[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I was watching NOVA "What Darwin Never Knew" this week.. It was truly wonderful, such a simple and eloquent explanation of evolution. I very much enjoyed all 2 hours with no arguments. It was thorough and concise, splendid and even charismatic! You all should catch it..

Anyways, a comment was made regarding human evolution that music was "unique to our species" which I thought was preposterous! It was the only mistake I saw in this otherwise delightful documentary. So many animals have music that this was an obvious mistake..

The real question, evolutionarily speaking, is why are humans so musical?

Perhaps it is because we are so social? Birds are highly musical animals, they use songs and melodies to communicate simple, instinctive messages that convey primal emotions of fear, joy, doubt, frustration etc etc..

We too use musical speach to animate our conversations and communicate with other people. The question could be then asked, "Did humans learn to speak from birds?" Some scientists argue that our vocal chords were developed to sing before we could speak, and that the origin of human speech is musical. Primates howl and 'talk' vocally with melodies, rhythms and musical patterns. Speech is entirely based upon mimic. Did we take speech from birds? We use speech to convey complex messages and thoughts, but are our musical roots to convey simpler, instinctive feelings like the birds and animals? Adding all these what-ifs, could we be musical as a species because it conveys instinctive feelings and not necessarily thoughts/ideas/opinions?

What then is the evolutionary function of feelings?

evolution is deeper than theology sometimes...

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

 

promo video




Program Description

Earth teems with a staggering variety of animals, including 9,000 kinds of birds, 28,000 types of fish, and more than 350,000 species of beetles. What explains this explosion of living creatures—1.4 million different species discovered so far, with perhaps another 50 million to go? The source of life's endless forms was a profound mystery until Charles Darwin brought forth his revolutionary idea of natural selection. But Darwin's radical insights raised as many questions as they answered. What actually drives evolution and turns one species into another? To what degree do different animals rely on the same genetic toolkit? And how did we evolve?
"What Darwin Never Knew" offers answers to riddles that Darwin couldn't explain. Breakthroughs in a brand-new science—nicknamed "evo devo"—are linking the enigmas of evolution to another of nature's great mysteries, the development of the embryo. NOVA takes viewers on a journey from the Galapagos Islands to the Arctic, and from the explosion of animal forms half a billion years ago to the research labs of today. Scientists are finally beginning to crack nature's biggest secrets at the genetic level. The results are confirming the brilliance of Darwin's insights while revealing clues to life's breathtaking diversity in ways the great naturalist could scarcely have imagined.

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

The real question, evolutionarily speaking, is why are humans so musical?

We use speech to convey complex messages and thoughts, but are our musical roots to convey simpler, instinctive feelings like the birds and animals?

I would offer my predictably philosophical arrogance and suggest that conscious beings (humans but let's not be so anthropic) are burdened by a great deal of ineffable meaning. As such, what may seem as simple and dumb 'feelings' as instantiated in language are actually far too complex for language to adequately express. Music, then, is a kind of lever to access at least a greater portion of this ineffable subjectivity.

I would hesitate that this is so comparable with birds and animals, though, as I don't know what their world is like.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by pbradley

I would offer my predictably philosophical arrogance and suggest that conscious beings (humans but let's not be so anthropic) are burdened by a great deal of ineffable meaning. As such, what may seem as simple and dumb 'feelings' as instantiated in language are actually far too complex for language to adequately express. Music, then, is a kind of lever to access at least a greater portion of this ineffable subjectivity.

I would hesitate that this is so comparable with birds and animals, though, as I don't know what their world is like.

genius! that is exactly what I was thinking about with this thread..

music allows humans to communicate and express deep feelings that are too complex to express in thoughts/language..

for example, in the Eastern tradition, prayer is strictly sung as it allows the mind to be free to feel the transcendental experience of worship, through the heart rather than through the logic of the thinking mind..

further, we can all agree that listening to music, from Bach to Sonic Youth are vehicles feelings which we have no language to express..

My idea is that humans have a transcendental soul which is beyond the physical world, and we use music as the language of this soul, which is beyond the comprehension of the logic of the thinking mind or the percpetion of the physical senses, it is a spiritual or metaphysical experience altogether..

