The Science of Music and the Music of Science

How Music Reveals Our Brain, Our Humanity and the Cosmos

Michael J. Montague

• Publisher: Cosmic Music, LLC
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781733916929
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Teoría y apreciación musicales

Science and music—scientists and musicians—are inseparable and symbiotic. For over 2, 500 years, music has inspired scientific investigation and progress. In return, science has provided musicians with untold numbers of valuable insights into their art and craft, as well as many powerful technologies.

The last 25 years have witnessed an even more intimate connection. Neuroscience now possesses new tools to image living human brains in real time as our brains engage in specific tasks. In using these powerful tools, neuroscientists have discovered that nothing demands more of human cognitive abilities than music-making and consequently, neuroscience now relies frequently upon music as an amazingly effective research probe.

During this same period of time, physicists and mathematicians have investigated the fundamental nature of reality, discovering the musical nature of the Cosmos itself. Quite remarkably, the equations and concepts of music theory are similar to theconcepts used for our best ideas about Nature.

This book describes these scientific advances accessibly and without jargon, but entertainingly and accurately. It provides the reader with an easy and graceful insight into basic music theory, the biology of the brain, the use of music as brain therapy, the psychology of music, the tools of the composer, the importance of music education for our children, and finally the story of our search for the fundamental nature of reality itself–leading ultimately to a better understanding of our humanity. It is written for anyone interested in music, science, the well-being of our children, and the best aspects of our humanity as we live in this magnificent Cosmos.

CHAPTER 1

What is Science?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Albert Einstein
Physicist, Nobel Laureate, Violinist

Perhaps your own personal view of science is very much like the experience of many other people. You may regard science as a collection of sometimes astonishing facts about Nature. In school, you may have memorized the names of plants and animals, or the names and locations of the planets (including Pluto), or the names of the chemical elements and their properties, and hundreds of other facts. For you, that was science: a set of isolated facts, most of which you promptly forgot after the exam.

Or you may regard science as the so-called scientific method. In school, you may have been fortunate enough to do experiments or to see demonstrations of experiments and you were taught that scientists employ a specific method in doing their work. This scientific method that you learned about seemed rigid and invariant with very specific rules and procedures.

Alternatively, after thinking about it, you may have decided that science is primarily a means to an end. Science is what provides the information that we need to cure diseases, to create computers, to maintain a supply of electrical power, to communicate using our cell phones, and to enjoy many thousands of other advances and conveniences that we all take for granted in our civilization. In other words, you observed that science provides technology (know how), and you decided that technology is the raison d’être of science.

In point of fact, science is all of those things, but it is also much, much more, and something far more important.

Science is the single most effective, accurate, successful, reliable, and the only predictive means of inquiry that human beings have ever devised.¹

When we scientists do our work, we nearly always begin with imaginative questions about Nature, asking ourselves these questions simply because we are curious about the Universe, and not necessarily because we think that the answers may be useful in some practical way. The questions can be about a phenomenon that is grand and huge, such as the origin of the Universe (Multiverse), or about something narrower, such as how a particular virus (e. g. the virus that causes AIDS) can avoid the immune system of the human body.

In many cases, we use mathematics as part of this initial inquiry, especially in physics. Mathematics is literally the language that we use to describe Nature, its laws, and its magnificence. In many respects, it is Nature’s own language. Often, mathematical analysis or mathematical models lead us to insights into Nature and help us with our thinking in ways that our verbal or visual imagination is unable to provide.

In any case, we formulate our questions by using our imagination, definitely as much imagination as that required by artists or writers or composers. Our imagination must be free, unfettered, without any reliance upon authority. In science, we often have experts in a particular scientific discipline, but unlike religion, for example, we have no authorities or “authoritative” source books or “revelation.” In science, no question is off limits. No direction for inquiry is impermissible or heretical.

This freedom of unfettered inquiry is part of the foundation for the success of science. If any question were off limits, or any form of authority acted as the final arbiter, or the opinions of even the most respected and knowledgeable experts weren’t questioned, science would quite simply not exist. Science questions everything.

So, if science begins with open, imaginative, unfettered, authority-free inquiry, what’s next?

Ideas.

Scientists get ideas about Nature as we ask our questions. Now, in the formal sense, we sometimes call these ideas hypotheses. But, frankly, that’s really a formal term. More simply expressed, we get notions about how Nature might work. And, most often, these ideas turn out to be abysmally wrong—even ridiculous. We scientists must develop courage and genuine humility because we so often devise terribly wrong ideas about Nature, at least initially.

That’s another characteristic of science. More often than not, we take wrong turns in our inquiry. Scientists may work on an idea for many years, only to discover that the original notion was simply incorrect. Nature can be difficult to understand!

So how do we decide whether our ideas are correct or not, that is, whether they are an accurate representation of how Nature works? We look at and study Nature, making observations to obtain:

Verifiable Evidence.

Reproducible, verifiable evidence is at the core of science. The standards for scientific evidence are very high. For example, mere eyewitness account is not acceptable, even though it’s often considered a perfectly good form of evidence in a court of law. We scientists know that humans are likely to be fooled by our senses, by our expectations, by our hopes, by our preconceived notions, by our ambition, by our emotions in general. For that reason, scientists are constantly skeptical about evidence, and we always consider it to be provisional, subject to finding better evidence or to developing a different interpretation of the same evidence. In fact, good scientists know that they must constantly try to show that even their own best ideas are incorrect because, if they don’t, their colleagues most certainly will.

A reliance upon obtaining verifiable evidence is called empiricism and our attitude that such evidence is always provisional is called skepticism. Empiricism and skepticism are two hallmarks of science.

So, what’s the ultimate goal?

