My professional specialty is music theory, so I trust I won't be appearing to disrespect or undervalue music theory when I say that it's not at all clear to me that learning about music theory would enhance most people's lives at all.
Music is so wildly popular that nearly everyone listens to and enjoys it already, and there certainly is not widespread consensus that knowing about music theory makes you enjoy music more. I would say that it certainly seems to make some people enjoy music differently, so for some people it will tend to shift their taste in music toward different music, but it is certainly not as though listening to music without knowing any music theory is like reading physics papers on the arXiv without knowing any math or physics.
The inescapable description of music as "the universal language," despite being totally disastrously wrong in nearly every way, is founded on the grain of truth that people do seem to be able to enjoy music, and enjoy it in many of the same (or similar) ways, even when they can't communicate about it at all, or with each other. There just isn't any serious sense in which music theory is vital to enjoying music (at least not most music, with sufficient exposure), or in which listening to music without knowing music theory is, as you say, "not knowing what [you're] hearing." Even a lot of successful, talented, skilled musicians don't know much music theory.
The basic situation is that music theory is a lot like what linguists do, and no one says you have to know a lot of linguistics to know how to understand other people talking, or even to have a very sophisticated appreciation of fine writing. And my impression is that most professional linguists would be very cautious about even asserting a correlation between knowing linguistics and having those other abilities. (Again, don't read this as my endorsing a music=language claim, which I certainly do not endorse at all.)
One thing I will say is that appreciation for music does seem to increase with early training not in music theory, but in practical music-making -- singing or playing instruments. This usually does come along with a bit of music theory training, but I think more fundamentally, interest in music is increased by hearing professionally-made music as on a continuum with skills that one possesses oneself (at however low a level).
Finally, I very strongly advocate training in music theory for one specific group of people: those who would like to discuss music theory in public. For some reason it is an area (others like it include politics and language) where a lot of people feel qualified to hold forth with little to no real grasp of what actual professional music scholars do.
For some reason it is an area (others like it include politics and language) where a lot of people feel qualified to hold forth with little to no real grasp of what actual professional music scholars do.
If you wouldn't mind, please educate me! I have no clue whatsoever.
Well, we do research on nearly any topic you can think of in the orbit of music's technical elements, history, interaction with culture, and interaction with individual people. There is a slowly-eroding bias toward working on "classical" music, i.e. music of the Western European "art music" tradition, although musics from outside that tradition are (as of the last couple of decades) now entirely accepted as legitimate at least in principle, and have attracted quite a bit of scholarship since they were under-studied until recently.
A few examples of the kinds of things music scholars might do:
The field has largely moved on from its 1990s-era infatuation with postmodernism and a reasonably high level of scholarly rigor is present -- this is not to say that no junk gets published or that music scholarship ever does (or should) resemble an exact science.
A few things that distinguish the best professional music scholarship from crankery:
I don't claim that these standards are met in every published piece of music scholarship, but they are what the profession aspires to and usually attains. I don't think music scholarship is as difficult as science assuming the necessary preparation, but the fact is that the necessary preparation in terms of gaining fluency with music notation, music theory, and music history takes a long time and is a high bar to clear for most people who aren't professionals.
I like most of your comment very much - but I visited the webpage of the trainwreck, and I agree with all of it. The claims the author is making are quite modest. I am willing to go out on a limb as far as he did, and say that 12-tone music is objectively superior to atonal music; that some combinations of notes are more useful than others; that some chord progressions are more useful than others; and that fractal structure, at least as far as having some instruments providing beats at low frequencies and others at multiples of that frequency, is often a good thing.
