Re: [Fis] Group Theory, Quantum Mechanics, and Music

Dear FIS colleagues,

Thanks to Michael and Elohimjl for their further 'musicking' (why do not
definitely leave the group-bio-discussion for the next round--as planned?
Besides, all current discussants should remind, please, about the
self-limitation rule of 2 or 3 messages per week).

As Michael puts it, the impressive explanatory power of group theory can be
applied to music too: showing a "deep relationship between the structure of
music and the structure of quantum mechanics". It reminds me other comments
by F.E. Yates, long ago: "Our science smells human, and we cannot get it
free of that odor". I do not mean it pejoratively, but simply that our
inner dynamics of categorization processes shows up again and again...
Properly putting 'flesh and bones' (neurons!) around those formalisms,
making sense of their cognitive emergence, is a very big challenge for our
modest possibilities, indeed, but at the same time it is a very interesting
enterprise in order to gauge the 'informational' qualities and limitations
of that approach. Hopefully, we will be able to discuss some
molecular-cellular parts of the theme in a few weeks.

Then, some parts of Elohimjl comments are spicy. Even the same music
itself may be felt as emotional, wild, mundane, sophisticate, ineffable...
does it depend on the abstract symmetrizing patterns per se? I do not think
so. Fundamentally it belongs to the sentient subject, with his/her personal
stock of memories and experiences, within a shared culture. It looks like
other forms of social activities that we have put under the label of 'art'.

Socially (and particularly when accompanied by dancing) music works as an
'emotional synchronizer'. Then, as a form of social communication, it is
powerful and pervasive but has rather limited contents. It is sort of an
intermediate channel: on the one side, for instance, two powerful sonorous
emotional-signs (laughter and crying), specific of our species, and also
endowed with neat precursors of 'rhythm' and 'melody', and at the other
side the unending combinatory and communicational power of language...
unfortunately I do not know about any hypothesis making further sense about
this, except Clynes' essentic forms, perhaps.

cacophonous greetings,

Pedro

PS. What about starting the next round (with a molecular-kickoff text by
Shu-Kun) on this very Summer Solstice--St. John's night?

_______________________________________________
fis mailing list
fis@listas.unizar.es
http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Received on Thu Jun 5 14:35:17 2003