Knowing Lizzie, in addition to being a scientist, is a teacher of music theory and an accomplished musician, I thought I’d frame one aspect of the ID discussion in terms of musical ideas and philosophy.
“Bad design” is one of the most formidable arguments against intelligent design. I’ve responded to this by saying that what constitutes “good design” depends on the goals of the designer. If fuel efficiency is the criteria of good design, then a motorcycle is a better design than an SUV. But some will argue the SUV is a better design for snowy and icy conditions when transporting babies, thus an SUV is a better design. The problem is what constitutes “good design”, and who decides the criteria for good?
We also have the paradoxical situation where good drama needs a bit of “bad” designed into it. If a great novel told a story with no problems, will it be a good drama?
“Once upon a time there were no problems…there were never any problems or difficulties….they lived happily ever after”.
And for some of those familiar with music, I argue the importance of incorporating “bad notes” in making beautiful designs seems plausible.
Here is a table of musical intervals. The list contains intervals that are called “perfect”. The label of perfect implies the other intervals are considered less than perfect, even the extreme opposite, such as the tritone interval “musica diabolica (the devils’ music)“.
The “musica diabolica” interval is featured in the first two notes of the melody known as “Maria” by Leonard Bernstein. When the word “Ma-ri-a” is sung to Bernstein’s music, the “musica diabolica” interval can be heard in the “Ma-ri” part. But then Berstein transforms the two harsh sounding notes of “Ma-ri” into a 3 beautiful notes of “Ma-ri-a”. We have two imperfect dissonant intervals (“Musica diabloica” combined with a minor-2nd) to make something beautiful. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts in the final effect. Bernstein figured out how to incorporate two imperfect parts into a heavenly design that would not have been otherwise possible using only perfect parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdB6CN7jww
By way of contrast, if musical culture enforced the convention of Gregorian chants using harmonies only with “perfect” intervals, we’d be stuck singing Gregorian chants rather than richly harmonized Christmas carols at Christmas. The resulting music would be sterile and lacking variety and contrast, much like a novel with no drama (where all the characters are perfect and the plot free of drama from start to finish).
Thus a little “bad design” may allow us to experience a greater good that would otherwise not be possible, it just takes a greater level of intelligent design to make that possible.
PS
Here is a nerdy treatment of the topic of “good” design in relation to tuning of musical instruments and personal tastes. It may be insufferably boring to most readers here, so I leave it as a post script.
Greeks found the notion of irrational numbers shocking, and this is reflected by the cultural myth that Hippasus drowned for divulging the secret of irrational numbers, a secret which came from the gods.
The Greeks loved whole numbers. In quantum mechanics and harmonics we see whole numbers to describe certain things. For example, we have quantum numbers that are whole numbers or integers. So what the Greeks perceived in their philosophy is echoed even a the atomic level.
The notion of sounds with small whole number ratios in pitch was very satisfying to the Greeks. Hence, a lot of the way instruments were tuned in the past relied heavily on small whole number ratios (like 2-to-1 and 3-to-2) .
The Ancient Greeks probably would have had a fit if they lived to see how musical tuning evolved in western culture toward “equal temperament”. Equal temperament is based on the 12th root of 2 which is an irrational number. So which design is bad or good for tuning of musical instruments? It seems the question of “good” or “bad” is somewhat in the ear of the beholder.
I like the “irrational” tuning of equal temperament better. It is where western music has evolved. What defines perfection in tuning in my book? A little irrationality…
Unfortunately, videos available on the topic aren’t so good. I link to the best I could find. In the video below, the piano on the left was tuned in meantone temperament. It sounded awful to my ears except when pieces were played in C major.
The piano in the middle I presume was tuned in well temperament (“new” temperament). It wasn’t so bad. No wonder Bach liked it. It approaches equal temperament, but isn’t exactly equal temperament.
The piano on the right is tuned in the “irrational” equal temperament. It was the one I liked, but he only played a few notes on it. Irrational equal temperament is how most western music is tuned.
Equal temperament allows melodies to express themselves in different keys effortlessly, whereas in mean tone temperament (closer to the Greek conception of good) the same melodies in another key would sound out of tune. Equal temperament also made it easier for a diverse number of instruments to participate in music production such as in symphony orchestras.
Even though the presenter in the video obviously loved the more “rational” Greek-like modes of tuning, it just didn’t sound right except for pieces played in certain keys. The Bach C# prelude sounded way out of tune on the piano on the left (mean tone temperament), so did the Chopin sonata. He liked it, I didn’t. Ugh!
The reason he liked these old tuning schemes is that music played in the old tuning schemes were possibly those used by the composers. Thus performances using such tunings are more authentic and thus (in his view) more beautiful — but that is subject to debate. Only goes to show, some notions of good and bad design are in the ear of the beholder.
