Society is not Newtonian physics
~From
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
by Philip Ball, page 30:
There are few political thinkers who have defined a social model with the logical precision of Hobbes, and none who have carried those precepts through to their conclusions in a truly scientific, rather than suppositional way. This is not by any means to denigrate such models; rather, it is simply to say that their approach is different. Political theorists tend to concern themselves with what they think ought to be; scientists concentrate on the way things are. The same is true of the new physics of society: it seeks to find descriptions of observed social phenomena and to understand how they might arise from simple assumptions.
Whoa, don't give Hobbes's lame attempt too much credit...
trying to be scientific is not the same as being scientific. If Hobbes started off with such silly and scientifically baseless axioms as "people remain in motion," then he's really being no more "scientific" than anyone else. Isn't he still concerning himself with what
ought to be the axioms?
Labels: Critical Mass
Hobbes the fool
~From
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Anotherby Philip Ball, page 17:
On meeting the great man [Galileo], Hobbes became convinced that [intertia] must be the axiom he was seeking [to form a fundemental hypothesis about human behavior]. Constant motion was the natural state of all things, including people. All human sensations and emotions, he concluded, were the result of motion. From this basic principle Hobbes would work upward to a theory of society.
I didn't know Hobbes was that foolish... to take the physical property of inertia and just decide it must apply to human thought?! Where in the world does that axiom come from?! I can understand how the human mind is like a computer, a very simple notion nowadays, and the notion that it "remains in motion" might have some merit, but it's Hobbes's logic that I find surprising... he learns something about physics and just decides to apply it humans in way that its meaning changes so much its basis in physics is almost meaningless. Give me a break, Hobbes, you fool!
Labels: Critical Mass
Fairy Tales
~From
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories
by Christopher Booker, page 11:
Over the past 100 years innumerable attempts have been made to interpret myths, folk tales and other stories in this way, from Ernest Jones's essay analysing Hamlet as another example of the Oedipal triangle to Dr Bruno Bettelheim's The Use of Enchantment analysing the reasons for the appeal and value of the old fairy tales to the children of today.
Kind of in an unrelated point, I don't think "children of today" have any particular craving for one type of story or another; what types of stories they hear are largely decided by adults. A best-selling children's picture book does not imply that children love that book the most, it's sales are determined by parents who decide to buy the book! Similarly, Shakespeare's continued popularity is, I believe, in large part due its continued teaching in school.
Hamlet sales would plummet if high school students suddenly no longer had to write essays on it. It would be wrong to conclude that there's something special about Shakespeare's work
just because of book sales and the fact that every high schooler has heard of him.
In other words, popularity is an emergent property that does not necessarily correlate with the presence of specific recognizable attributes. (It might, it might not.)
Labels: The Seven Basic Plots
Music of the future
~From
Roots of the Classical
by Peter Van der Merwe, page 377:
The music of the future! What an intoxicating notion--and what a marvellous excuse for obscurity! No wonder it proved so popular. Yet its practical effects were surprisingly limited. To sloganize and pamphlateer was one thing; to put notes on paper, quite another. Composers soon discovered that being 'in advance of one's time' is more easily said than done. The real innovations were rather the outcome of stylistic cross-fertilization, mainly between east and west, than of any striving after novelty.
People are only 'ahead of their time' in retrospect.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Real artists
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 345:
The selfsame contradictions persisted into the twentieth century. Schoenberg was merely echoing Wackenroder when he wrote: 'I believe that a real composer writes music for no other reason than that it pleases him. Those who compose because they want to please others, and have audiences in mind, are not real artists.'
Uh... thanks, Mr. Schoenberg...
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Plausible but worthless
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 300:
In view of these associations, it was probably inevitable that these patterns should attract the censure of Authority: 'It will be quickly realized that sucha common formula... however plausible it may sound, has little musical worth; it belongs to the realm of "salon" at best, or the lowest type of popular dance music, or sentimental "sacred solo".'
