Content
The Relation of music to Intelligence according to Science
I. Ancient Interpretation
II. The general intelligence factor (Spearman)
III. Multiple Intelligence (
IV. The Mozart effect (Shaw)
V. Music and the Brain (Weinberger etc.)
1. How does music affect one’s intellect?
2. Music Increases Intelligence
3. Leadership and the Musical Mind
4. “Music and the Mind"..
5. Music and the Brain
==> Inner Songs
==> Well-Developed Brains
==> Ode to Joy—or Sorrow
Music and the Brain (by Laurence O'Donnell)
==> Bodily Responses to Music
==> The Power of Music on Memory and Learning
==> Healthy and Not So Healthy Effects
==> On Animals and Plants, Too!
==> Mystery Music and Mozart
==> Musical lizard brain (Evolution)
==> Music and Emotions
==> conclusion
Epilogue:
The earth is a "living, self-regulating being,"..."a central, plain fact of life."
"If the earth is what I think it is, an immense being, intact and coherent, does it have a mind? If it does, what is it thinking?" ..."a mind at work, adrift somewhere around or over or within the mass," ...."an immense collective thought, spread everywhere, unconcerned with the details."...A mind, which...."contemplates,.." Lewis Thomas (1913-1993), The Frigile Species. 1
Can this (The Gaia Hypothesis) be expressed by Intelligence, I = hq2 and E = mc2 leading to the function of Harmony??? Dynamic Harmony always embedded in time...and space.
S ource <<== >>> Funktion (I, E) <<====>> Funktion (E, I) <<==>>> D estiny
The central point of the hypothesis I made in the harmony model is:
The Relationship of Music – quality of music to Intelligence:
The beauty - the quality of Music: Just to mention the effect in general and in simple terms, I would assume and imagine a highly abstract phenomena which delights and illuminates the soul. Recently I have come across a highly interesting personality, a philosopher and a mathematician, Franklin Merrell-Wolff, narating his spititual experience, which best suites my imagination of the quality of music. He tells us about ".. A tiny melody from the Cosmic Symphony " , which trilled "joyously into the mind – a little stretch born forth from the Grand Harmony." And from this a wave of joy was distilled and pulsed through " him. Reflecting further, he says: " There were no words, no ideas, not any other form, yet one might say It was the very essence of Sound and Meaning. It was utterly satisfactory and filling. It was the very Power that makes all things to become clear. Again there flowed the Current of gentle joy that penetrates through and through…. It appears as of the nature of a fluid, for there is this sense of ‘flowing through’. It penetrated all tensions with the effect of physical release. All over and through and through there is a quality that may well be described as physiological happiness. The organism feels no craving for sensuous distraction to find enjoyment. " 2
And I am sure, this superb encounter is to the mind, the moment of sublime intelligence, which I think is exponentially related to the quality of music manifested. And the subject is at this moment full of wisdom, knowledge, freedom and delight in space ( heavon) signifying hope and deliverance for and from the absolute at a time.
The beauty of Music...(q)... The quality of music...is thus understood as the heavenly music analogous to the speed of light, which is the source and factor of Einstein’s Energy in the Godly hemisphere (the material and spiritual plane).. . This quality of music is the essential component of Intelligence. Intelligence ..(I).., which can be described by the maximum possible sublimity for the conception and cognitive capacity of the human being, can have its source in the beauty and musical expression of the universe. The human factor, the other factor (h) - which can have its expression in the form of all other aspects of science and philosophy – the enlightened human culture can flow into Intelligence as a common fundament of all other facets of Intelligence. The beauty of music, be it emperic or substantial, whose interpretation may be highly difficult, is immaterial and ideal. It is a feeling which can best be manifested by means of the composition or the acquisition of the bliss of the appropriated musical component.. This bliss is a moment of higher depth combined with the heavenly inspiration of the human touching its godly nature and virtue, conscious of its history and anticipating its harmonious destiny. Einstein’s Energy in his theory of relativity is also understood as rest energy in mass or the potential energy of mass at rest. This is true for the Godly hemisphere in the harmony model. This is not at every moment the expression of an atomic reaction signifying a manifestation of Energy. I.e. Energy as the axis of nature is understood at rest and as a perpetually existent ultimate potentiality. This potential can have its particular expression in life, if it is accordingly activated. This is the practice of atomic energy for instance. Intelligence – abstract social intelligence as well… This is not some substance we can take hold of or are consistently aware of. It is rather the spirit of the community which hovers around the vicinity of the concerned region. Its presence may well be sensed in times of peace and harmonious atmosphere in the form of the community’s intellectual leadership and potential or perhaps sometimes in the form of the outstanding non-controversial individual representatives of the generation, like for instance Ghandi, Nelson Mandela or Einstein, Mozart etc...
Intelligence interpreted as a potential maximum spiritual substance or substantial spirit, which is the axis of the community as a sublime potential, moves the human being in life and through life, depending on the achievement of the community concerned.