The tuner gives another lecture. The video was a bit confusing, but I’m sure it was clearer for those in the audience who saw the talk in context and with their handouts. He tries to clarify the fact that “equal temperament” in the 18th century isn’t what it means in the 20th century.
NOTE:
As a total aside, I was surprised at the interest physicists had in the question of tuning.
I have heard it said that an A cappella choir will tend to sing in non-equal temperament modes because they have no (irrationally-tuned) musical instruments to reference their tuning with. This makes sense in that it is easier from a physics standpoint to sense frequencies with certain simple whole number relationships rather than the irrational relationships in equal temperament.
From wiki Perfect Fifth
The justly intoned pitch ratio of a perfect fifth is 3:2 (also known, in early music theory, as a hemiola[9][10]), meaning that the upper note makes three vibrations in the same amount of time that the lower note makes two. In the cent system of pitch measurement, the 3:2 ratio corresponds to approximately 702 cents, or 2% of a semitone wider than seven semitones. The just perfect fifth can be heard when a violin is tuned: if adjacent strings are adjusted to the exact ratio of 3:2, the result is a smooth and consonant sound, and the violin sounds in tune. Just perfect fifths are employed in just intonation. The 3:2 just perfect fifth arises in the C major scale between C and G.[11]
Kepler explored musical tuning in terms of integer ratios, and defined a “lower imperfect fifth” as a 40:27 pitch ratio, and a “greater imperfect fifth” as a 243:160 pitch ratio.[12] His lower perfect fifth ratio of 1.4815 (680 cents) is much more “imperfect” than the equal temperament tuning (700 cents) of 1.498 (relative to the ideal 1.50). Helmholtz uses the ratio 301:200 (708 cents) as an example of an imperfect fifth; he contrasts the ratio of a fifth in equal temperament (700 cents) with a “perfect fifth” (3:2), and discusses the audibility of the beats that result from such an “imperfect” tuning.[13]
In keyboard instruments such as the piano, a slightly different version of the perfect fifth is normally used: in accordance with the principle of equal temperament, the perfect fifth is slightly narrowed to exactly 700 cents (seven semitones). (The narrowing is necessary to enable the instrument to play in all keys.) Many people can hear the slight deviation from the idealized perfect fifth when they play the interval on a piano.
I don’t think the argument is based just on bad design, but on the specific nature of the bad design. Its unnecessary bad design. More to the point, its bad design thats very clearly the result of an incremental process of solving problems by minimal small steps, whereas an intelligent designer could use a global holistic approach to design.
The question of bad design usually conflates what is “good” for the object, versus what is good for the designer.
Self destructive design like the Monsanto terminator-traitor GMO seeds certainly don’t benefit the new man-made species of GMOs toward their perpetuity and propagation, the design benefits Monsanto. The species line effectively self-terminates by design.
The fact that organisms in this world have features that may not ultimately benefit them, and may even cause their demise, is not the metric of bad design any more than the villains in great novels are necessarily bad designs in the ultimate sense because they are bad.
Bad is in the eyes and ears of the beholder, and in the question of biological origins, presuming there is a designer, the designed objects notion of bad (our notion of bad) may not be the same as what the intelligent designer considers bad.
This of course presumes for the sake of argument there is an intelligent designer of designs. The point of this essay was that under this assumption there is an intelligent designer, could there be flaws in the design argument based on “bad design” arguments which Darwin used to great effect.
I offered an alternative way of looking at the bad design argument, and in the process I did find some interesting data points about music I thought would be informative and possibly appreciated by those with music backgrounds.
I agree that the question of what does (or doesn’t) constitute “bad” design can be problematic, for the reasons laid out in the OP. But in the context of ID, the question of what does (or doesn’t) constitute “bad” design is just as problematic for ID pushers as it is for ID’s critics! Because if a putatively-‘bad’ Design X can, in fact, be good for reasons which weren’t considered by whoever judged Design X to be ‘bad’… so, too, can a putatively-‘good’ Design X, in fact, be bad for reasons which weren’t considered by whoever judged Design X to be ‘good’.
So the question is this: Can we puny humans, or can we not, distinguish between ‘bad’ Design and ‘good’ Design? ID-pushers certainly think we puny humans can make that call, when they’re arguing that thus-and-such Design is so wonderfully spiffy that it just had to have been the Designer’s handiwork; but when responding to ID’s critics who point out that thus-and-such is actually a kinda sucky Design, ID-pushers’ responses tend to be variations on the general theme we puny humans are just too stupid/uninformed to recognize the Goodness of thus-and-such.
Such inconsistency is, of course, par for the course in Creationist apologetics, and lord knows that ID is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creationism.