Yuck. I cringe when I hear quotes like that. How can something sound plausible but have little musical worth? In my opinion, musical worth is based on, gee, I don't know... how plausible it sounds! Maybe I'm just reading it wrong... it kind of reminds me of that Mark Twain quote: "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." Please note, I think Mr. Twain was trying to be funny. If he wasn't, he's an idiot. And unfortunately his quote is only funny once.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
The genetic fallacy
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 230:
Next to snobbery and ethnic prejudice, the greatest barrier to recognizing these patterns is what philosophers call the 'genetic fallacy', the feeling that everything somehow carries the taint of its origins. Compositions that draw on trivial sources must themselves be trivial; Oriental patterns must go on sound Oriental--or so we tend to think. The greater the composer, the more triumphantly will such notions be refuted.
Not that I've met anyone who actually disagreed with this, but I think it's an important thing to keep in mind, and worthy of being quoted for at least my own remembrance.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Evolution by nature
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 142:
Even today, our notions of causation are profoundly influenced by the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Newtonian physics gave such satisfying results that later thinkers gound it natural to apply its principles to biology. They assumed that nature--including human culture--must proceed by similar chains of cause and effect. One had only to trace the chain backwards to arrive at the ultimate cause: natural selection in Darwin, the economic motive in Marx, the sexual instinct in Freud. People argued about which was the correct 'driving force', but seldom stopped to wonder whether the whole system might be based on false analogy.
It now appears that no driving force is needed... Evolution is a process whereby parts combine into wholes, and this happens automatically.
Exactly. Also note that in some systems, like John Conway's "Game of Life", you
can't work backwards, as deterministic as the future is.
I think this point is also touched upon in Taleb's
The Black Swan which I hope to read this summer. Some composers look at Mozart's and Beethoven's influence and ascribe them entirely towards something like their innovations in certain pieces of music, when in reality their influence is most likely part of a much larger more incomprehensible system.
And, while an artist may strive toward innovation in his work, it is not only
not a promise a success, it is also not needed to bring about changes in the art world as a whole. The artist's desire to innovate for its own sake is not a driving force. The art world will change and innovations will emerge without needing to be forced.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Clichés
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, pages 139-140:
... clichés are an inescapable part of the evolutionary process. Before a musical pattern can be elaborated, it must first become familiar; and this, in practice, means mechanical repetition, ready-made emotion, and cheap effects generally. If the word had existed in the fifteenth century, critics would no doubt have complained about the irritating new cliché of preceding the tonic chord with the dominant.
People should love clichés because it's cliché to hate clichés.
But, seriously, many composers vehemently reject musical clichés whilst trying to create new ones. I personally do not think they are inherently bad... in fact, they're quite vital! Without them, no film music at all would work. It's kind of a shame a 'cliché' is most often used as a negative word nowadays. I think clichés can come and go without any forced opposition. ("Forced opposition" being the choice to reject a cliché for mere sake of its being cliché instead of for some more natural reason, like honest cliché-caused displeasure.)
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Defensive snobbery
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 132:
... popular music was especially highly developed among [the Germans]. Nowhere in Europe did it come closer to what we should now call 'art' music. This closeness, while encouraging beneficial cultural exchanges, also drove 'serious' composers (as they were beginning to think of themselves) into a defensive snobbery. It is easy to adopt an attitude of benign condescension to a popular musician when he is a peasant bagpiper or blind hurdy-gurdy man; not quite so easy when he is a prosperous bandleader in the house next door.
What can one say but... Salieri?
Labels: Roots of the Classical
The sad minor mode?
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 127:
The truth is not that early composers were unaware of the mournfulness of the minor mode, but rather, as in the case of the more extreme discords and dissonances, that they had yet to exploit it. In fact, from the strictly scientific point of view, minor intervals were a form of discord and dissonance. The emotions expressed, depending on the context, might be gloom, melancholy, tension, resolution in adversity, wistfulness, and a host of others. But they were all in a some sense negative, and nothing could entirely erase the negativity. A jig in the minor mode may well express merriment, but never quite the same unclouded merriment as the same jig in the major.
