HARNESSED: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella, 2011) Language and music are central to what it means to be human. But where did they come from? In Harnessed, cognitive scientist Changizi argues that language and music are in us not because we evolved for them, but, rather, because they evolved for us. Over history, language and music came to have the structure that our non-language and amusical brains could brilliantly absorb. In particular, language and music came to have the structures of the sounds in nature, just the sorts of sounds our brain had evolved to process. It is this “nature-harnessing” that explains who we are today. For speech, Changizi provides a barrage of evidence that speech across human languages mimics the fundamental sounds of physical events in the world. By mimicking the sounds that solid objects make when they hit, slide and ring, speech harnesses our ancient event-recognition powers that were never intended for language. And, for music, Changizi lays out his case that music mimics another equally important category of sound in the world: the sounds of human movement. Just as we possess brains specially designed to recognize facial expressions, our brains evolved to recognize what people are doing in our midst from the sounds they make. Music harnesses that ancient brain capability, turning a human action recognition system into a music appreciation machine.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 11:22:32 +0000