The argument against ID isn’t so much about bad design as it is about inefficient design. For a sooper dooper Intelligence supposedly capable of designing and manufacturing a whole universe and every living thing in it from scratch the Designer sure came up with some horribly inefficient ways of doing things. The classic example is the routing of the giraffe laryngeal nerve but there are many others. The methods humans have to employ to get their vitamin C is another example. Having some animals (insects, amphibians, mollusks) require metamorphosis to reach their adult stage is yet another.
The question has arisen in my mind as to whether if we started civilization again, wiped the slate clean, given the architecture of the brain, whether something like western music would arise.
I’ve concluded the Western tuning scheme we have today would eventually arrive given enough time as it is optimal in terms of physics and communication of aesthetics — but this optimality is only achieved via admitting the imperfection of equal temperament tuning. That is to say, the perfect design actually admits a degree of imperfection.
The same question arises with the need for imperfection in communications. If compactness of information is a design goal, then it necessitates that the information must be recorded with errors. This is a consequence of Shannon and other information considerations.
That’s why the best data storage devices have error correction…they could record the data almost error free by making the device less compact, but by allowing recording errors which are corrected later, the device can store more data, hence it is more optimal to allow defects in some aspects of its operation. The modern Compact Disc records data with errors and then with error correction schemes retrieves them.
I was trying to give more artistic examples of the notion of the necessity of some imperfections to achieve designs. The tuning of instruments is quite esoteric, but it touches on a philosophical question as to whether the human auditory system is predisposed to liking certain kinds of sounds over others.
From considerations of physics, particularly acoustics, the perfect 5th corresponds to one of the physical vibrational modes of a string — we see analogs of this in quantum mechanics where there are discrete modes say in the energy levels of an atom. There are inherent modes of vibration of a string. Some of the math of harmonics in some quantum systems looks hauntingly like the math in the study of acoustics…
The vibrational modes of a string are described here:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/string.html#c3
We can approximate all the 12 letters of the pitches through the circle of perfect 5ths if we admit imperfection in the way musical instruments implement the perfect 5th. The circle of 5ths is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths
That imperfection comes as a slight deviation from the ratio of 3/2 from the Greek ideal (harmonic ideal based on physics). This slight imperfection allows architecture of sounds and music not otherwise possible in the world that admitted only the simple “perfect” physical frequencies.
These thoughts aren’t original. They came up in a book that talked about strange attractors in musical scales. The author, like myself, was astonished that one of the powers of the twelfth root of two (equal temperament basis) approximate 3/2 (one of the perfect intervals associated with the modes of string based on physics, aka the perfect 5th).
Western culture has adopted the imperfect representation of perfect 5th because this defect allows a large class of music that sounds “in tune” when playing melodies in different keys. Thus imperfection was the perfect solution.
Get to the point, Sal. Everybody here knows that you’re an ID-pusher, so there’s no need to beat around the bush. Are you, or are you not, leading up to some sort of pro-ID argument here?
Please make that ‘aspect’ clear. What do musical ideas have to do with Intelligent Design Theory (IDT)? According to IDM leaders at the DI, IDT is *NOT* about human-made things, e.g. like music. Why? Because then it could and would be required to identify and study the designers, which IDT *cannot* do, according to IDM leaders, by fiat. (And please don’t regurgitate the veiled reference to archaeology or ‘forensics,’ since music is what is being proposed in this thread.)
stcordova is yet another IDist who intentionally forgets to add the term ‘Theory’ behind the combo (uppercase) ‘Intelligent + Design,’ thus improperly designating the topic of the discussion and misleading readers. Check it: It is a theory that is the main topic of “the ID(T) discussion,” not some reified ID. As we know, lowercase intelligent design (or ‘the design argument’) is already accepted by Abrahamic believers, without the need or reason to claim it as a ‘strictly natural scientific theory.’
Here it seems stcordova is once again demonstrating science-envy, while relating to a humanities theme.
p.s. there’s precious little ‘philosophy’ in the post, which is why I bracketed it above.
From the OP:
I think the driver for evolutionary change is the environment, or that particular niche that any population of organisms occupies. The environmental designer of course has no goals. The goal that drives organisms seems to be survival, or taking the opportunities presented by the niches that are available.
Where Sal goes wrong in understanding evolutionary theory, I think, is he is seduced by the idea of perfection. Dawkins has a go at Plato and essentialism in “The Greatest Show on Earth”. (pp 21 – 27 in my paperback edition). For the organism, the goal of survival can be met through adequacy, being just a little bit better than your rivals.
