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 see Mr. Cordova has decided to ignore the questions about his claim. Looks like he was just making it up as he goes. Creationists do that a lot I’ve noticed.
I’ll also note that Mr. Cordova has his own pet definition of ‘natural selection’ different than the one used by the scientific community. Creationists love to make up their own definitions too. Makes it easier for them to hide in the murky waters of ambiguity.
stcordova,
I’m afraid it is you who are confusing matters. Darwin conceived NS as an analogue of breeder selection. ‘Varieties’ with inherently greater output will tend to outcompete the lesser, ultimately to the point of their extinction. But must such varieties always be capable of interbreeding? It is an ecological statement, and is not restricted to single sexual species, though we typically do tend to think of within-species competition. This reflects the fact that conspecifics are typically the closest competitors an individual will encounter, and that change down a lineage in sexual species is that which interests us most, since we are such, as is most of our food.
But the collection or arena within which NS can be said to occur is not solely drawn by interbreeding. It applies to the production of any area – think of a mixture of bacteria: asexual and effectively ‘species’ at the level of the individual. Then think of a collection of sexual species in competition for some resource. NS still applies, but can be harder to isolate because of imperfect niche overlap and more general differences in output.
Entire sexual species can go extinct through NS (and for other reasons as well). It just requires one to shift the level at which one thinks of NS occurring. It is not fixed by anything ‘natural’, though the natural boundary of interbreeding does provide an interesting example of the broader principle operating in a particular arena: the sexual gene pool.
Yeah? Groovy. As you may already be aware, our gracious hostess has argued that the process of evolution is, itself, a Designer. Given a product of the Designer that is evolution, and a product of a more-conventional Designer that’s got a sentient mind, what “evidence in the artifact” would you use to determine which of those two products was, er, produced, by which of the two Designers?
Or if you want to argue that no, there ain’t no way evolution is a Designer, no way nohow, how would you demonstrate that our gracious hostess is in error on this point?
If you’re talking about 1 (one) specific, individual bumbler, who’s attempting to create 1 (one) specific, individual mechanism all in 1 (one) specific, individual go, then sure, a bumbler ain’t gonna do the job. But who says there’s only one bumbler at work? Okay, Fred Hoyle says so, albeit only implicitly rather than actually saying so in so many words, in his tornado-in-a-junkyard caricature. So let’s consider an alternate scenario, which starts with some sort of ludicrously primitive self-reproducing—
What’s that, Sally-boy? You want to say that I don’t get to just assume the existence of a self-reproducing whatzit for my scenario? Okay, fine. But in that case, you don’t get to just assume the existence of a Designer for your scenario. Because in each and every case of a designed entity whose origins are known, functional biology has been a necessary prerequisite for that designed entity. For each and every Designed entity whose origin is known, that origin has been one of the following:
a: One or more living beings
b: A Designed entity whose origin is, itself, one or more living beings
Which means that biology is a necessary prerequisite for Designers. So if you want to argue that Life requires a Designer, you damn well need to explain where the hell that Designer came from. But thus far, no ID-pusher I am aware of has ever yet done more than just assume the existence of the Designer they invoke. Can you do more than assume the existence of the Designer you invoke, Sally-boy?
Can you demonstrate an origin for Designers that doesn’t require biology to come first, Sally-boy? If you can’t do that—if you’re just making the unsupported assumption of ‘a Designer that doesn’t require biology as a prerequisite’—you, of all people, do not get to whine about anybody else’s unsupported assumptions.
And frankly, the hypothesis of “a highly primitive whatzit with the capability to make copies of itself” is not a bald, unsupported assertion. Crystal growth is exactly and precisely an instance of “a highly primitive whatzit with the capability to make copies of itself” and so is the phenomenon of fire. Which means that I can point to 2 (two) distinct instances of “a highly primititive whatzit with the capability to make copies of itself”, which is two more than the 0 (zero) instances of “a Designer for whom functional biology is not a necessary prerequisite” which your scenario requires.
So.
Alternate scenario.
Start with some sort of ludicrously primitive self-reproducing whatzit. Let this whatzit reproduce itself with less-than-100%-perfect fidelity. The total number of physically possible variations on this whatzit is going to be finite; since the total population of whatzits will tend to rise along an exponential curse, it’s not going to be all that long before the population of whatzits contains actual physical instances of most-to-all of the physically possible variants of the original ür-whatzit.
For each individual member of the population of whatzit-variants, there will be a finite number of physical variants… and since each whatzit-variant is physically different from the ür-whatzit, the set of physically possible variants of Whatzit-Variant X will differ from the set of physically possible variants of the original ür-whatzit.
So.