Explanation.

Our best scientific explanations all share certain characteristics. First, they are broad, that is, they explain a lot of observations. Second, they are robust, that is, they hold up to intense scrutiny. Third, they are coherent, that is, they seem to make good sense and fit together with our other good explanations about Nature. Fourth, they are powerful because they are compelling intellectually, even beautiful, based upon everything else that we understand. Fifth, they are falsifiable. If an explanation is not falsifiable, it simply is not a good explanation—at least not yet. Scientists spend a lot of time trying to test and to falsify explanations, because if they do falsify a very well accepted explanation, they could be awarded a Nobel Prize. [That’s a little joke, of course, but winning a Nobel Prize can be a strong incentive.] Finally, and this characteristic distinguishes scientific explanations from those obtained in any other way, a good explanation is predictive of future events.

This ability of scientific explanations to predict future events reliably, or to predict the outcome of experiments not yet performed, even those not yet conceived, or to predict a productive new path for future inquiry (leading to important new questions) is critical. Our best formal scientific explanations are called theories, though recently this term has also been used less formally or rigorously to describe explanations that are not yet complete. Some of our best theories include Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and Einstein’s theory of general relativity². Both are highly predictive. Both can be tested and falsified, and every experiment, observation, or prediction about Nature made so far is consistent with and affirms those theories.

Please note that science provides only explanations, not proofs³. A proof is in the purview of logic and mathematics, where logicians and mathematicians start with axiomatic (given) statements and then use formal rules to derive a proof of a new statement. Of course, some scientific explanations are so well supported by so much verifiable evidence that they are not only highly plausible, but we think of them as true. Still, in the back of our minds, we scientists know that even the best explanation can conceivably be overturned by new or better evidence or by a new interpretation of old evidence.

Finally, with regard to this book and to our discussion of science and music, I want to emphasize that often we’ll discuss findings that are very well supported by abundant verifiable evidence and good, predictive theories. For example, we’ll discuss the physics of sound and the biology of the ear. Both are very well understood, based upon much evidence. We’ll discuss what we think we know about the way the brain processes music but this is less understood at our point in history. We’ll also discuss music and human evolution. Whereas we have much verifiable evidence about human evolution per se, we have only a little that specifically applies to music. Finally, we’ll examine music and the fundamental nature of reality. There, the mathematics is beautiful, and much of the evidence is highly verifiable, but sometimes the interpretations of that evidence cannot yet be tested.

Science, as applied to music and to other aspects of Nature, gives us a range of levels of plausibility as a function of the quality of the verifiable evidence available to us and the status of the explanations that we possess. When our explanations are so powerful that we consider them to be true for all practical purposes, we can confidently base very important decisions upon those explanations. When our explanations are not as well-supported, however, we must acknowledge it, and become more cautious in our conclusions and decisions.

As we unravel the science of music in this book, I’ll endeavor to choose the best empirical results available, constantly assessing the quality of our evidence and thereby, the reliability of our explanations.

Now, let’s define the other subject of this book: Music.

CHAPTER 2

What is Music?

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”

Albert Einstein
Physicist, Nobel Laureate, Violinist

One of my most cherished memories of my late father was an occasion when I was perhaps six years old. I was enamored with a particular popular song, for reasons that I didn’t understand then, and don’t fully understand even now when I’m 70, so many years later. All I knew for sure as a child was that the music gave me great pleasure when I listened to it on the radio. My dad learned about my infatuation, went to the record store, and bought me a 78-rpm phonograph disc of the tune. I’d bet now that he didn’t understand then how much I loved him for this simple gift—this gift of music.

Just as it was for me as a six-year-old, music seems magical to most of us human beings, with its amazing, inexplicable effects on our minds. It can give us enormous pleasure, sometimes even lead us to ecstasy, change our mood instantly, trigger long forgotten memories, make us dance, often help us to connect intimately with others, and thereby allow us to share our deepest joys and sorrows.

But what is it? How can we describe music? How can we define it, even provisionally, so that we have some kind of working definition?

Music has been defined in hundreds of different ways, sometimes scientifically (physically), sometimes mathematically, sometimes philosophically, sometimes aesthetically, sometimes poetically, sometimes functionally, sometimes narrowly or very broadly. Sometimes it’s even been defined quite trivially:

“Music is that which we regard as music.” Martin Walker (author)

While that definition is undoubtedly accurate, it’s not very useful for a discussion about music and science, is it? Can we find a more useful definition, at least as a start for our discussion together?

Perhaps a good place for us to look for a definition would be in the words of important composers, who, after all, spend their lives, their whole essence, in music. What have they said?

Beethoven

Sometimes composers can be very philosophical or metaphysical. For example, Ludwig van Beethoven said:

“Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”

That’s not very encouraging to us for this discussion because our aim here is to comprehend music at a fairly sophisticated level of understanding. Let’s hope that Beethoven was incomplete in this particular opinion—or at least that we can arrive at a definition that’s more concrete to meet our own needs here.

In fact, composer Igor Stravinsky was much more concrete, almost pragmatic:

“All music is nothing more than a succes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. What is Science?
• Chapter 2. What is Music?
• Chapter 3. The Pulse
• Chapter 4. Sound
• Chapter 5. Melody
• Chapter 6. Harmony
• Chapter 7. Making Music
• Chapter 8.The Ear
• Chapter 9. Our Musical Brain
• Chapter 10. Music Changes Us
• Chapter 11. Music Heals Us
• Chapter 12. The Composer’s Toolkit
• Chapter 13. Our Musical Humanity
• Chapter 14. Our Musical Children
• Chapter 15. Cosmic Music
• Notes
• Books
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Index