At the individual level; states of mind or moments of inspiration when for instance, the composer doesn’t have to think to become a virtuoso interpret or the poet doesn’t have to contemplate to write his poesy or the artist to give his work a slight touch to fix his genius on a piece of wall, as though some spiritual existence behind the curtain is at work, making a harmonious unity with the subject on this side to make him complete with the highest feeling of pleasure and faith in its subjectivity. - Pure Intelligence —analogous to Energy in the counter-part of the godly hemisphere. Particular intelligence manifesting its existence through the best intellectual elements of the community shining with their high intelligence and spirit, to enjoy their existence with bliss emanating from their very being to serve the community. - To serve the Medium, which gave birth to their very existence in the fields of culture, politics, science or faith as their higher objectives - A share for the universal harmony of life as the ultimate purpose.
In my opinion and according to my subjective search for truth, Music is the prominent factor of this abstract intelligence.
Expressed by I = h q2, with q – the quality of music as a prominent factor suggesting an exponential relation and h as the human factor, stressing the fact that an intelligence with non-human component is meaningless in the sense that it goes counter to the harmony of life, which should be promoted in order to elevate the
existential potential of nature as a whole.
This suggestion is a result of a limited insight and personal experience, through a sporadic search for truth – personal truth to give one’s life a rational purpose, which ended up along the path of rationality –reason and logic at a blind faith in the absolute and a blissful sense of that “beyond”.
What is however the relation of music to intelligence, according to science?
After coming to this end, it lies in the good nature of any human being to find out if this sort of suggestion is shared by others too, especially by the community of science. Though differentiated by the degree of veneration, mankind is in the average at a relatively high level of development where the truth of basic scientific inquiry, be it by the fanatic religious or the tolerant or otherwise, cannot be today simply dismissed.
On this ground, frankly speaking, it is not in the intention of questioning the initial outcome of my search for truth that I ventured to make the search again, this time in the vicinity of science. I have no room for scepticism, not because of a dogmatic propensity but due to the fact that my attitude has its origin in a highly fundamental and existential positive experience, which I cannot consciously disregard as a mind phantom or hallucination or solipsism,
Searching for supporting substance and material, not in the isolated vicinity of my own intellect and experience, but in the community of well-established scientists, even under the limited perspective at my disposal is also extensive enough, that I have my problem in sorting out the documents.. This search would not have been so convenient without the medium of the internet, which fortunately is today a high factor of knowledge acquisition.
To my greatest surprise and gratification, the science community is full of material indicating, to say the least, that my suggestion i.e. hypothesis is not that simple, groundless or far-fetched and a phantom of the mind, like it looks like at its face value.
Due to the abundance of the material indicating the prominent place music has been allocated in its relation to intelligence, I will simply try to enumerate a collection of only the outstanding experts on this domain, which I have come across during the last months, leaving it open for further future discussion and investigation..
In advance if I take the courage of making a synthesis of all the attitudes of the scientific community concerning the significant role of music in the formation, development and capacity of intelligence, it is a fact that there is no intelligence devoid of music and that music is a high substantial and prominent factor of
1 http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/LewisThomas.htm
2
Intelligence.
Music is the best and cumulated expression of any culture in any community. There is no human culture devoid of music. Life – human existence without music, be it at the individual level or in a community is beyond imagination, indicating the highly essential role it plays in the conception of human intelligence.
Even Howard Gardner, the prominent expert in the field of Intelligence and the advocate of Multiple Intelligences, who would like to enumerate and consider musical Intelligence as just one of the eight intelligence sectors, doesn’t like to conceal the central role music would take in the conception of intelligence.
He points that,
“If ... scientists explain music, we may find the key for all human thought”1
“In the January 1997 article, “The Musical Mind”,
Given all the technical and biological differentiation and variations of Intelligence sectors, I cannot imagine that there is no possibility of making a unifying abstraction of these sectors into one notion!- At least the way this was expressed in the ancient human wisdom; in the following nice way of generalizing the abstract substance, which I call quality of music in its highest form:
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” (Plato)1
“Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.” (plato)3
And I say this not because I am a musician but simply as a person who may have happened to experience under certain favourable circumstances, what the musicians call (I learned later) the so called perfect pitch, which gave me the feeling of understanding higher philosophical and natural relations for a short period of time. I feel this state of existence and experience may have been over by now, like a form of youthful love affair, with its blissful nostalgic memory. But along this exprience the residue of enjoing and appreciating classical music at a very high intensity remains, which was not the case at all before due to the given cultural background or the missing training in any of the musical genres. This still fills me with immense satisfaction I didn't encounter earlier.
“Irrespective of the fact, whether the nature of perfect pitch is genetic or not, this event can be explained by the missing musical module, which was not, cultivated enough during the early infant period.” In respect to this, may be also my experience, John Slovobada thinks that “we are all born like our innate capacity for language, for the music capacity if accordingly developed during critical periods”. Among others, this can also be an explanation for our natural discrepancy regarding a harmonious mind at the individual level and a social harmony at the level of the community at large. (4)
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