From the OP:
“Bad design” should not be an argument against IDT at all, although granted some people unfortunately use it that way. The OP is correct that the whole notion of the quality of a design is only coherent in the context of having some knowledge of the goals, capabilities, methods, and resources of the designer. Without any such knowledge, and especially in the case of IDT with its calculated disinterest and disavowal of any such knowledge, then people are just flapping their gums aimlessly to talk about “good” or “bad” design.
Rather, the formidable argument against IDT is that any analysis of design at all is only coherent in the context of having some knowledge of the goals, capabilities, methods, and resources of the designer. If a theory of design has a calculated disinterest and disavowal of any such knowledge, then people are just flapping their gums aimlessly to talk about design.
The OP’s suggestion that “good” design always needs a little “bad part” designed into it is rather nonsensical. The constitutive materials, components, or parts of a design cannot be judged good or bad in and of themselves, independent of the objectives for the overall design. One material may be absolutely useless for a particular application, and hence using it would constitute bad design. But that same material might be just what’s needed to improve a design for another application. Similarly, there aren’t “good notes” and “bad notes”. Any note can sound discordant if placed poorly in one composition and melodious if placed well in another. If a component of a design “improves” the design (e.g., it works better, sounds nicer, etc), then that component can’t, by definition, have been a “bad” component.
The tempered scale evolved via trial and error. The intervals are based on the twelfth root of two, and since musicians by and large don’t know this mathematical fact and wouldn’t know how to implement it, the mathematics was arrived at by trial and error.
Prior to the invention of keyboard instruments (harpsichord, organ) music was played in whatever key was natural for an instrument. If you wanted string instruments to play together, you had to tune them to the key of the composition.
There were dozens of attempts to make a tempered scale, and much discussion of how to do it. Harry Partch wrote a wonderful history of the various Western scales, and included some discussion of non-western scales.
The tempered scale is a compromise. It is not based on the natural overtones of instruments, and in fact, the overtones of natural instruments produce dissonance when chords cross several octaves.
The reason the tempered scale won is because it enabled singers to transpose music to a more comfortable range and allowed composers to write for large orchestras without worrying about the natural keys if the instruments.
It’s a wonderful historically documented example of variation and selection leading to a complex invention.
Goal directed.
Yes, the point was:
That’s a pro-ID argument in as much as it tries to address what I consider the best anti-ID argument in the minds of people. The next best is probably the absence of the designer. The third best is probably evolution. That is what I rank for the minds of most people.
I have a different ranking than others as to what I think are good and bad arguments against ID, “bad design” isn’t one of them. I listed my ranking here of good and bad arguments against ID:
The outline of the discussion:
1. bad design arguments are formally not adequate grounds to reject ID
2. this can be illustrated with examples of good drama that incorporates villains, musical compositions that incorporate “bad” intervals, musical tuning schemes that deliberately incorporate imperfections
,
3. I pointed out the discussion of tuning would be insufferably boring to the uninitiated and uninterested, so I left it as a post script. However for some, it is an extremely interesting topic. Apparently you do seem to have much interest in the topic. Not only does it raise questions about the philosophy of aesthetics in the question of good and bad design, it delves into physics, the physiology of our auditory capabilities, and some interesting history starting from the Greeks. If you don’t like those topics, that’s fine. I’m merely elaborating the details of my illustration of “bad design” in musical tuning that results in perfect design relative to the goals of the designers.
Thanks for your comments.
And what was natural to the instrument was what the Greeks perceived in their Pythagorean tuning scheme, the perfect intervals must be tuned according to simple ratios whereby the modes of the standing waves for the configuration of each note have great intersection.
For example say a note has fundamental frequency of the The standard pitch 440 Hz.
According to the hyperphysics link above, the natural standing mode frequencies will be whole number multiples of that so the natural modes are:
440 * n, where n = 1,2,3,4
The most perfect other notes that will share similar modes are the notes one “octave” (or perfect 8) above or below 440Z.
For example, the note an octave below 440, has a pitch of 220 HZ. It’s natural modes are:
220 * n, where n = 1,2,3,4
The human auditory system, for whatever reason, senses notes that share so many standing wave modes we ended up calling them by the same alphabetic names (like A, B,C#,D….) or solfeggio names (do re mi…).
The other perfect intervals like the perfect 5th and perfect 4th also share a large number of modes between the notes.
Strictly speaking, equal temperament destroys this exact relationship for the perfect 5th and perfect 4th, but providentially, the imperfection is only slight. How slight?
This morning I silently depressed the E above middle C one of my acoustic pianos to release its damper so that standing waves could be induced on it if sufficiently energized. It is equal temperamently tuned to 329.62 Hz.
It is an imperfect “perfect” 5th above A of 220 Hz. If E were tuned as a true perfect 5th above A 220, it would have a pitch 3/2 as much, namely 330Hz, but instead, according to equal temperament, E is tuned to 2^(7/12) * 220 Hz = 329.62 Hz.