12-tone music is objectively superior to atonal music
I definitely don't understand this (not the aesthetic preference, but the assertion of its objective correctness). The only plausible account I'm aware of for how some music could be objectively better than some other music is the so-called "intersubjective" account, where music possesses more intrinsic quality the more widely liked it is by large numbers of people. This still runs into the problem of what it could possibly mean to tell someone who likes some unpopular music "I acknowledge that you like this, but you are incorrect" -- which I take to be a fatal flaw. But nevertheless, in the case of (let's say) tonal versus atonal music, it must be acknowledged that tonal music has various features that make it more pleasing to most people, and this can look like objective superiority in some respects (though I myself insist that it is best described as widespread agreement on its subjective superiority).
But in the case of 12-tone versus atonal music, there isn't even widespread agreement that one or the other is better. Most people don't like either kind and could not distinguish them from one another by ear. Among people who understand the difference, the relative merits of the two approaches is hotly disputed and has been essentially since the advent of the 12-tone system. So there isn't even the intersubjective reason in this case to create the appearance of a particular type of music's being objectively superior.
Some might insist that something about the presence of some type of "mandatory" structure in 12-tone music (vaguely akin to, though very different in practice from, the structuring influence of tonality in tonal music) makes it objectively superior to atonal music even if we can't demonstrate that people actually prefer one to the other in practice. I am quite sure that no argument of this type will hold water either, but I would need to know more of the particulars to know how to address my objections.
But nevertheless, in the case of (let's say) tonal versus atonal music, it must be acknowledged that tonal music has various features that make it more pleasing to most people, and this can look like objective superiority in some respects (though I myself insist that it is best described as widespread agreement on its subjective superiority).
And that is objective superiority, for sufficiently high values of "most". Because we're only talking about humans here. Ants will not value that kind of music highly, because they can't hear it. But we can make some claims about objective superiority when we limit ourselves to humans.
Hi Phil, that Skytopia web page doesn't mention 12-tone music being superior. It mentions "12 notes to the octave", and maybe that's what you meant (tonal music - the stuff most people like).
But '12-tone' (with the word 'tone') in its strict definition is actually usually atonal.
I'd like to add to grouchymusicologist's comment by pointing out that, unless otherwise stipulated, 12-tone music is a subset of atonal music.
Do you think that a person can truly appreciate something without fully understanding it?
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I agree that music-making does help increase music appreciation in many cases. I'm not sure of the exact cause of this, though. Could it be that when a person does it themselves they are forced to think about it more? They are forced to begin "feeling" the music so that they can make the audience "feel" it too? Both? The problem is that music is "half felt and half heard." In other words, the emotional experience is a big part of why people love music. I think that studying music theory would be trying to approach and appreciate music from an intellectual approach. Is this a useless struggle? Or, is "feeling" music enough?
Do you think that a person can truly appreciate something without fully understanding it?
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: I don't believe in "true" appreciation of aesthetic or cultural artifacts as being distinct either practically or metaphysically from whatever other kinds of appreciation or quasi-appreciation there are.
Long answer: I certainly do consider some basic literacy in music theory or music history to be part of a good education, just because it is a major cultural product that nearly everyone consumes a lot of. In the course of receiving that education, some people will find that it enhances their enjoyment of music. (Some don't, though! And they always make sure to tell me about it! Including on my course evaluations!) People who are in favor of that kind of knowledge-enhanced enjoyment tend to elevate it with the prestige term "appreciation." The thing is, though, that people's aesthetic experiences and reasons for liking music and personal uses of music vary a lot. Since liking music in whatever way and for whatever reason really doesn't involve holding factual beliefs, I'm at a loss to see what good I'd be doing by going up to some guy who likes music and telling him that he's right to like it but that he likes it for the wrong reasons.
About as far as I'd go is to say that, since pleasure is good, most people should consider learning more about music to see if it enhances their pleasure in it. If it does, great. If it doesn't, they should stop. It's not a one-size-fits-all situation.
Your post comes across as a rambling high-school essay, rather than coherent thoughts of a "science researcher", which might be a part of the reason for people downvoting it. Maybe work on your presentation skills.
So, my point is that we should -- in life and in school -- emphasize actual everyday thinking more.
