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2 replies for the price of 1

graeme:

you know that psychologists were just fed up with the whole "get your kid to
listen to Mozart and it will be smarter" because A) it was only one study,
and B) because the stimulus (Mozart) received more attention than the idea
that complex environments help develop minds that can understand complex
environments.  I think anyone in this field of research would find that
studying the difference between two groups where one listens to Phil Thomson
and the other to Kim Cascone will not prove fruitful (how about a control
group that only has access to the microsound list?).  I guess if it can
happen, I'd like to see a hypothesis.

good point actually. i haven't researched the matter much, but i wouldn't put my money (if i had any, that is) on a study that tries to see which composer makes people smarter than the other. or more generally violent, or more socially involved, etc.

i was mostly thinking of the basic level of, what individual people think of the music they hear. do they get it? do they like it? what do they do with it? of course you can't just go & ask people specifically these questions or attempt to profile them; it's unethical (yep) & the proper answer is necessarily more subtle & genuinely expressed. this is why i love reading well-researched, well-written music reviews, often for albums which i know well already; i simply find it interesting to see how sound is translated to word, the patterns (whether recurring or singular) that emerge. as a matter of fact, such writing, when it is very well done, sometimes helps me hear the music differently & in the best cases, with more immediacy. another demonstration of this is a mailing list such as this one, & what better source is there as microsound-l if you want to look up what there is to understand (or enjoy!) to kim cascone or phil thomson or cray or yituey or pita?

ben:

> but in science, one can prove that something is false.

since all of mathematics is built on a set of axioms, it seems to me
logically unassailable that even "proofs" of falsehood are only as good as
the axioms they rest upon.  as far as I know there is no self-contained
logical system that operates without such a set of basic assumptions, and
therefore this same external dependence.  but I haven't studied philosophy,
only analysis, so maybe I haven't been exposed to the necessary fruity
perspective to believe in some sort of absolute truth.  ;)


neither is this a belief, nor is it about "absolute truth".

in practice, the lifespan of a theory goes from the point where it is assumed to be true to the point where it is known to be false, simply because a certain observation contradicts the theory, at which point the theory may be modified to account for the new observation, but it is then a new, unverified theory. the old one is, for all practical scientific purposes, false, unless there was an error in the observation.

if you're curious about this, i would suggest you read karl popper (a philosopher of science)'s book _objective knowledge_ if you would like to read the proper argument. call it a pragmatic (& thus not purely logical) way to look at science & knowledge, which doesn't mean it doesn't have its own flaws; nor is it always useful. the main problem i see with this theory (or way to organize scientific thought) is that it's a little flat--it doesn't account for the (not uncommon) case of a technically false theory which continues to be relevant for other reasons, & even inspire later theories (as with feigenbaum who gained insight from goethe's scientific writing, which had long been thought to be devoid of scientific interest); but i think that is beyond the issue of truth or falsehood & into the field of paradigms & the organization of thought, & a little bit of history of science.

this is unfortunately wildly OT, but i must say philosophy of science has been an interesting area to research. my one semester of university ever. <sheds tear>

have a nice day
~ david