Theory predicts if the imperfection is slight enough, striking A-220Hz on the piano will transfer a little energy through the air and induce a standing wave on the E string at a frequency of approximately 660 Hz or so (the first standing wave mode that A-220Hz and E-330Hz share in common). Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened as I could hear it! Technically the string probably vibrated at 659.25Hz, but the important thing is it was behaving almost like something tuned according to the Pythagorean Greek mathematical ideal.
“Perfect” tuning precluded diverse instruments from cooperating, further it prevented “perfect” modulation of melodic themes whereby the mathematical relationships in the melody notes are exactly duplicated at the modulated frequencies (echoes of what electrical engineers would do in the realm of remote transmission via modulation at different frequencies).
From a music composition standpoint, perfect modulation of melodic themes takes priority over perfect tuning. It was providential that this probably came about in order to get diverse instruments to be able to play in ensemble.
Goes to show, what defines “perfect” is relative to the goals of the designers.
Gregory
I,ve moved your comment to guano. You are welcome to repost minus the ad hominem.
The tempered scale was goal directed, but composition from generation to generation is shaped by a changing marketplace. There is no static or absolute standard for what is good music.
Sal,
I have a different ranking than others as to what I think are good and bad arguments against ID, “bad design” isn’t one of them. I listed my ranking here of good and bad arguments against ID:
Bad design isn’t an good argument against ID , but it is a good argument against good design being a proof of ID.
Well, as it happens….
I am something of an expert on temperaments (musical ones, that is).
🙂
And I’d say a few things.
Firstly, only relatively recently has equal temperament been standard in Western music. Bach’s “Well-tempered Clavier” was almost certainly not tuned in equal temperaments. There are many other temperaments that are circular (i.e. you can play in any key, right round the circle of fifths) but not equal.
Secondly, the reason there is a problem to solve is because Western harmony is based on the equivalence between the natural interval of the major third, which is part of the harmonic series, and the interval you get when you pile up four perfectly, perfectly tuned, fifths (e.g. C:G, G:D, D:A, A:E).
Other musical traditions don’t try to approximate these two notes (the E harmonic of a C fundamental, and the E you get when you go four fifths “round” from C).
The difference between the two is about 22 cents (1 cent=1/1200 of an octave), what is called the “syntonic comma”. So one way of fixing it is by shaving 1/4 of the syntonic comma off all your fifths. The fifths are heavily tempered, but major thirds are beautiful. This system is called “mean-tone” and was widely in use until composers started to want to use remote keys.
At which point they encounted a second problem, which is the “pythagorean comma” – the difference between the note you get if you go up 1 octaves, and the note you get when you go up 12 fifths – you overshoot by another comma (about 24 cents). However, if you have already shaved 1/4 of the syntonic comma off all those fifths, you will undershoot. If you take 1/12 of the pythagorean off all the fifths, you will get their exactly, but you won’t have done much for the syntonic comma.
One trick is to take 1/4 pythagorean comma off 4 of the fifths, or 1/6 pythagorean comma off six of them, which improves the thirds in the “near” keys, but makes them worse in the more remote keys. Or you can use other systems in which you take varying amounts off various fifths.
That gives you a circular temperament, so you can play the Bach 48 Preludes and Fugues, but not equal temperament.
So you could sort of say it “evolved” but actually a lot of smart people did a lot of thinking, using basic theory based on Pythagorean principles and geometry.
No solution is “perfect” but that is simply because the entire Western musical tradition is based a non-equality.
Aside from the fact that there are numerous non-western scales, within the western tradition we have musical traditions that allow or require deviations from the musical scale. Jazz and blues often involve singing off pitch for expression.
I’ve often wondered about people who have “perfect pitch.” What exactly are they perfect at? The current Western scale is a compromise reached by consensus and for convenience. Harry Partch “designed” a more rational scale, but never sold it as a desirable alternative for composition.
Most of us are so accustomed to the tempered scale that a Pythagorean scale sounds ugly. There are people who cannot bear to listen to performances on period instruments or with period tuning.
Blas argues that the evolution of the scale was goal directed, but how was the goal established? It certainly wasn’t established in advance. The goal evolved along with the various variations in tuning. In the end, the marketplace of performers and patrons arrived at a stable species of tuning.
Even today there are numerous scales in use. My copy of the Autotune program has a menu lists about 50 scales.
Do we need to have the specifications and goals of the designer in order to judge and object designed? No. Design, as far as ID is concerned is the negation of chance and law that are recognizable to our specifications, even specifications for “bad designs”.