What is that "everyday thinking"? Without proper guidance, or even with it, we are prone to the multitude of cognitive biases, and these biases tend to stick, not self-correct. Hence this site.
I asked them to analyze their own lives and make their own philosophies. As expected, they were terrible at it at first. But, by the end of the year people began to actually think about the world around them.
Feel free to elaborate on how their thinking evolved over this time and contrast it with the standard approach.
Perhaps because I am a high school student? I work in a lab in my free time :) This wasn't supposed to be an essay, though. I probably wasn't clear enough, but I was just trying to raise points for discussion. |-| My point is that most people don't even try to think deeply about anything. This is especially true of my peers in school. If you guys don't like my method, what do you suggest to do? It's not that easy to convince average (lazy!) teens to try to think, in any sense of the word. Even if I told them to read this site, they wouldn't have the passion to do it (because classes don't involve thinking per se as much as memorizing, so to them it would be useless), and if they were somehow forced to read Lesswrong, they might not try to remember the concepts and apply them in outside cases.
You're going to rapidly leave your peers far behind. I wouldn't put too much effort into getting them to think deeply about the world. I agree critical thinking skills should emphasized more in high school but in general the problem with secondary education in the United States is not one of insufficient appreciation of the arts.
To generalize from my own experience, most people with graduate level education don't have the passion to really learn how to think.
We are the weirdest of the weirdos in this respect. A mental model that neglects this fact will be punished by reality.
What exactly do you mean by graduate level education? In other words,have the people that completed great Ph.D. projects never thought during that time period? Or is the problem that they don't really apply thinking outside their field (which I think is more plausible)?
I was just trying to raise points for discussion...If you guys don't like my method, what do you suggest to do?
Hold off on proposing solutions during the first stages of discussion.
It's not that easy to convince average (lazy!) teens to try to think
I disagree.
They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly payout of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts and lucky amulets.
--George Orwell, 1984
Count be wrong, they fuck you up.
Kid in The Wire when asked how he could keep count of how many vials of crack were left in the stash but couldn't solve the word problem in his math homework.
Fantastic! In that case, The Simple Truth is n words longer than necessary, where n is the number of words in it minus seven.
They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly payout of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts and lucky amulets.
This is fictional evidence--are there real examples of otherwise unintelligent people being able to perform intricate calculations in specific domains? Most of the people I know who play the lottery don't think about the probabilities involved, which is probably why they're playing the lottery in the first place.
I disagree.
As a college student, I second shend's statement that high schoolers are lazy. It's one thing to engage students who are interested in their studies and enjoy thinking, but engaging the average high school student is much harder.
I do not know if this is strong enough evidence for you, but I offer the following text dump for consideration; from "The Predictive Value of IQ":
...Nuñes (formerly Carraher) has done a series of studies over the years investigating the mathematical skills of Brazilian street children (Carraher, Carraher, & Schliemann, 1985; Carraher, Carraher, & Schliemann, 1987; Nuñes, 1994; Nuñes, Schliemann, & Carraher, 1993). The example of Brazilian street children is an apt one for the illustration of the construct of practical intelligence, because as Nuñes points out, the survival of these children is threatened on a daily basis. If the children are unable successfully to run a street business, and lapse into crime, the chances of their being murdered are quite high. Nuñes has found that the same children who can do the mathematics to run a successful street business are often failing math in school or otherwise show only minimal competence in math in academic settings. Similar results have been obtained by Ceci and Roazzi (1994), suggesting the findings are generalizable across investigators. As pointed out by Anderson, Reder, and Simon (1996), one needs to be careful about the exact conclusions one draws from studies such as these. For example, the exact computations required in one situation may not be the same as the computations required in another. But in terms of [End Page 25] adaptive functioning, the point is that the people who are best able to adapt in one circumstance often are not those best able to adapt in another.