This seems to be a large point of discussion in the music world... is how we hear the minor mode conditioned? Could the major and minor mode be reversed in regards to the feelings commonly associated with them? I think only to a certain degree. I think all human brains will naturally here the minor third and major third intervals as fundamentally different, but to say that one is 'happy' and one is 'sad' depends far too much on the context of the actually music than the interval itself. So, in a sense, it is conditioned by what music one has heard previously, but it is more strongly conditioned by the context of the piece.
I've heard people say that Javert's suicide song does not sound sad because he is singing in the major mode, and that the ending of "O Fortuna" is too happy because it ends in the major mode instead of the minor. But whether or not a piece is in the major or minor mode has more to do with what degree it's perceived at. No piece (that sounds good, at least) will be composed entirely in the minor mode; there will always be some major mixed in, and vice versa. What makes a piece be in a minor key is the degree to which those minor intervals are percieved.
So, in the end, I think to just associate major and minor to happy and sad in general is to, well, over generalize. It's never really been that way.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Ugly thirds?
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 111:
The level of discord does indeed rise in medieval music, largely because of increasing polyphonic complexity (though it is a myth that twelfth- or thirteenth-century composers were afraid of thirds and sixths), reaching a peak in the Ars Nova of the fourteenth century.
I'm not quite sure what the author means by 'afraid of thirds and sixths', but I, unlike some, do not believe anyone from those centuries heard such intervals as dissonant, though this depends on how you define 'dissonant'. What I mean is, it is my belief that no one heard such intervals as
unpleasant. Did they hear it as strange? I don't know, maybe. But some people seem to like to think that back then people heard such intervals as disgusting then as we might hear some random cluster nowadays, and that, in the future, if put to good use, that cluster will sound as good as a third someday. I reject this notion, and think it absurd.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
What the public wants
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 85:
Historians owe a great debt to Joan Ambrosio Dalza... We should be thankful that his intention was not to be clever or original, but merely to turn an honest penny by giving the public what it wanted.
Oh, how many 'serious' composers loathe the idea! Heck, I might loathe the idea too, but I am in the fortunate state of sharing at least a portion of the modern public's tastes, so I believe my work suffers considerably less...
Still, it seems interesting that many 'serious' composers would rather shun the public's tastes in this day and age when it's rather doubtful any of it will be forgotten by history by its merely being shunned by anyone. Then again, maybe that's why it's shunned.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
All music is pentatonic
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 50:
In a way, the word 'pentatonic' is unfortunate. It is incidental that there happen to be five notes in the scale. The real basis of pentatonic melody is consonance, and, ultimately, that 'sound in nature', the major triad. This primordial pattern is so powerful that it provides a frame of reference for all the more elaborate types of melody and harmony, whether heptatonic, chromatic, or, for that matter, atonal. In the end, all music is pentatonic.
I just thought that was an interesting perspective! It certainly seems true when you think about it... but it's not something that pops out. Quite interesting!
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Harmony and melody
~From
Roots of the Classicalby Peter Van der Merwe, page 21:
Chords are melody, behaving in a special way... Harmony is an 'emergent' property of melody, in the same way as life is an emergent property of matter, or mind of life. And, just as one can have life without mind and matter without life, so one can have melody without harmony--but not harmony without melody. There can be no explanation of harmony that does not take into account its melodic component.
This seems to be an important point. Harmony and melody are often thought of as perpendiculars; the melody is the horizontal and the harmony is the vertical, which is, in a sense, still true when it comes to looking at notes on a page. But chord
progressions, harmonic shifts, and such, which are usually implied by the use of the word 'harmony', are definitely based on melody. They're not opposing forces. Any good chord progression is melodic by nature, though probably much simpler.
Labels: Roots of the Classical
Humans resent the inevitable
~From
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clarke, page 200:
"... Besides, no one of intelligence resents the inevitable."
That proposition, Jan reflected wryly, had never been fully accepted by mankind.
