Faith and Science

[TheBigDog]

Originally Posted by coldcreation

Your experiment for small minds is irrelevent. Of course we could prove music exsits. Vibrations could be detected. The base notes would pass directly through your body. They could be recorded and visualized with any stereo system available on the market today.

Without ears would we have a concept or context of music?
Can you look at the dancing lights on a stereo and recongnize the song?
Would the song be recreated by making the lights repeat the same motion?

Originally Posted by coldcreation

We could also write music without every having heard it, or without every hearing. We could even play music on any instrument.

Without sensory feedback, how would a person play any instument? The point is to make music, not noise.

Originally Posted by coldcreation

My point: when something is physical there is available in the environment evidence of its existence. When no evidence is available, it usually means the whatever is been sought is product of pure thought.

My point: when you assume that nothing is lost when information is translated from one form to another you are gravely mistaken.

Originally Posted by coldcreation

That is the difference with the physical and the metaphysical, with the natural and the supernatural.cc

Without ears, "sound vibrations" would be physical; "music" would be metaphysical. Does that mean it doesn't exist?

CC, I shall take your comments under advisement and state the question again...

A small experiment for minds of all sizes...

Take music - something we all recognize when we hear it. But now imagine we have no ears. Could science ever prove that music exists? Even if we were completely surrounded by it, could math and observation ever prove that there was music and not just sound?

Bill

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by webenton

Without ears would we have a concept or context of music?
Can you look at the dancing lights on a stereo and recongnize the song?
Would the song be recreated by making the lights repeat the same motion?Bill

Yes.

Originally Posted by webenton

Without sensory feedback, how would a person play any instument? The point is to make music, not noise.Bill

Some call Led Zeppelin noise. Others call the sound of waves hitting a beach music.

Originally Posted by webenton

My point: when you assume that nothing is lost when information is translated from one form to another you are gravely mistaken.Bill

I think that recording studios are well enough equiped to handle the job. With digital technology virtually no information is lost. It's just a question then to apply a combination of effects to th individual: lights, vibrations, colors perhaps and the sound/music should be decipherable.

Originally Posted by webenton

Without ears, "sound vibrations" would be physical; "music" would be metaphysical. Does that mean it doesn't exist?Bill

Why would the music be metaphysical? I dissagree with the reasoning.

Originally Posted by webenton

Take music - something we all recognize when we hear it. But now imagine we have no ears. Could science ever prove that music exists? Even if we were completely surrounded by it, could math and observation ever prove that there was music and not just sound?

Bill

Yes to the first. Yes to the second (the interface between music and sound is far from clear, it is too subjective: most of what I listen to might be called sound or noise).

Do you have any other analogies beside music-sound-noise?

cc

[TheBigDog]

CC, A swimming pool is more fun when you get in and swim.

Perhaps my question is poorly worded, and I need to change my approach to get you to come in and swim around a bit. So here it goes again...

A small experiment for minds of all sizes...

Take music - something we all recognize when we hear it. But now imagine we have no ears, we have never had ears. We have evolved into beings that have no concious use of sound. Yet in our physical world there exist the same fauna and flora that we know today. We, instead of vocal cords and ears, have developed a language of hand signals and facial expressions. We have computers, and monitors with awsome 3D graphics, but no sound cards or speakers, or headphones. There is written language, and a spectrum of colors, but no notion of musical notation, octaves, chords, etc. If you are a man in that world, could science ever prove that music exists? Even if we were completely surrounded by it, could math and observation ever prove that there was music and not just sound?

Forget the question about taste in music. Call it your taste in music for your own purposes.

Bill
ps. Don't bellyache about people not responding to your posts. What am I, chopped liver?