Music: An Important Digression

...is a chapter in Daniel Dennett's latest book, I've Been Thinking. I wasn't aware how much he was involved in music when he was younger. He's mentioned it in his talks but I wasn't aware of the degree that he was involved in playing in all kinds of orchestras and bands, and he has a good knowledge of jazz harmony as an arranger.

My first Dennett book was Consciousness Explained which I read in the late 90s--probably after reading an interview on Edge.org--which I recall was popular with artists and musicians at the time. It was the so-called "Third Culture", as an extension of the Two Cultures dialectic in the early 1960s. E.O. Wilson also touched on it in Consilience, about the unity of knowledge between the sciences and humanities.

There's a natural progression of people who have a musical background into other science domains. Dennett is a philosopher but it's very common that the people who are into jazz tend to gravitate toward the sciences, particularly engineering and physics. Even the be-boppers were interested in physics, at least marginally. Physics and music theory seem to have a resonance--most likely because the chord symbols used in jazz charts resemble formulas. John Coltrane elaborated on this with his Coltrane Changes, which also overlapped with mysticism, particularly the enneagram or mandalas, also touching on philosophy.

It's almost universal amongst scientists that they will have some interest in music, or use it frequently as a metaphor. However, the connection seems to be limited to primarily classical and jazz. Why is that? Why shouldn't a pop musician or prog-rockers make similar connections between art, science, and philosophy? Why can't Harry Styles(!), for example, be inspired by science, and use it in songwriting? I think it may have to do with language: since classical and jazz are primarily instrumental forms, words don't get in the way. (This is particularly ironic for Dennett, given his theories about language and thought).  Progressive rock obviously has never been strictly instrumental: Neil Peart was the philosophical engine of Rush. Otherwise, Rush's lyric writing would have been more typical of pop songs with mostly throw-away lyrics, or lyrics that simply served to fill that space in the music. You need someone who can be a bridge between disciplines and successfully finesse them and Neil Peart filled that role. It's not easy to do, especially in today's cultural climate.

There are open access points between art and science (as well as religion, spirituality, and mysticism--think Yes in pop music, and of course, the liturgical music of the baroque) where you can explore each of the "rooms". It is culture that determines whether you can actually do that and be taken seriously. The 90s, in particular, were a good time for these explorations (as part of the Third Culture movement) as I recall, but not so much now. It will come back at some point--perhaps when the so-called First Turning arrives (or on a first day of spring).