The self-destructing Monsanto terminator-traitor species is an excellent example of GMO design that has no benefit to the organism. From an evolutionary standpoint, if we saw such a device, a biological entity that was designed to preclude reproduction in successive generations, it would be viewed as maximally unfit, and thus in the evolutionary mind, non-functional.
But of course it was designed, its self-destruct feature was cleverly designed. So what if it looks like a bad design according to evolutionary specifications, it is still a design.
For example (as Thornton mentioned) the chrysalis phase of monarch butterflies. It has dubious survival advantage, it looks horribly inefficient, but in terms of suggesting there is creator that likes to build Rube Goldberg machines that don’t conform to explanations via selection, it’s a great design. Like the self-destructing GMO species that Monsanto created, the design might be bad for the species, but great for the designer.
From the standpoint of ID, one can still judge a “bad” design as a design, even if it conforms to what some might view as bad. Bad design is not an argument against intelligent design. This is like saying the Monsanto terminator-traitor self-destructing seeds aren’t designed because they are “bad” designs that self-destruct. That’s the wrong inference. They are “bad” for the organism, but good for the designers (as in they ensure farmers will keep buying seeds from Monsanto for planting).
Bad design arguments aren’t a valid criticism of design theory. But the absence of having the goals and intentions of the designer are not a requisite for recognizing designs. We dig up many archaeological artifacts, and many times we have no idea their purpose. This is especially true of artifacts with engravings we don’t understand.
As far as what an omniscient designer would do — would he make “perfect” biological organisms as perfect God? Is that logically even possible. Ergo, it would seem God, by definition would make imperfect designs (imperfect relative to Him, that is).
Lizzie,
Regarding what you said — WOW!
I have not cross-posted this essay yet at UD because I felt TSZ was the better venue given your musical insights. I did not realize Petrushka also has quite a great deal of in-depth knowledge on the topic.
Thanks all for the input. Independent of ID, these comments in response to the OP made it worth my effort to write this essay.
Thanks!
Sal
The negation of chance tells us nothing about the history of something. Nothing.
petrushka,
Thanks for the comments on tuning, that was very informative. And it leads me to ask a small off-topic question. Your handle, is that because of Stravinsky’s Petrushka? Sorry for the off-topic, but I’ve been meaning to ask for about a year.
Yes. I’m so nerdy, that was the first LP I ever bought. Stravinsky conducting. I still have it and listen to it.
Something you might not have guessed, but I chose that name to use at UD, at a time when many AtBC regulars were talking about sock puppets. Despite the puppet reference, I have never re-registered at a site where I was banned.
UD is the only site that banned me simply for disagreeing with the reigning management.
ETA: Petrushka is actually a marionette.
“Design, as far as ID is concerned is the negation of chance and law”
Again, properly stated, the topic is “Intelligent Design Theory” (IDT). stcordova is ‘trying to pull a fast one,’ as if he doesn’t know that IDT is a THEORY. He also knows (or at least should), that there is *NO* IDT for human-made things such as music.
No, it’s not worth the time re-composing, Alan. stcordova is still ducking. That’s enough.
Mr. Cordova, I notice over at UD you’ve posted several replies to a post I made here at TSZ. That’s not a very good way to have an honest discussion since I’m one of the many who has been banned at UD and therefore can’t respond. If you have something to say to me, say it here.
They can recognize frequencies without reference to other notes. I knew a pianist like that, and she said it was a curse. One time she played a piano were all the notes where in tune relative to each other (presumably equal temperament), but all the frequencies were shifted down a little relative to the standard pitches.
In her ears, she couldn’t recognize what she was playing, it messed with her memory and she could not continue performing. I can only imagine what would happen to her if she tried to play harpsichords that were non-equal temperament tuned — she’d probably freak out and have to stop playing.
I tune pianos using an electronic tuner, so I am somewhat sensitive to hearing variations from equal temperament, but I don’t have perfect pitch.
When the tuner/performer in the video modulated the prelude in C to C# on the mean-tone temperament, I started to freak out. Yikes!
I’m afraid that would be me, depending on the key. It was enlightening for me to hear that when Prelude in C (the “Ave Maria” harmony for Gounod) was played in the key of C, I could hardly tell it was tuned to the Pythagorean scale. I would have thought it was equal temperament, but when he modulated that melody to C#, it was like an explosion — it was so obvious something was different than what I was accustomed to!
The fact that we don’t know the purpose of, or specifications for, some of the ancient artifacts that we’ve found doesn’t negate the fact that some knowledge of the goals, capabilities, methods, and resources of the designer is necessary. Ancient human artifacts are recognized as such because we have a lot of basic understanding of what humans need, want, are capable of, are prone to doing, are known to have done, have done in a similar fashion, etc. We can recognize the hallmarks of human activity because of our experience with human design, whether or not we have a complete understanding of the object in question. There are cases, which are not altogether uncommon, in which there are disputes as to whether an artifact found at an archeological site was human-made or natural. Those who argue for such artifacts being human-made generally do so by appealing to similarities with known human-made objects, by hypothesizing about possible functions based on known human needs and activities, and by attempting to demonstrate how the artifact may have been made using known human methods and tools. We don’t recognize design ex nihilo. Considerations of the designer are instrumental and inescapable.
