musician, because in those roles I’m very much aware that the experience of creating music is largely intuitive, informed by aesthetic and emotional responses, not mathematical considerations. <<

I would suggest that you simply have an innate ability to do the maths. Not everyone has this.

I thought you were doing the washing up? I’ve done the roses. And several other things.

>I would suggest that you simply have an innate ability to do the maths. Not everyone has this.

Don’t think so. There’s nothing in maths that tells you how to compose music :)

In reference to music, are emotions an alternative intuition to the logical process of math?

Postpocelipse said:

In reference to music, are emotions an alternative intuition to the logical process of math?

Emotional and aesthetic preferences give rise to a vast variety of music that can all (at least in principle) be modelled mathematically. But there’s nothing in the maths that tells you why those sounds were chosen.

Someone on the old forum, Ecky Thump (DSO KGB PMT with Bar) I think, said that music creates an expectation and then fulfils it, I think he nailed it.

I’m with Mr car.

Maths can describe music but music is not maths. It’s one of those things where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Improvisational maths could be an interesting field.

Bubblecar said:

Postpocelipse said:

In reference to music, are emotions an alternative intuition to the logical process of math?

Emotional and aesthetic preferences give rise to a vast variety of music that can all (at least in principle) be modelled mathematically. But there’s nothing in the maths that tells you why those sounds were chosen.

I would have to name ‘harmony’ as the mathematical reason why the sounds were chosen.

:P ;)

>I would have to name ‘harmony’ as the mathematical reason why the sounds were chosen.

“Disharmony” can be mathematically modelled just as easily as “harmony”. Maths itself doesn’t favour any particular structure of what it can model.

Bubblecar said:

>I would have to name ‘harmony’ as the mathematical reason why the sounds were chosen.

“Disharmony” can be mathematically modelled just as easily as “harmony”. Maths itself doesn’t favour any particular structure of what it can model.

Maths was devised to exclude disharmony in action. Music is similarly motivated…….

All I know is, if you want to do 3 Unit Music at school, you need to be in 3 or 4 Unit Maths as well.

mollwollfumble said:

That phrase is used by Swift in his description of the musicians of Laputa.

Leaving music out of the equation, then. Is this a genuine personality type?

1. Their heads were all inclined either left or right.
2. They are so deep in intense thought, mostly of mathematics, they they can neither speak nor hear. The wealthiest have a “flapper”, a servant with a balloon on a stick, who touches the balloon to their mouth when they need to speak and to their ear when they need to hear. Also to their eyes when on walks to stop them walking into lampposts.
3. They like their food cut into geometrical figures, equilateral triangle, rhombus, cycloid, cone, cylinder.
4. They love astronomy, the zodiac, the tropics, polar circles, and have their clothes decorated with stars, suns and moons.
5. Making clothes starts with measuring a persons height with a sextant and also with ruler and compass, then taking other geometrical measurements. But the clothes frequently fit terribly because of an error in calculation.
6. Their houses are very ill-built, without a right angle anywhere, because they despise practical construction.
7. Although dexterous with pencil and paper they are exceedingly clumsy and awkward in other actions.
8. In practical matters, such as politics, they are very bad reasoners and vehemently give to opposition, unless they happen to be of the same opinion, which is seldom the case.
9. They are neither imaginative nor inventive.
11. They have a fear of distant catastrophes, such as the Sun dying or the Earth being hit by a comet. They are so perpetually alarmed by catastrophes like these that they cannot sleep well or enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
12. Their wives and daughters have contempt for them and wish to escape.

Would that description fit any particular mathematicians of circa 1700? People like for example Blaise Pascal, John Wallis, Giordano Vitale, Philippe de La Hire, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Giovanni Ceva, Giovanni Gerolamo Saccheri, the Bernoullis, Abraham de Moivre, Christian Goldbach, Leonhard Euler? Or modern scientists or mathematicians?

My dad used to call people like this academic idiots. Full of knowledge and interesting ideas, but completely useless at a practical task. The world’s full of them. Although they’re eclipsed by the common idiot that one sees everywhere.

I once went out in the field with a Hepetologist who was brilliant in her knowledge of reptiles. However she saw nothing wrong with driving a Land cruiser at 60kph over sections of terrain that would have had me in first gear and possibly low range. When I suggested that it was neither good for the vehicle or the passengers, she just stared at me blankly.

