Well, I guess my point is a subjective one. I feel that there needs to be a lot more science and technology involved in the study of music because music really does involve a lot of science (as you know). The gap that I see may be just my focus on the subject causing me to see a lot more room for science than in other subjects.
I feel that the liberal arts approach to music is getting old, and that music theory has been delayed because of it.
I took two quarters of "music theory/composition" at a school that is supposed to have a good reputation for it. I thought I was going to be able to have the opportunity to study the foundations of music from the physical and psychological views, but instead I found a rather mystical view with many very conflicting "schools of thought". I disagreed with a statement made by the chair of the music department, and wrote a composition to illustrate my point. I didn't get any credit for my research and final product, which got me a F in composition class (only that one project affected the grade), although I was doing really well everywhere else. You can see why I am a little bitter and cynical. I even wrote software to help visualize sound for my research, but it was not an acceptable form of work for my teacher. With that type of visualization, I can easily illustrate the effect of intonation on brightness, as you mention, but the tenured professors at my school weren't interested in things like that because they were busy trying to find how many times $dead_composer did $foo with $bar instrumentation.
So I definitely agree that music and science (and even religion) are interwoven as objects, but they seem to not be perceived that way. The problem is that since music deals mostly with multiplicity, ambiguity and indiscreteness, it is perceived as not being a concrete study. This same problem even occurs at the higher levels of normally concrete sciences, like physics (e.g., quantum mechanics). I just think that music seems to have more of a problem with that issue.
The article talks about research being involved in art, and I think that is what I am talking about.
Although science greatly influenced the media that an artist can use, their technique has no scientific basis and leverages no technology. Only how it is propagated leverages technology. I have rarely heard a musician talk about intervals, or chords in a "technological" manner, and they never apply what they know of tones, if they know anything at all.
Let me put it this way: music involves technology on the client side, but not the server side. That is mostly an artifact of what the listeners of music know about technology, and what the artist does not.
I do have one book from 1877 that takes a scientific approach, and I have heard about a couple more, but that is a small minority. I have never heard a musician, in all of my years as a musician, talk about music like Herman Helmholtz did. The only evidence I have that there is an intertwining is a couple book reviewers, and the fact that Dover published that book.
The horizons of physics, philosophy, and art have of late been too widely separated, and, as a consequence, the language, the methods, and the aims of any one of these studies present a certain amount of difficulty for the student of any other of them; and possibly this is the principal cause why the problem here undertaken has not been long ago more thoroughly considered and advanced towards its solution.
- Hermann Helmholtz, On The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for The Theory of Music, Introduction
The issue is that art is about ambiguity, and science is about clarity. It is difficult to understand how to make ambiguities clear. It goes beyond thinking about what is probable (i.e., what usually occurs) to what is possible (i.e., what can occur). If only we could learn to understand each level atomically, we could do neat things like build more secure software.
Free software can be designed better because of its freedom from the economic urgency to settle for mere statistical understanding (mere art). The "open-source economic model" can spoil that aspect of free software by involving monetary profit, when the profit of having science-grade software is enough incentive.
The issue, therefore, is as it has been since the beginning: "how and why do we fund science?". The open-source model is a hack to capitalism-as-it-is-practiced, and we will therefore have to deal with the side effects of capitalism-as-it-is-practiced. Being involved in open-source, to me, is like being involved in a union. It is a reaction to capitalism.
We are talking about a generality here, not just a few examples. Try talking about science in a music theory class, or most other liberal arts classes. Just because artists often use technology, doesn't mean they understand the science of it.
I guess that explains what happened to the big dinosaurs. The scientists were really measuring inches, not feet.
Re:slowness
on
Netscape 6.2
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The CSS and extensions that IE support are artificially important because of its huge market-share. Mozilla is a better browser for standards, and that is my only claim.
Have you tried developing standard CSS? Once you do, you will realize that Mozilla supports a lot more CSS than IE, and Mozilla is much more stable in its rendering. IE will often forget where it has drawn and can't keep a list in a straight line. Explain to me IE's bugs on this page (With the CSS bloated for IE) and this other page (roll over the links in the "recent posts" list) and notice how slow it is on the navbar. Mozilla doesn't have any of these problems.
Even looking at an outdated chart of CSS bugs, Mozilla is at least as good at CSS. Considering that development on IE is crawling compared to everything else, Mozilla has much better support. I actually think that Mozilla has the only sane CSS implementation of all the browsers.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a look at OEone. They have Linux with a Mozilla desktop on cheap hardware. It looks like they are going to sell it without the hardware soon. There is a review on newsforge.