Yes of course. The comment was directed at UD readers, but I’ll repost my comment here. Apologies.
I wrote:
How is it you come to know the Designer’s capabilities and intentions to create something that is purposely “extravagant” and not just the inefficient work of an incompetent bumbler?
Bill Dembski’s No Free Lunch has a section that uses music as an illustration of detecting specifications. He specifically mentions Arthur Rubinstein in relation to generating specified complexity on pages 93-96, and 120. He also mentions Franz Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsody in relation to specified complexity and Turing machines.
Bill Dembski, like some at UD and TSZ is also an accomplished musician. If anything, it is surprising these sort of discussion about music and ID haven’t come up more often.
Also Mr. Cordova, please take a minute and learn the scientific definition of ‘theory’. The hypothesized “Intelligent Design” of life isn’t a scientific theory. Neither is ReMine’s “biotic message” nonsense.
What defines good design in music is the audience.
Which changes over time and is different for different cultures. It’s a perfect example of speciation by gradual accretion of variations. And most of the intermediates are preserved.
Yes, I like the analogy! The niche environment is not going to recommend that poor* performance to friends. There are not going to be encores and repeat performances.
*Define “poor”? I can’t, objectively!
“Bill Dembski’s No Free Lunch has a section that uses music as an illustration of detecting specifications.”
Dembski makes so many equivocations, it is surprising IDists take him seriously. Most credible scholars, including Abrahamic believers, don’t.
“it is surprising these sort of discussion [sic] about music and ID haven’t come up more often.”
‘ID,’ as you call it, is a misleading concept duo that avoids the vast work in ‘design theory’ by many, many non-IDists who reject IDT wholeheartedly.
How long will it take you to admit that IDT is the topic you are actually raising, not ID? Yawn, stcordova.
p.s. just to add that ‘design’ seems to be a rather awkward (IDist forced) metaphor when it comes to music, imo, as a non-musician. I’m surprised TSZers are biting so far. Composition anyone?
You don’t need to know the Designer’s intentions. Some of his capabilities are in evidence in the artifact.
Bumblers don’t make super complex Rube Gold machines that can disassemble and reassemble themselves. That is what happens when a land-based machine disassembles itself and reassembles itself into a flying machine that has a suite of navigation systems including magnetic and mapping navigation to enable travel at almost intercontinental scale (4000 miles) — that is the monarch butterfly.
The argument has been made the selection can build such a wonder, but other arguments even in this thread would suggest selection would select against such an inefficiency. One cannot have it both ways.
It appears selection is selecting against the inefficiencies of creatures with such complex development cycles since these creatures are going slowly extinct. If so, then selection is not indicated as the mechanism of formation of such creatures as the Monarch butterfly.
David Cope, among others, has written programs that can learn the style of a composer and compose original music in that style. Without knowing any rules of composition.
Any estimation of the amount of “information” in a composition needs to account for the ability of a very simple algorithm to compose melodies that can fool a non-musicologist.
As I said in a previous post, the complexity of an object tells us nothing about its history.
You can argue this from your armchair all you want, but the wonder does not encode its own history. For that you need to look elsewhere,
A) “the goals of the designer.” OP
B) “You don’t need to know the Designer’s intentions. You don’t need to know the Designer’s intentions. Some of his capabilities are in evidence in the artifact.”
Anyone at TSZ think stcordova will openly, honestly explain why he chose to capitalise ‘Designer’ one time and not capitalise it another time? And why call the ‘Designer’ a ‘he’? Is stcordova sexist?
This is why distinguishing IDT from ID, uppercase ‘Intelligent Design’ from lowercase intelligent design is so important, and why creationists and IDists like stcordova can’t and won’t speak clearly about the distinction. They simply are unwilling to explain their equivocations, following Dembski, Johnson, Behe, et al.
stcordova seems to believe that ‘to be a Christian’ requires supporting either IDism or YECism. That’s such a narrow sectarian viewpoint, blatantly lacking harmony (to use a musical analogy) with greater Christendom.
You know this exactly how? I’ll ask again – you claim butterfly metamorphosis was purposely overdesigned to be “extravagant”. How did you make that determination? Do you have anything to offer besides yet another episode of Personal Incredulity Theater?
Wrong. Natural selection would only weed out inefficiency if there were another more efficient method readily available. NS favors the method that works even if it’s kludgy and inefficient.
