Music Out of Range of Darwins Instrument
In Science this week,1 Michael Balter reported on a Montreal meeting of the Brain, Music and Sound Research Center (BRAMS). The center is gaining attention for its renewed interest in the biology of music, and why human beings are so good at this skill with its dubious survival value. The topic came up about how music might have evolved. Balter reported about his conversation with Isabelle Peretz, a neuropsychologist at the University of Montreal and co-director of BRAMS.
Yet whereas work on musical learning is showing progress, “music remains a mystery,” Peretz says. “The biggest question is what it is for.” Researchers have suggested many scenarios for why musical abilities might have evolved, such as enhancement of social solidarity and increasing communication between mothers and children (Science, 12 November 2004, p. 1120). But Peretz is cautious about such speculations. Although she has long argued against claims by researchers such as Harvard University cognitive scientist Steven Pinker that music is just “auditory cheesecake” with no adaptive function, she conceded in a recent review in Cognition that most hypotheses about music’s role in human evolution are inherently untestable. “I believe that music is in our genes, but belief is not science”–more evidence is needed, she says.
See also the 03/07/2002 and 12/09/2004 entries on music and evolutionary theory. A new, detailed article by a medical doctor on the intricate design and construction of the human ear can be found on Apologetics Press.
1Michael Balter, “Study of Music and the Mind Hits a High Note in Montreal,” Science 9 February 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5813, pp. 758 – 759, DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5813.758.
A scientist gets a little closer to singing on pitch (compare 11/12/2004). Hallelujah.