Text 1151, 84 rader
Skriven 2004-12-21 22:08:00 av Tim Tyler (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: Music's place in evol
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EKurtz99 <EKurtz99@twilightzone.com> wrote or quoted:
> 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?

Most people can't run long distances either - yet few doubt the
adaptive utility of that among our ancestors.

The modern environment differs in many ways from the ancestral one.

For one thing there is more specialisation - it pays to be very
good at one thing - whereas these days those who try to master
everything wind up not being very good at any of them.

In the ancestral world, competition was not so global, the
"winner takes all" phenomenon was not so pronounced.

There was not so much pressure to specialise.  More people
were generalists, and thus more people were likely to have
a broad range of abilities.

Then there's recorded music.  These days, if you want to expose your
parntner to beautiful music, you can give her recordings of the
world's finest - rather than sing to her yourself.  That only shows
her your musical taste, rather than your musical ability, but that's
not a bad move.

Then there's TV.  People sitting around campfires often sing -
even in modern times.  People clustered around a TV set tend not to.

> 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?)

Singing well is not easy.  However music is a common part of courtship.
If you know many musicians, you ought to be able to observe the effect.
If you can't see it first hand, look at the "groupie" phenomenon.

> > 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.

Most people in the world are not red-heads.  It doesn't follow that
red hair does not exist due to sexual selection favouring it.

> > 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.

Very many sexually selected traits signal the health of the displayer
of the trait to prospective mates.  IMO, it is pretty obvious that
singing is one of those.

> > 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.

Birdsong is fine music - you just fail to appreciate it.

It seems likely to me that it plays much the same roles for
birds as it does for us.

Birdsong does convey a message along the lines of "here I am,
I'm of your species" - but there are definite overtones of
"see how beautiful I am, see how beautiful the world is,
see how beautiful you are, lets have sex to celebrate".
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