In a related study conducted near Kisumu, Kenya, we found that children's knowledge of the use of natural herbal medicines to combat illness is significantly negatively correlated with scores on tests of crystallized (Mill Hill Vocabulary in English and a comparable test in Dholuo, the home language) abilities (Sternberg, Nokes, et al., in press). In other words, practical intellectual skills were actually inversely associated with academic intellectual skills.
Lave (1988) also did related studies among Berkeley, California, housewives. She found that the same housewives who had no trouble doing comparative price calculations in the supermarket (before the introduction of unit pricing) were unable to complete most of the problems on a standard paper-and-pencil test of mathematical knowledge given in a classroom.
Investigating a different population, Ceci and Liker (1986) found that men's handicapping abilities for predicting outcomes of horse races were unrelated to their IQs. Moreover, successful handicappers had an average IQ of only about 100, despite the complexity of the handicapping task.
Ceci and Bronfenbrenner (1985) looked at quite a different task. They gave children a time-estimation task either in a classroom or at home. Strategies and quality of performance were very different in the two settings, suggesting that the context in which the judgments were made had a major impact both on how they were made and how well they were made.
In a very different context, Fiedler and Link (1994) reported that IQ positively predicted leadership performance under conditions of low stress but negatively predicted this same performance under conditions of high stress; in contrast, acquired knowledge of the kind that is essential for practical intelligence positively predicted leadership performance under conditions of high stress but negatively predicted under conditions of low stress.
Also somewhat relevant http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/190222/1077302733/name/Kwon is a brain imaging study of Korean Go players; the expert professional Go players averaged IQ of 93, the control group 101.
From the Go paper:
Conclusions The results of our study revealed that Baduk experts develop structural fronto–cingulo–striato–thalamic connectivity, as evidenced by increased FA of WM tracts, as compared with those of non-experts. These structures are associated with cognitive processes that include spatial perception, attention, working memory, executive control, and problem solving (Chen et al., 2003). In addition, the experts' increased FA in inferior temporal areas indicates that, unlike the situation in controls, task-specific templates had developed in experts' neural mechanisms, enabling the efficient operation of tasks related to playing Baduk (de Rover et al., 2008). Right hemispheric dominance in Baduk experts also suggests that the involved tasks are mainly spatial processes (Thomason et al., 2009). Therefore, this study demonstrated that brain training, such as that required to become an expert Baduk player, might cause structural changes in the brain that are particularly helpful with regard to engaging in such foundational tasks as learning, abstract reasoning, problemsolving, and self-control.
So, they got (? or chose the profession because they were?) good at a number of specific tasks that are components of IQ, but they aren't good at IQ measuring tasks overall.
This Go paper is one of the things I point to as evidence that while strategy games may benefit you cognitively early on, there are diminishing returns and they probably set in well before expert skill levels.
-are there real examples of otherwise unintelligent people being able to perform intricate calculations in specific domains?
I can't speak to their intelligence, but if you hang out with sports nerds for long enough you will encounter one with an encyclopediac grasp of it, play by play recall of numerous matches, nigh on eideitic recall of statistics, and sophisticated ability to relate and manipulate said statistics. Intellectual curiosity and intelligence may be linked but it's not a necessary link.
As a college student, I second shend's statement that high schoolers are lazy.
Do you think most high schoolers are more lazy than most college students? If so, is this because people actually develop more of a work ethic by college, or because lazy people never even make it that far?
I think most people are probably lazy, if by "lazy" we mean reluctant to consider ideas outside their comfort zone or seek knowledge for its own sake. But I haven't seen any reason to believe that laziness is more prevalent in high school than in the general population.
It probably is more prevalent in high school than college, just because the college application process, especially to selective schools, strongly selects against laziness.
I don't have nearly enough evidence to have high confidence in this conclusion, but I think high schoolers are intellectually lazier simply because of the selection effect of the college application process. I have noticed (warning: anecdotal evidence!) that college students (myself included) tend to procrastinate a lot more, but that may only be because they have increased freedom to do so.