We resent the inevitable all the time, don't we? We loathe it. At least I do. It's sort of inevitable that we'll loathe it.
Of course, it's not so easy to know eactly what is and isn't inevitable, so it's only natural to resent something that may seem inevitable... it's like challenging it to not be inevitable, which is how you'll discover whether or not it truly is inevitable.
Labels: Childhood's End
Quivering chicken
~From
I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas Hofstadter, pages 18-19:
Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block?
I like how he uses the words
preening and
quivering to describe the animals! Don't behead the quivering chicken! It's quivering, for goodness sake!
And to answer the question: No, I would feel more troubled because beheading the chicken would just be more of a mess.
Labels: I Am A Strange Loop
Degrees of souledness
~From
I Am a Strange Loopby Douglas Hofstadter, page 17:
Some of us (again, I count myself in this group) believe that neither a just-fertilized egg nor a five-month old fetus possesses a full human soul, and that, in some sense, a potential mother's life counts more than the life of that small creature, alive though it indisputably is.
~From
I Am a Strange Loopby Douglas Hofstadter, page 22-23:
Even though I sincerely believe there is much more of a soul in the twenty-year-old than in the two-year-old (a view that will no doubt dismay many readers), I nonetheless have enormous respect for the potential of the two-year-old to develop a much larger soul over the course of a dozen or so years.
The word "soul" here is not being used in the religious sense of the word, in which there are no levels. Here Hofstadter is using it as more of a level-of-consciousness thing, which is, as far as I know, somewhat similar to the way Ayn Rand used it. (Being an atheist, she did not believe a religious soul exists.)
I can thus certainly agree that a fetus and a two-year-old have less soul than, say, me, thus I am not a dismayed reader in that sense. However, Hofstadter says he has enormous respect for the
potential for large soul, but also states that a potential mother's life
counts more. It's hard to tell how enormous his respect for a fetus really is.
I like what he also points out:
~From
I Am a Strange Loopby Douglas Hofstadter, page 23:
In addition, I have been built, by the mechanisms of billions of years of evolution, to perceive in the two-year-old what, for lack of a better word, I will call "cuteness", and the perceived presence of that quality grants the two-year-old an amazingly strong shell of protectedness against attacks not just by me, but by humans of all ages, sexes, and persuasions.
Hmmmm... ain't it the truth. However, this can sometimes have a negative impact. For example, a child could be ugly. Will that change how much he is loved? Hopefully not by his parents, but perhaps. And what about the activists who donate more money to help the poor little puppy dogs and stray kittens than to another country to help feed a family? Surely proximity also has something to do with it, but a puppy's cuteness is a great survival tool. How nice of evolution to evolve us to perceive furry little animals as being cute too...
Labels: I Am A Strange Loop
Philosophy can't prove anything...
~From
I Am a Strange Loopby Douglas Hofstadter, page
xvii:
It seems to me that many philosophers believe that, like mathematicians, they can actually prove the points they believe in, and to that end, they often try to use highly rigorous and technical language, and sometimes they attempt to anticipate and to counter all possible counter-arguments. I admire such self-confidence, but I am a bit less optimistic and a bit more fatalistic. I don't think one can truly prove anything in philosophy; I think one can merely try to convince, and probably one will wind up convincing only those people who started out fairly close to the position one is advocating.
I agree with the latter part... that one will only wind up convincing only those who started out close to the position one is advocating. However, isn't whether or not something can be proven
dependent on whether or not it's convincing? Philosophy suffers from having to use imprecise words all the time, while in math a number is understood to be the same by all mathematicians. I disagree with Hofstadter; ideas in philosophy can certainly be proven, perhaps just not as easily and precisely.
But what is "proof"? Can it be relative? Can something be proof for you, but not for me?
Labels: I Am A Strange Loop
Yet Another Blog
Here's yet another blog! This blog is entirely dedicated to quotes I come across in books. I post the quote then I little blather about why it stood out to me. This will probably be more helpful for me than anyone else, but, who knows, it might be interesting for someone who has time to waste...
