It seems both Pythagoras and Johann Kepler thought music was supernatural. I tried to find a decent link for this, but nothing seemed both informative and reliable. If anyone’s interested, try looking for ‘music of the spheres.’ However, it looks like Kepler knew a lot of what he was doing was astrology rather than serious science.
T.S Eliot believed it too…google for Four Quartets. I believe the copyright has expired. However, I’d like to point out, in my estimation, that Eliot was, like the OP, extrapolating from thin air, however marvelous his poetry.
For those interested, another Christian inspired work by T.S. Eliot is The Rock.. He was never as good as Prufrock or the Wasteland–he lost something after that–however, in my well-read (at least as far as poetry goes) opinion.
To me, music is a very lucky coincidence that the fact that certain things make interesting sounds when hit or plucked, combined with the ability of humans to experiement with things, combined with time - produces very very pleasurable results.
In fact now that I think about it, just like the ‘miracle’ of life - time is the key. Given enough time banging a stick on some stretched animal skin becomes classical music.
It’s like what some famous dude said - “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic” (paraphrased)
The same applies to so called ‘miracles’.
That was Arthur C. Clarke, I think.
I don’t follow you. What do you mean by “explaining” emotions? If you punch me in the face, I will feel pain. If you perform J.S. Bach’s b minor Mass, I will feel rapture. That’s because each stimulus causes excitation of a very specific area in my brain. That electrochemical activity IS the emotion. Artificially inducing emotions DOES exlain them; it demonstrates that they originate in the brain, and shows that it is unnecessary to posit a supernatural explanation.
Now, if you’re asking “Why does x event cause y emotion?”, the answer can be very complex, and possibly beyond our ability to explain. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason; it just means it’s complex. I don’t know exactly how my car runs, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation.
I have some very basic ideas as to why music has the effect on us it does. One, when we hear a sound, we perceive a very complex pattern of harmonics because of the way the sounds waves vibrate. Tonal music, at least, mimics these naturally occuring harmonics. So we recognize an element of nature, which is usually not in the forefront of our minds, being mimicked in the music, thus making the music strangely compelling to us. Two, the rhythm of the music imitates another element of nature, that of repetition, like our heartbeat for example. So when music takes a steady pulse and varies it in interesting ways, that’s compelling as well. I think the response is much too complex to ever be explained completely, but I don’t see how that is cause to believe it to be supernatural.
I suspect we’re in agreement, actually, and we’re just coming at the problem from different directions.
This presupposes a dichotomy between astrology and science that didn’t exist at the time, at least not in the way it does today. I would argue that Kepler’s “music of the spheres” scheme proposed in Harmonice Mundi was more of a last gasp of the pre-Newtonian philosophy of science, in which scientific theories had to conform to certain aesthetic standards in order to support the premise that the universe follows a divine order.
Harmonice Mundi and its predecessor, Mysterium Cosmographicum, are, however, fascinating works. It’s interesting that, given new evidence contradicting his theory of nested Platonic solids, Kepler didn’t reject it, but first added an “echinus” (small stellated dodecahedron) and later decided that the whole business about the solids was just God’s rough draft, and that the “music of the spheres” model was His finished work.
Yes, You elegantly and succintly summed up my rather agressive post. I was trying to make the point that jsut because the OP does not “understand” emotions or human reation to stimuli in no way makes it magical, anymore than the fact that people build two story houses is evidence of God.
That famous dude was Marshall McLuhan.
You are the first one to use the word “magical” in this entire thread.
What exactly is wrong with blasphmer’s choice of words? “Magic” seems as good a word as any to describe a phenomenon that is purported to be without a scientific explanation.
In my opinion, what the OP and others have offered as mere reflective wonder is quickly and contemptuously dismissed as superstition and silliness by the “smarter” posters. The word “magical” is in this vein of discussion board alpha doggism.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
And Lobsang made reference to this before blasphmer did. I think the fact that people consider religious/supernatural stuff to be dignified and magic to be undignified is precisely the point, since they’re equally valid as explanations.