Tell me, Sally-boy: How, exactly, do you propose to distinguish a product of that sort of “designer”, on the one hand, from a product of an ‘extravagant’ Designer such as you want to invoke? Exactly what sort of “evidence in the artifact” will you use to make that call?
Four part harmony is very algorithmic. I don’t think it would be difficult to write a computer program that could harmonize a chorale.
In fact \here is one that claims to work.
Interestingly, it’s based on a learning algorithm – i.e. the way evolution works 🙂
As I say, complexity does not encode its own history, and history is the object of dispute.
In any forensic investigation you look for agents capable of producing the history.
So far, ID has not produced any candidates for an agent capable of producing the fossil record or producing the remarkable nested pattern of similarities and differences in genomes. Nor any motive for producing patterns of evidence that mimic what is expected if the agent is evolution.
http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm
Sure they have. GAWDIDIT! is the answer.
Take Mr. Cordova here for instance. On other boards he’s well known for his YEC stance. Just this morning at UD he created a new thread promoting an Answers In Genesis article with the same hackneyed list of YEC claims – the human appendix isn’t vestigial, evolution doesn’t cause bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance, scientists only assume that molecules-to-man evolution is true, yadda yadda yadda.
Of course Mr. Cordova and his ilk can never name their Designer on open science forums because it violates the First Law of ID Subterfuge – IXNAY ON THE ODGAY!.
Getting back to the question of the OP, actually good design is much more than the the quality of the note. Rather it is the quality of the composition. It is the composition that evokes emotion, passion, revere, hope, dreams, melancholy. These are the things listeners are after. These are the things that composers seek to master in order to entrance the audience.
Sal’s remark that imperfect notes could very well be a strategy, whether created or inadverently discovered in the course of playing out a composition, in developing a piece of good music, is only a tiny aspect of what is required.
The fundamental requirement is an idea. The tools required to embody the idea may perhaps be already in possession or picked up in the course of creating a piece, but the idea must come first.
Sometimes the idea is fully mature before even one note is written on paper. Sometimes the idea is an infant, learning as it grows. Either way, the idea is prerequisite and fundamental.
Contrasting this with evolution, absent an idea, it is incapable of creating the myriad integrated systems that we observe in nature. Step-wise replication acting on variation quickly runs aground without a visionary template to follow.
I believe design deniers try to get around this by insisting that advantageous variation creates the systems. Yet, the concept of advantage is foresight. Only an organism that is able to learn is capable of seizing an advantage. But this would concede the organism is sufficiently well developed. But then this begs the question, what drove the development which provided evolution’s ability to learn from an advantage.
In a nutshell, evolution is a subset of design.
That claim is demonstrably false. There is a whole field of scientific study – evolutionary algorithms – which uses exactly that method with no “visionary template” to create both functional and often remarkably complex structures.
NASA evolved antenna
Again that is demonstrably false unless you consider the carrying forward of heritable traits to be learning.
You may want to learn at least a little bit about actual evolutionary theory before presenting your Creationist cartoon misunderstandings.
Evolution is a kind of learning. How can anyone misunderstand that?
In real life, the idea often comes after the design.
When the laser was first designed, nobody knew of any uses for it. Sticky notes apparently resulted from a failure at 3M.
We also make inferences based on what we expect to see in the environment absent human interference. Since the environment is, in most cases, thoroughly familiar, and since it offers a limited variety of forms, when we find something out of place, something that a human could produce (even if we don’t have any guesses as to goals and methods), we may propose anthropogenic origin. Occasionally we get it wrong, when we don’t provision for some unfamiliar feature of non-anthropogenic environment.
petrushka:
I’ve often wondered about people who have “perfect pitch.” What exactly are they perfect at?
Well, I am supposed to have one. I can identify well-enough tuned notes without a reference. Hit a random key on a piano and I’ll tell you what it is. When I hear a Western composition, I can identify its key. But my discrimination is not all that perfect. In fact, I think it’s been getting “out of tune” as I’ve been getting older – not an uncommon thing.
Many people do, and I accept that it isn’t intuitive. It’s key, though.
I suppose that I remain disappointed with people who pontificate about what evolution can and cannot do, without understanding what it is and does.
Bad example. Post it noes didn´t resulted from a failure. A member of a church choir were looking for an easy way to find the songs of the day in the songs book. He were looking for a easy removable sticky paper. And he looked for low adherence adhesives at 3M labs. The adhesive was a failled experiment, but the notes were goal directed.
No. In that program the algorithm has a goal.
That is a too much democratic view of the musical composition. Maybe there was composers that writted music for the taste of the audience, but usual each music composer writed “his” music. What each composer thaught was the “perfect” music. If the audience were the goal, Mozart would have copied the Salieri stile. Very popular at his time. Bach and Beethoven made the music they liked, medievals monks made the gregorian not with the audience in mind but God.