The methodology of ID science is to search the literature for examples of structures for which the incremental history has been lost, and to ignore examples of equally complex structures for which we have good evidence of an incremental history.
Not true because you forget the cases where nature chooses complete extinction of a particular architecture independent of whether there is a more efficient method readily available.
You are confusing Natural Selection as falsely conceived by Darwin and Natural Selection as it actually works in the wild according to real-time or near real-time observations in the field and lab. Some times Nature selects to cause extinction of an entire species — in such case the fittest and most efficient of the species are also taken away with the least fit. Darwin’s conception failed to account for this obvious fact of how nature really behaves.
In the case of such extinctions, nature doesn’t wait to get rid of a form because a better one comes along, it can get rid of the existing form without waiting for an improvement. This isn’t like getting rid of your current car once a new model comes along. Nature could care less whether a future improvement is waiting in the future.
The human race is expected by many geneticists to go extinct rather quickly relative to geological time, and they aren’t predicting it will happen because an new improved species of human will emerge. The conception of how you state selection works is contradicted by the facts and even prevailing theory.
So this thread isn’t about ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ qua ‘theory’ at all?
These discussions would be smoother if we substituted differential reproductive success for “selection.”
Metaphors like “selection” become counterproductive when one side or another stretches the metaphor beyond applicability.
Natural selection is simply term used after the fact to indicate that a particular variation appeared to confer a reproductive advantage.
But species or varieties can drop out for any number of reasons unrelated to objective design inferiority.
I don’t follow this at all, Sal. Could you give an example of what you mean by “complete extinction” (is there partial extinction?) “of a particular architecture”?
For a non-musicologist, I suppose maybe 5,000 lines of java code. This would drive a Midi to make non-tonal new age sounding music that is directionless.
Heck a random number generator that chose a mix of random half notes and whole notes in pentatonic scale might fool someone into thinking they were hearing some profound New Age composition!
To make something with high levels of recognizable teleology as is the case for Western Tonal music, that would be harder. If we involve modulation, secondary dominance, and some of the more elaborate harmonic structures (such as used by the Romantics like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff), your guess is as good as mine. I can’t imagine the information base would be small….
One of the Bach’s described the rules for four-part harmony. I suppose a machine could represent that, but the problem is creating heuristics and constraints to allow convergence to pre-specified goal (i.e. the harmony converges on the tonic in root position).
I suspect an algorithm could do well with Theme and Variation. I suppose a computer in some dimension could do well creating “rounds” or “canon” styles of music, maybe it might actually do better than most humans because of its ability to traverse large spaces for solutions quickly.
Alan,
Complete extinction — all members of the species, genus, family higher group go extinct world wide. Architecture can describe a species but is not limited to just a species — for example we have several extinct phyla which include many genus and species. Each phyla represent a discrete architecture that is shared by many diverse species in the phyla. So if an architecture goes extinct, every member that shares that architecture go extinct.
Partial extinction is sometimes used to describe extinction in a geographical location, but not globally.
Sal
Can you give a specific example of a phylum made extinct through natural selection (as opposed to participating in a mass extinction).
Extinction is an example of natural selection as defined by nature itself (meaning, the way things really work), not the way Charles Darwin defines it. Darwin’s definition is not in line with the way nature really “selects”. He presumes it will select the most fit of the forms, that is false, it doesn’t really select. But if we’re going to use the word “select”, it’s what ever survives.
Darwin presumes, like Herbert Spencer, the “fittest” will survive. That’s not true either, especially in extinction events, and it isn’t necessarily true in the sense that ancestors may be more functionally fit than their descendants.
Natural Selection is a misnomer if one conceives of it as Darwin did because it is neither natural (what really happens in the wild) nor is it selection (in the sense of making choice toward some goal).
The problem is my supposed bad usage of the phrase “Natural Selection” is the fact that “Natural Selection” as the way Darwin conceived of it isn’t how nature behaves — the Darwinian view is decidedly unnatural.
I’ve worked with a couple of singers with perfect pitch who also became expert at singing in historical temperaments. They were both, as it happens, geeks as well, and would talk for hours about it – both about the issues of singing not at modern concert pitch (A=440) and in uneven scales.
Essentially they applied moveable and flexible name-labels to all their remembered pitches. You could ask them to sing a Bb, and they’d ask: at what temperament, and what pitch standard?
Perhaps you could communicate better with us if you actually understood what Darwin said and didn’t give the Ken Ham version of Darwin.
Darwin distinguished “natural” selection from human selection, as in plant and animal breeding toward a goal. I defy you to fine any part of Darwin’s natural selection that is not natural in that sense.
Second, nothing in Darwinian natural selection involves a goal.