Text 1142, 108 rader
Skriven 2004-12-21 05:55:00 av Ekurtz99 (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: Music's place in evol
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> Michael Laschober <stlpiano@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> In what ways can evolution explain the existence of music?  There does 
>> not
>> even seem to be a selective advantage to simple pitch recognition.  Is 
>> music
>> better explained through memetics rather than genetics?

============================================================
"John Wilkins" <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote
> See
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/anvil.html

QUOTE
Beethoven's Anvil: Music in mind and culture
by William L. Benzon
Basic Books, 2001
In some ways it seems on his account that music is a way of creating 
society, and thus is a goad to further selection, a social selection as it 
were, for greater complexity of hominid capabilities.

snip

..... humans evolved to be linked through such communal activities as dance 
and rhythm ..... It might explain, for example, how larger social groups 
than is normal for apes evolved in our lineage, and how self-consciousness 
developed as a way to represent internally what the performer is doing with 
respect to others in the performance.
END QUOTE

This is the tediously familiar "it evolved because it conduces to societal 
coherence" argument, which is routinely invoked to explain everything that 
otherwise doesn't admit of  evolutionary explanation - humor, consciousness, 
language (in the form of gossip), religion. There is no attempt in the book 
(as far as we can tell) to explain how this particular behavior could emerge 
from nothing to serve its alleged role - a single musical hominid would have 
no effect on group solidarity; there would need to be a substantial subset 
of the group with the behavior before it would have any effect. So how did 
it spread? We are not told.

It also doesn't explain why there is a distinct structure to music. 
Solidarity could be achieved by formless, rhythmless, tuneless ensemble 
chanting.
The book also (apparently) fails to ask - are there contemporary human 
groups of unquestionable solidarity that do not sustain that solidarity 
through music? and of course, the answer is - yes - combat groups the 
military, for example, teams in football and other sports, political 
parties. So why do we have to suppose that music evolved for this purpose? 
Other animals - lionesses, chimps, monkeys for example, are able to maintain 
coherent social groups without song; what makes about human group survival 
more likely where this capacity was present?

============================================================
Tim Tyler" <tim@tt1lock.org> wrote

> Sexual selection offers a good explanation for music - IMO.

In that case, why are there so many people who can't sing? Where are the 
societies in which singing is a crucial part of courtship? (no doubt you can 
find one somewhere, but why are they not common?)

> Women seem to like men who can sing them good love songs.

....and what percentage of the population is that? 1%?
If singing ability were the determining factor in survival, my lineage would 
have died out centuries ago.

> Maybe the ability to do that is correlated in some way with good health.

This is adaptationist reasoning gone bonkers - which is actually its usual 
condition, at least as applied to human behavior, as in this case.

> Much the same explanation no doubt applies to birdsong.

Which is completely different from music, in that it lacks rhythm and melody 
and is mind-numbingly repetitious.

============================================================
"Malcolm" <malcolm@55bank.freeserve.co.uk> wrote
> Every culture has music.

True.

> We don't know exactly what role it plays, but it is
> a good way of co-ordinating the movements of large groups of people. I 
> call
> this the "heave-ho" theory.

What adaptive use is the coordination of everybody's movement?

> A lot of music also mimics the rhythm of sexual
> intercourse, so I call this, rather rudely, the "rumpy-pumpy" theory.

Oh is that what you call it? Thank you for sharing that.
But there are many music genres that have entirely non-sexual rhythms and 
are still indisputably music - Gregorian Chant, polyphonic church music, 
folk ballads, baroque music, classical music; even martial music, though it 
is strongly rhythmic, does not have a sexual rhythm. The strongest sexual 
rhythms are found in rock music, which was invented in the 20th century, at 
least 100,000 years after the first Hs roamed the African savanna.
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