Can I patent the idea of patentable standards? Sounds like a business model to me...
It will work. Although there is too much prior art, they will accept your submission anyway.
Now I see where you are coming from.
Well, I guess my point is a subjective one. I feel that there needs to be a lot more science and technology involved in the study of music because music really does involve a lot of science (as you know). The gap that I see may be just my focus on the subject causing me to see a lot more room for science than in other subjects. I feel that the liberal arts approach to music is getting old, and that music theory has been delayed because of it.
I took two quarters of "music theory/composition" at a school that is supposed to have a good reputation for it. I thought I was going to be able to have the opportunity to study the foundations of music from the physical and psychological views, but instead I found a rather mystical view with many very conflicting "schools of thought". I disagreed with a statement made by the chair of the music department, and wrote a composition to illustrate my point. I didn't get any credit for my research and final product, which got me a F in composition class (only that one project affected the grade), although I was doing really well everywhere else. You can see why I am a little bitter and cynical. I even wrote software to help visualize sound for my research, but it was not an acceptable form of work for my teacher. With that type of visualization, I can easily illustrate the effect of intonation on brightness, as you mention, but the tenured professors at my school weren't interested in things like that because they were busy trying to find how many times $dead_composer did $foo with $bar instrumentation.
So I definitely agree that music and science (and even religion) are interwoven as objects, but they seem to not be perceived that way. The problem is that since music deals mostly with multiplicity, ambiguity and indiscreteness, it is perceived as not being a concrete study. This same problem even occurs at the higher levels of normally concrete sciences, like physics (e.g., quantum mechanics). I just think that music seems to have more of a problem with that issue.
The article talks about research being involved in art, and I think that is what I am talking about.
Although science greatly influenced the media that an artist can use, their technique has no scientific basis and leverages no technology. Only how it is propagated leverages technology. I have rarely heard a musician talk about intervals, or chords in a "technological" manner, and they never apply what they know of tones, if they know anything at all.
Let me put it this way: music involves technology on the client side, but not the server side. That is mostly an artifact of what the listeners of music know about technology, and what the artist does not.
I do have one book from 1877 that takes a scientific approach, and I have heard about a couple more, but that is a small minority. I have never heard a musician, in all of my years as a musician, talk about music like Herman Helmholtz did. The only evidence I have that there is an intertwining is a couple book reviewers, and the fact that Dover published that book.
- Hermann Helmholtz, On The Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for The Theory of Music, Introduction
The issue is that art is about ambiguity, and science is about clarity. It is difficult to understand how to make ambiguities clear. It goes beyond thinking about what is probable (i.e., what usually occurs) to what is possible (i.e., what can occur). If only we could learn to understand each level atomically, we could do neat things like build more secure software.
Free software can be designed better because of its freedom from the economic urgency to settle for mere statistical understanding (mere art). The "open-source economic model" can spoil that aspect of free software by involving monetary profit, when the profit of having science-grade software is enough incentive.
The issue, therefore, is as it has been since the beginning: "how and why do we fund science?". The open-source model is a hack to capitalism-as-it-is-practiced, and we will therefore have to deal with the side effects of capitalism-as-it-is-practiced. Being involved in open-source, to me, is like being involved in a union. It is a reaction to capitalism.
We are talking about a generality here, not just a few examples. Try talking about science in a music theory class, or most other liberal arts classes. Just because artists often use technology, doesn't mean they understand the science of it.
[i]Why spend time and money on R&D when someone else will just steal the idea and make money of it.[/i]
Yeah, why make free software?
I guess that explains what happened to the big dinosaurs. The scientists were really measuring inches, not feet.
The CSS and extensions that IE support are artificially important because of its huge market-share. Mozilla is a better browser for standards, and that is my only claim.
Have you tried developing standard CSS? Once you do, you will realize that Mozilla supports a lot more CSS than IE, and Mozilla is much more stable in its rendering. IE will often forget where it has drawn and can't keep a list in a straight line. Explain to me IE's bugs on this page (With the CSS bloated for IE) and this other page (roll over the links in the "recent posts" list) and notice how slow it is on the navbar. Mozilla doesn't have any of these problems.
Even looking at an outdated chart of CSS bugs, Mozilla is at least as good at CSS. Considering that development on IE is crawling compared to everything else, Mozilla has much better support. I actually think that Mozilla has the only sane CSS implementation of all the browsers.
http://lojban.org/
Don't wait until Microsoft releases their version.
You can order a Doctor of Divinity from ULC for $25: Courses and Degrees
You might be able to pull it off and get federal funding for the "social service" of copying digital video.