Learning is a process where a subject acquires a concept it didn`t have. Can you explain who is the subject and which are the concepts in the learning process of evolution?
From the link:
“The computer program starts with simple antenna shapes, then adds or modifies elements in a semirandom manner to create a number of new candidate antenna shapes”
Semiramdom do not very darwinistic.
What do you think the difference between “Semiramdom” and “random” is, Blas? It’s hard to read your comments as more than Mungesque “I don’t like evolution” drive-bys.
Evolution tries things and keeps what works.
Yes, composers are typically trained in historical modes of composition, but music changes and speciates over time, and the change is steered by audiences.
Cerebrial music –driven by ideas — seldom finds much of an audience.
It has become rather trivial to write perfect music in historical styles. Computer programs are doing this rather well. But audiences demand change.
That’s an absurd anthropomorphism.
Semiramdom seems the ramdom arrangement of pre existing data.
Isn`t the other way around? It is not antropomorphism calling “evolution” a “learning process”?
Both are learning algorithms, however.
No, because learning is given an operational definition. Change over time, steered by differential survival or reproduction.
I do not see what is evolution trying. You mean “life tries and keeps what works”?
Maybe, but composers do not change ramdomly. They search a change seeking something and usually good musicians they do not make a “market research” for his composition. Usually the music based on “market research” is ephemera.
Tha wasn´t the problem. The problem was that you said “is how evolution works” and it is not.
Then I suggest a palce in this blog with all the operational definition we have to assume for common words.
No, it isn’t.
People have been studying non-human learning for a long time. It at least goes back to Pavlov, but is probably far older.
So are dice random or semi-random?
So according to you a conditioned response is another operational definition of learning.
Good question for the authors of Wiki´s cite.
So you don’t know. Are you just here to try and find semantic quibbles because you don’t like evolution?
It’s one — rather limited kind — of learning.
No, I do not suggest that. A conditioned response is not learning, though the acquiring of a conditioned response is an example of learning.
Scientists who studied conditioning were studying learning. One should not assume that all of learning is conditioning, just as one should not assume that all of learning is acquiring new concepts.
No, I do not try to find semantic quibbles. I only do not wnat to be fooled with wrong examples.
TSZ Operational definitions:
Learning: Option 1 Change over time, steered by differential survival or reproduction.
Option 2 Acquiring condotioned responses
How do you know if it’s wrong if you don’t know if there’s a difference between the two terms?
If you are a scientist studying learning, and you want to take those as operational definitions, then good for you. And if you happen to come up with a body of research based on those definitions, you might be able to persuade people that you are onto a good research program.
On the other hand, if you are just trying to ridicule, then you are being very successful. You are making yourself look ridiculous.
Darwinism claims that the information is created ramdom. NASA “evolved” antenna seems to be semi ramdom evolved. The example do not fits already on that let aside the “selection” of the outcomes.
No, it doesn’t. What is random is the effect a variation has on the reproductive success of the individual with the variation.
Any new ‘information’ is the result of variations to existing structures, the identical thing you defined as ‘semi-random’ with the NASA evolved antenna.
Can’t have it both ways Blas. You need a different semantic game.
Is there something wrong with learning having different kinds? Just curious.
Just as an attempt to reach some understanding of what we are talking about, There are two very broad categories of learning.
Pavlovian conditioning involves associating a stimulus with an involuntary response (a reflex). After repeated paring, the stimulus elicits the response.
The other kind of learning — the one more nearly analogous to evolution — involves a change in the likelihood of a behavior as a result of consequences.
The probability of the behavior is analogous to the frequency of an allele in a population.
Citation please.
What “Darwinism” claims is that populations learn what works by trying variations and keeping some.
Variation is indeed lacking in foresight.
Or, for some reason, a foresightful designer tries every possible variation just for the hell of it, even though He knows which one is needed.
“Or, for some reason, a foresightful designer tries every possible variation just for the hell of it, even though He knows which one is needed.”
A slight correction: if you are going to acknowledge capitalised ‘He,’ then you should likewise use the term ‘Designer’ uppercase.
stcordova intentionally forgets to do this out of convenience in keeping with the masquerade that IDT is a ‘strictly natural scientific’ theory. What he doesn’t realise is that hiding God ‘in nature’ as a ‘Designer’ is no more effective than speaking of ‘evolutionary creation,’ iow, God using evolution for creative purposes, even for anyone reading this message.
This thread has nothing to do with IDT; stcordova is equivocating design/Design on the topic of music and either doesn’t realise it or is acting as a simple fool for IDism.
Uppercase He is used ironically, but I don’t care enough to be consistent.