But I haven't seen any reason to believe that laziness is more prevalent in high school than in the general population.
And you might be right--I don't think it's an easy task to convince the general population to think, either. (Plus, "general population" includes people who don't have a high school education.)
I second shend's statement that high schoolers are lazy.
I third it, I just don't think that's much of a barrier to getting them to think.
Can you elaborate on this? As far as I can tell, laziness is definitely a barrier to thinking about thinking. For example, if I wanted to teach a group of students about a cognitive bias, they would have to do some reading about it or at the very least listen to a presentation or lecture. But a great deal of students simply don't want to put forward the effort to read a passage or listen to a lecture, and would rather just sit there and stare at their desks.
(This is not idle speculation--in early 2010, when I was in high school, I read Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks and was so amazed by the material that I taught a ten-minute lecture on it to a 12th grade history class and three 9th grade biology classes as an extra-credit project. When I talked to people afterward to get feedback, what shocked me the most was how many people were only idly listening and not thinking about what they heard.)
For example, if I wanted to teach a group of students about a cognitive bias, they would have to do some reading about it or at the very least listen to a presentation or lecture.
I'm thinking that there is probably a way to get them to gamble and lose money (grades?) for employing a bad heuristc (best), or having those who think most clearly make the most money.
I think the problem here is that people can’t understand what is really important. Calculus, mechanical physics, chemistry, microiology, etc. are interesting to learn, perhaps. ... People don’t use them in daily life unless they are professionals. Why not learn things that we think about every day instead of those that will frankly be useless to most?
It is precisely this kind of thinking, fostered by a pretty low-par early education in math and physics, that led me to believe that knowledge in these areas is virtually useless to just about everyone. And so I passed my one and only college math course in my first semester, filled in my hard science requirements with courses like Environmental Geology, and moved on.
I was wrong. So very, very wrong. Where isn't math useful? I'll refrain from preaching to the choir and instead just ask "Why?" Why do you feel the need to disparage these fields in order to make a point about the usefulness of music theory?
Oh wow, now that I look at it again... that is some horrible wording. I apologize. That "instead" should have been "before" or "in addition to." Also, I meant to be talking in relative - not absolute - terms. I repeat, I do not think they are "useless." I am not at all disparaging this fields. Rather, I was trying to say that learning other fields can sometimes be as useful.
Where isn't math useful?
Literature, most of the humanities, the social sciences except at high levels of abstraction, i.e. those things that we've evolved to deal with or that are products of those subsystems that we encountered all the time in the EEA.
Where isn't math useful?
Literature, most of the humanities, the social sciences except at high levels of abstraction
Statistics aren't useful in social sciences???
The mains fields listed on Wikipedia are: anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, political science, psychology and sociology. I'd say statistics are probably useful in around half of those.
Math? I'm not studying hard science here! I'm studying people/markets/social constructions/events/language/political theory. They're far more complex than your petty mathematics! Life isn't so simple as to be just mere equations.
The response I'd expect from most people studying psychology, history, sociology, linguistics, political science, anthropology, and law if I asked them when they use math in their work.
That's quite likely, but you may get a more positive response if you ask them about statistics (at least in psychology, sociology and political science); it probably mostly depends of what is implied by "maths".
I would say statistics are useful for many social sciences, and that some maths are needed to understand statistics, though things like theorems and proofs and calculus and category theory are not. Calculus is useful for the (smaller) set of disciplines that can use numerical models (mostly economics). Game Theory is useful in law, economics and political science and also requires a bit of maths.
I'd like to know of a science - any science, social or otherwise - that can be optimally useful without utilizing mathematical analysis.
I suspect this is like demanding a married bachelor. If you understand something well enough to have a theory that explains a lot about something's characteristics or behaviour you can probably model this abstraction mathematically. And math is unreasonably effective at manipulating abstractions.
