Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (2904)	10/16/2006 5:34:01 PM
From: Jim S	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

Brumar, to narrow the discussion a bit, would you agree that musical tastes have evolved? That is, the music of the stone age (still practiced in many places) evolved to the midaeval, then to Classical, and so on? An interesting question to me is why some particular period music seems to be universally popular. For example, classical music (at least some of it) is enjoyed by almost everyone. Same thing for some "big band" music. And, to me a true anomoly, music from the 60s seems to be almost universally popular. Yet other epochs of music aren't enjoyed outside their time period or ethnic "niche."

To: Brumar89 who wrote (2904)	10/16/2006 5:41:50 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

In the case of music, there is no evolutionary mechanism that I can think of or that anyone else can offer....And it seems unwarranted to attribute something to evolution in the absence of any known or inferred evolutionary mechanism. Once again, I am not suggesting you attribute it to evolution. My point has to do with your insistence that it cannot be attributable to evolution. Just because no one here, or perhaps anywhere, has yet offered a mechanism that meets your standards doesn't mean that there cannot be one. If I can acknowledge the possibility, however remote, as I have, that it could turn out that there is a god who designed it that way, you can acknowledge the possibility that it happened naturally. Especially when it's no skin off your nose to do so.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (2904)	10/16/2006 7:46:18 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10087

In the case of music, there is no evolutionary mechanism that I can think of or that anyone else can offer. Some biologists hypothesize that Neanderthals sang, but did not speak. Others hypothesize that singing evolved as language evolved, as a means of communicating, e.g., mothers singing to babies, very relaxing, stress-relieving, even in the womb. Another example, work songs, which keep groups in sync. Others who have a bent for both math and music (the two go together) hypothesize that music ability is a side effect of the development of math abilities. My opinion -- all of the above are possible, but it's also true that humans enjoy creating beauty. In fact, although it may be --- hmm, what's the word, something like "self centered" -- anthropologists use the deliberate creation of symbols and the use of decoration as the dividing line between "not human like us" and "human like us." Cave painting, tattoos, decorating the dead, making and wearing beads. We create beauty because we can.