[Keeping It Simple]

You're speaking from a human's persepective and not from a bird's perspective. A bird might think oppositely. In fact I suspect a bird would most likely think you and pd are talking shit, afterall, isn't that what most humans already think?

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

You're speaking from a human's persepective and not from a bird's perspective. A bird might think oppositely. In fact I suspect a bird would most likely think you and pd are talking shit, afterall, isn't that what most humans already think?

oppositely of what?

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

oppositely of what?

Of what you think.

[atsonicpark]

It's an animal. Actually, a collection of them. On this board, at least.

[pbradley]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

You're speaking from a human's persepective and not from a bird's perspective. A bird might think oppositely. In fact I suspect a bird would most likely think you and pd are talking shit, afterall, isn't that what most humans already think?

Originally Posted by pbradley

I would hesitate that this is so comparable with birds and animals, though, as I don't know what their world is like.

You hardly have any more ground than we do to suspect what a bird thinks than anyone else.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by pbradley

You hardly have any more ground than we do to suspect what a bird thinks than anyone else.

I beg to differ. I've been called "birdbrained" in the past. So clearly I have more of a mentality likened to a birds' than most people.

[floatingslowly]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

You're speaking from a human's persepective and not from a bird's perspective. A bird might think oppositely.

this was to be my post.

curses.

now I shall be forced to make a different one.



imbeciles! the insects are calling.

music is the multiverse.

[floatingslowly]

henceforth, I'm posting solely in seven.

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Good music often makes me want to do things reminiscent of scenes werewolf of london or altered states, so I'd say it's animal.

But it's also more than that. Music is human, animal, elemental. It's everything.

[GeneticKiss]

I dunno, I think it might be a bit of a stretch to think of birdsongs in the same sense as music created by humans. Sure, birdsongs have melody but often neither a whole lot of rhythm nor structure, and they often sound pretty alike (I mean the same kind of bird, not among other species of bird).

I know a lot of bands put out songs/albums that sound very much the same, but still...

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by GeneticKiss

I dunno, I think it might be a bit of a stretch to think of birdsongs in the same sense as music created by humans. Sure, birdsongs have melody but often neither a whole lot of rhythm nor structure, and they often sound pretty alike (I mean the same kind of bird, not among other species of bird).

I know a lot of bands put out songs/albums that sound very much the same, but still...

you are thinking of music to mathematically, or quantitatively, not not quality-wise. Surely you can appreciate to delight and melody of a bird song..

Evolutionary scientists say that the evolution of the human vocal chords from the more primitive structures of other primates came about through singing. They theorize that we were singing before we ever spoke a word and that our speech evolved from song. Speech is communication of thoughts, ideas whether simple or complex, and language is designed to convey complex ideas and opinions.. however, music seems to convey something so simple it is deeply complex. The feelings of the human experience of music often have no language in words to describe, they are simply felt, and this is what attracts humans almost universally to music. Further, our language of words is full of music, rhythm and melody in our speech patterns, which we use to convey unspoken messages of mood, tense and feeling the emphasize our words.

Another question to this thread then, is that are these feelings behind our music human or animal? Are they part of the soul (ie, human), or part of the mechanics of the evolution of the brain (ie, animal)? For that matter, is there even such a distinction to begin with, or is the music of animals equally soulful? If anything, the point made about bird songs lacking math like sheet music, is their improvisational music more soulful then the calculations of a composer who writes with out even touching in instrument sometimes?

[Dead-Air]

music is vegetable. grows like a plant. smokes like a plant too.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

henceforth, I'm posting solely in seven.

What a massive prick you are.

[GeneticKiss]

In all honesty, I fully agree with Keeping It Simple saying we're looking at this from a human's point of view. We can't really know how animals see things.

[gmku]

Birds whistle, my dog makes funny noises. I would say, animal. That's my vote.

[Green_mind]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

Another question to this thread then, is that are these feelings behind our music human or animal? Are they part of the soul (ie, human), or part of the mechanics of the evolution of the brain (ie, animal)?

What do you mean by part of the soul? I think it must be solely the brain that allows us these feelings.