Math can be a very powerful tool. I don't think anybody is arguing against that possibility here?
I disagree that music theory and the physics of color are more relevant to our daily lives than mechanics and electricity - the models used in learning about electricity - direct and alternating current, how batteries work, how an electric radiator works - are pretty close to our daily experience of electric items. The concepts in mechanics - rotational inertia, gear ratios, kinetic and potential energy - are directly relevant for cars, bicycles, balls ... whereas knowing about the physics of colors is pretty damn seperated from our use and experience of colors (the same seems to be true for music theory).
There are a class of explanatory theories best described as "folk" theories. (E.g. folk psychology, folk economics, folk physics). They are the "everybody knows this" explanatory theories. But every folk X theory that I've encountered is looked at with disdain among actual Xers. For example, academic psychologists think folk psychology is filled with nonsense.
How would the proposed self-taught philosophers avoid concluding that folk philosophy was the best theory?
So, folk theories are the older ideas that have been in the field for a long time? If so, that's correct.
Perhaps those philosophers should keep up with the newest theories so that they realize the conflict of the old and new. I don't think that self-taught philosophers are the problem, though. Autodidacts do not necessarily believe the wrong ideas.
Roughly speaking, folk theories are the theories that an ordinary viewer of Law & Order thinks are true. For daily life, many folk theories are close enough, but they often make nonsensical or wildly wrong claims when applied in any specialized context.
It appears that folk theories are slightly entangled with actual scientific theories, in that I doubt Victorian era common folk thought that the speed of light was a fundamental constant, and most moderately educated people now do have some concept of that idea.
In response to (2), there are a lot of things you can learn about what makes a given painting interestingly distinct from other paintings, that are non-obvious to most people without someone pointing them out, and that (for some people under some circumstances) enhance the enjoyment of looking at the painting.
It can be a real pleasure to tour an art gallery with someone who knows a lot about the works there. I recall the first time anyone pointed out to me that, in a certain painting, a spot of bright color was used to draw the viewer's eye toward the most interesting and detailed part of the painting. I have no gift for observations of that kind -- without some help, I'd just be wandering around saying "Look, it's a picture of a woman. Look, it's a picture of a duck. Well, it's been fifteen minutes now, I'm bored."
Even with the uniformly blue canvas, looking at it can be an interesting opportunity to learn about who painted it and why they thought they were doing it (even if you don't agree with their rationale or take it at face value), and maybe spend ten seconds trying to see it through their eyes. Even if you ultimately conclude that it sucks and that the painter was stupid and wrong about everything, it's not less enjoyable than just seeing the blue canvas and spending ten seconds being baffled or bored by it and then moving on.
I'm surprised you don't think there could be any more to art history/criticism than either "Look, it's a picture of a duck" or postmodern babble. There is less postmodern babble in nearly all fields in the humanistic disciplines than most people around here seem to think.
I'm surprised you don't think there could be any more to art history/criticism than either "Look, it's a picture of a duck" or postmodern babble.
I am perhaps a bit oversensitive to the word "understanding", which was what I was mainly pointing at. Every time I met this word in connection with art or literature, it was someone trying to impose her aesthetic preferences on me while signalling her superior cultural sophistication. I am not completely ignorant about history of art, I paint as a hobby and usually spend more than fifteen minutes in a gallery. But all my school experiences with learning to understand art or literature or music - as opposed to learning how to draw or write or sing - was a boring exercise in snobbery.
Even with the uniformly blue canvas, looking at it can be an interesting opportunity to learn about who painted it and why they thought they were doing it (even if you don't agree with their rationale or take it at face value), and maybe spend ten seconds trying to see it through their eyes. Even if you ultimately conclude that it sucks and that the painter was stupid and wrong about everything, it's not less enjoyable than just seeing the blue canvas and spending ten seconds being baffled or bored by it and then moving on.
