truth & beauty

It's one of the oldest and greatest mysteries: there's some kind of resonance
between reality and our experience of it. Why do simple ratios sound nice?
Perhaps at the core of our being we are actually mathematical, which might be
the structure of truth. Perhaps we have just evolved together with the rest
of the world, so our structure fits naturally with that of the world, and our
mathematics is a cultural creation that fits in with everything else. That
simple ratios match our sense of harmony might be no more surprising than
that husband and wife wear the same brand of sneakers.

No doubt music picks up much of the arbitrary nature of any human
language. David Abram's book THE SPELL OF THE SENSOUS discusses the idea that
our languages have non-arbitrary roots in the sounds of animals and nature at
large. Certainly there is much arbitrariness. But over the millenia, as
language evolves, that evolution is always against the constant background
of natural sound. Often even a subtle cause, if constant, will eventually
have a powerful effect.

I'm looking forward to reading R. Murray Schafer's THE SOUNDSCAPE: OUR SONIC
ENVIRONMENT AND THE TUNING OF THE WORLD - it's on the stack, I hope it
surfaces before too long!

Mathematics and aesthetics overlap in territory beyond tuning. In space and
time, by eye and ear, we appreciate repetition and symmetry. Folks have also
studied visual harmony, e.g. Le Corbusier.

A couple more books of interest down this line, in case anyone has missed
them:

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: A MUSICAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE, Thomas Levenson
HARMONIES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH: THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF MUSIC, Joscelyn
Godwin

Jim



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