Swift would have probably been referring to a range of academics, rather than an individual.

Teleost said:

mollwollfumble said:

12. Their wives and daughters have contempt for them and wish to escape.

Apart from being a decidedly humorous observation, this also alludes to the mathematical nature of music, ie; unification of individuals. War drums are another example of harmonising emotions to obtain a unifying result.

(can I stir the Bubblecar pot any further?)

hehe

Divine Angel said:

All I know is, if you want to do 3 Unit Music at school, you need to be in 3 or 4 Unit Maths as well.

That’s because theory is very useful. A knowledge of mathematics is helpful in understanding music theory. Music theory is helpful when writing and transcribing music..

Music theory is also completely unnecessary to be able to compose play and perform music. It’s a helpful tool, but it’s only a tool. I once heard improvisation jazz described as playing whatever you want and then finding the theory to justify it. The maths describes, it doesn’t create.

Were Beethoven and Mozart good at maths?

>Maths was devised to exclude disharmony in action. Music is similarly motivated…….

No.

Even if a statistical analysis of human music reveals certain intervals and harmonies etc as being particularly prevalent, this would be due to characteristics of the human CNS etc, not anything to do with mathematics, which is able to map any combination of sounds.

Divine Angel said:

Were Beethoven and Mozart good at maths?

Could Euclid and Pythagoras rock out?

Bubblecar said:

>Maths was devised to exclude disharmony in action. Music is similarly motivated…….

No.

Even if a statistical analysis of human music reveals certain intervals and harmonies etc as being particularly prevalent, this would be due to characteristics of the human CNS etc, not anything to do with mathematics, which is able to map any combination of sounds.

My point is that maths is devised to observe various harmonies where as music is devised to express harmony. There is a degree of ‘two sides of the same coin’ between them………

Rock Me Amadeus

Teleost said:

Divine Angel said:

Were Beethoven and Mozart good at maths?

Could Euclid and Pythagoras rock out?

Ask Bill and Ted………..

I think there are so many things about music that are not mathematical, although coolly and without emotion could be recorded on paper, but is the latter really music?

Teleost said:

Divine Angel said:

Were Beethoven and Mozart good at maths?

Could Euclid and Pythagoras rock out?

People often say to me “You like maths so you should be good at music”. But I don’t have any understanding of music at all. Zilch.

It looks like Swift was poking fun at people engaged in quadrivial pursuits…

Quadrivium
Wikipedia said:

The quadrivium (plural: quadrivia) are the four subjects, or arts, taught after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning “the four ways” (or a “place where four roads meet”), and its use for the four subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts (based on thinking skills), as opposed to the practical arts (such as medicine and architecture).

The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy (sometimes called the “liberal art par excellence”) ^{[citation needed]} and theology.

PM 2Ring said:

It looks like Swift was poking fun at people engaged in quadrivial pursuits…

Quadrivium
Wikipedia said:

The quadrivium (plural: quadrivia) are the four subjects, or arts, taught after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning “the four ways” (or a “place where four roads meet”), and its use for the four subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts (based on thinking skills), as opposed to the practical arts (such as medicine and architecture).

The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy (sometimes called the “liberal art par excellence”) ^{[citation needed]} and theology.

Ah, I was thinking there was probably some actual social convention being satirised here.

I like maths, and I like music.

I suppose that when I’m playing music I’m a little bit aware of the mathematical / music theory aspect of the piece, but I’m mostly focused on “channeling” the appropriate emotions.

I enjoy playing guitar to songs on the radio, improvising lead lines around the melody. To do that properly I need to work out what key the song is in, but I do that by ear, not by some conscious mathematical process. Once I’ve found the key, my music theory tells me what notes belong to the key, but even then, I’m mostly thinking in terms of finger patterns rather than note names.

I choose what notes to play by feel, maths doesn’t tell me what notes to play, but I guess music theory tells me which notes I (probably) shouldn’t play. OTOH, in all but the simplest songs, there are often notes used that don’t strictly belong to the key but which add colour and personality to the tune, as well as modulations into other keys. Dealing with those issues while improvising keeps you on your toes. :)