Is Richard Dawkins helping science through his attacks on religion?
I would wish for Dawkins to use more emotional sensitivity and compassion when dealing with religious people, because his hostile tone gets in the way of his invaluable message. His condescending...
View ArticleDoes teaching Intelligent Design in schools really damage science?
You don’t go to high school biology class to learn particular facts; you go to understand the general framework of evolutionary theory. Rather than contradicting any single fact, Intelligent Design...
View ArticleWhy has the human brain evolved so much more than any other animals?
The human brain isn’t “more” evolved. It’s just differently evolved. Our intelligence has its obvious advantages, but it carries some significant costs. Like Joshua Engel says, the big brain is...
View ArticleWhat is the evolutionary purpose of dreaming?
Dreaming doesn’t have an evolutionary purpose per se. It’s just an emergent property of the piecemeal way our brains have evolved, from the older and more automatic systems out to the newer,...
View ArticleWhy do I grimace when I concentrate?
The parts of your brain that do your abstract thinking are very tightly interconnected with the parts that control your muscles. In fact, some of that abstract thinking is done by the same brain...
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Where does the “Egyptian” melody originally come from?
I know this melody as the cartoon snakecharmer song. Here’s a kid playing it on bass clarinet: [iframe_loader width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tQcfVyQN0P8" frameborder="0"...
View ArticleThe evolutionary origin of laughter
In his book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, David Huron does some fascinating speculation about the evolutionary origin of laughter. Unvocalized panting occurs in response...
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Hereditary units in music
Another thought-provoking Quora question: Are there any hereditary units in music? The question details give some context: In his blog post “The Music Genome Project is no such thing,” David Morrison...
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Toward a better music theory
I seem to have touched a nerve with my rant about the conventional teaching of music theory and how poorly it serves practicing musicians. I thought it would be a good idea to follow that up with some...
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Can science make a better music theory?
My last post discussed how we should be deriving music theory from empirical observation of what people like using ethnomusicology. Another good strategy would be to derive music theory from...
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Marc Weidenbaum on remixes
There’s an interview on the Creative Commons blog with Disquiet Junto instigator and Aphex Twin historian Marc Weidenbaum. It’s full of his usual keen insight. Here are some key quotes. Something...
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Internet blues
Recently, WNYC’s great music show Soundcheck held a contest to see who could do the best version of the 100 year old song “Yellow Dog Blues” by WC Handy. Marc Weidenbaum had the members of the Disquiet...
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Why do people love music so much?
We’re attracted to music for the same reason we’re attracted to fire: it’s been a critical survival tool for us for hundreds of thousands of years. Music cognition is one of the first high-level brain...
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Ch-ch-ch-check out, check out check out my melody
My computer dictionary says that a melody is “a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying.” There are a lot of people out there who think that rap isn’t music because it lacks melody. My...
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Music Matters chapter three
This post is public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class. This chapter goes after the big questions: What is music and...
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Émile Durkheim – Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week, we read another cornerstone of the sociology canon: Émile Durkheim on where religion comes from. The book is very much a product of its...
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Freud – Civilization And Its Discontents
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg We have read some dense canonical European White Guys. None of them have been as difficult and off-putting as Freud. I would have rather read...
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Ethnomusicology and the body
Writing assignment for Ethnomusicology: History and Theory with David Samuels It is such a strange artifact of Cartesian dualism that we have to specify experiences as being “bodily,” as if there were...
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