I strongly disagree. The OP clearly says: “Evidence, if ever there was any, that there is a God”. That does not constitute mere reflective wonder, but rather a positing of a supernatural entity.
I think you’re just reacting to his earlier post, which was rather sarcastic. IMO you’re criticizing the wrong thing. There’s really nothing elitist about using the word “magic” in this context. I don’t see any reason that it can’t be a synonym for “supernatural”.
Thanks Marley. McLuhan cites this in “The Medium and the Message,” and my memory was fuzzy.
Supernatural: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
Magical (2): having seemingly supernatural qualities or power
Fair enough, blowero. I didn’t take the OP that literally. I think the word we need to introduce to the conversation is “sublime.” I think you can be pretty much agnostic and still have a sense of the “sublime” in the arts. It’s not very interesting to me to say, “wow, that new Alison Krauss CD really caused my brain to release such and such a chemical and blah blah blah.” I’d prefer to just call it “sublime.” Anyway, I don’t know that the chemical reactions observable aren’t an effect. Maybe to call the chemicals themselves the experience is a kind of map-for-the-territory fallacy. It’s not like we fall in love because our pulse quickens… it’s the other way 'round. As I’ve said before, for at least 100 years people have studied an observed the corresponding physiology to even the most complex emotional states, but the best of these scientists and philosophers did not feel they had either explained or solved the nature of the experience itself.
Personally, I like the way Paul Churchland argues the mind/body problem the best. He says that physiological, scientific descriptions and experiential phenomenon are simply two different but equally viable ways of interpreting the same internal processes. You interpret these internal processes as an emotion or an experience (with the help of your somatosensory system) and the scientist interprets the internal processes as chemical interactions and equations and so forth. Does comprehensive knowledge of either one lead you to comprehensive knowledge of the other? Of course not, and why should it?
Leibniz’s Gap specifically, and “God of the gaps” in general.
“God of the gaps” is a very common tactic (read: fallacy) used by theists to “prove” the existence of their god. A theist will point to a gap in our knowledge, something we so far can’t explain, and proclaim, “This is where god is.”
I don’t know why you didn’t. The thread title, “Music is evidence of God” seems pretty straighforward to me. If the OP just wanted to say how great music is, it should have gone in Cafe Society.
Of course; I already said so. You can worship the Invisible Pink Unicorn for all I care, and still think music is sublime. But that’s not the discussion we’re having.
Hmmm…I find such a statement far more interesting than, “That new Alison Krauss CD makes me happy because the supernatural man in the sky made it that way and blabbity blabbity blah.”
Yes, but you didn’t start this thread. The person who started this thread didn’t just say “sublime”, but rather “proof of God”. Otherwise, he/she wouldn’t have gotten any argument from me.
So you believe that we have emotions first, and that causes the electrochemical processes in the brain? And then what do you believe causes the emotions? God? If so, what process does God use to cause the emotions? Sorry, but I’ve gotta call Occam’s Razor here.
When did we start talking about blood circulation? Do you think the brain is the same as the circulatory system? That’s just silly - brain damage has been observed to dramatically affect people’s behavior and emotions; heart damage has not. The function of the brain vs. the function of the heart is extremely well documented. You’re trying to set medical science back about 500 years in one fell swoop.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t know what causes the experience. Experimental data confirms that emotions originate in the brain; we don’t have to know exactly why the subjective experience of consciousness exists in order to know from where it originates. I don’t know exactly how my computer gets from silicon chips to these letters glowing on my screen, but I know that if I pull the plug right now, the letters aren’t going to be there any more, so it’s a pretty good guess that they’re not being beamed here from Alpha Centauri.
Tell me, what theory do you have that better explains where emotions come from? To say they come from “God” doesn’t explain it any better than I have, and has the added disadvantage of not fitting the observational data.