This can be said about almost anything. Look at a chair, a railroad track or a dog's leash and ponder about the maker's intentions and motives. Almost any product of human effort is worth ten seconds of thought, usually more interesting than with a blue canvas. Singling out paintings for such an argument is privileging the hypothesis. And remember, modern art advocates even don't tell us to think ten seconds about any object we happen to look at. They tell us to spend much longer time thinking about objects classified within the quite arbitrary category "art", pretending that those are especially interesting or important. They aren't. Rothko's thoughts about colour fields on one of his paintings are no more interesting than my neighbour's thoughts about the shape of his new flowerbed; after all, both are of comparable complexity and take about the same time to complete. I have had discussions about the blue canvas (I remember neither the author nor the name of the painting) when my friend said that I can't pronounce the canvas worthless - perhaps the choice of the exact colour was the unique act of creativity and the precise uniformity reflects the author's genius. It's silly.
This can be said about almost anything. Look at a chair, a railroad track or a dog's leash and ponder about the maker's intentions and motives. Almost any product of human effort is worth ten seconds of thought, usually more interesting than with a blue canvas. Singling out paintings for such an argument is privileging the hypothesis.
Very good point - it's interesting to imagine a guide giving tours in an ordinary city showing ordinary things like cars, fences, houses, lamp posts etc. talking about their design and manufacture. If well done, it may be more instructive and thought-provoking than the average art gallery visit! But it would be dreadfully low-status.
I'm surprised you don't think there could be any more to art history/criticism than either "Look, it's a picture of a duck" or postmodern babble. There is less postmodern babble in nearly all fields in the humanistic disciplines than most people around here seem to think.
My knowledge of art history specifically is limited to a single college course, but I've been exposed to literary criticism in a little more depth. At least in that field, the predominant failure mode seems not to be postmodern babble (there's some of that in a lot of contemporary work, but it seems more in the nature of a stylistic tic than an actual fixture of thought) but what I might call promiscuous application: that is, readings of a work are decoupled from the needs of readers and writers generally and selected according to what looks fresh and interesting to the literary criticism community. This produces a lot of entertainingly hyperspecialized but ultimately sterile interpretations, a lot of ingroup pandering, and a lot of political grandstanding, but not -- as a fraction of the whole -- much insight into the actual mechanics of literature.
That's not to say that I've gotten nothing out of it; I have. But it tends to take a lot of digging.
Interesting comment and I do agree. I think it's only to be expected that in their research-level scholarship, literary critics/theorists are mostly talking amongst themselves (the same is the case with most academic specialties). But like you I've struggled to find interesting, accessible, eclectic/broadminded (i.e., not massively argument-driven, or as you put it "hyperspecialized") readings by legitimate experts that really enhance my enjoyment of (especially) difficult works without trying to draw me down a rabbit hole of topics that are only of interest to lit-theorists.
There is a strange and not obviously sensible blending of cultural theory and literary criticism in academia. So often you end up reading an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate someone's theory of culture rather than an analysis of a work that exists to illustrate important aspects of that work. Freud gets invoked far too often, too.
Huh? The number of people does not mean much. My point is that people should be educated in more areas, so that the scientist understands part of what the artist's work, and the artist understands part of the scientist's work.
I mean it the way that I realized I didn't really understand paintings until I started thinking, especially artistically when so required (because art is one of my main hobbies). This applies much more to realistic paintings than conceptual works, admittedly. I also recognize that this phrase is vague, and less mathematical than something like decision theory. Part of it is recognizing that anyone can be a (realistic) artist, if they notice the world around them. Assuming, though, that art takes simple observational skills to the next level (e.g. trying to perfect reality), should people try to understand the reality first, or come to the painting, trying to understand what the artist was trying to say, without having thought about reality first?
Indeed it is. I meant it as more of "ways and process of thinking."
The number of people does not mean much.
Fine with me. I was under impression that you are implying that people become artists quite often, due to this apparently ironical statement
Because, obviously, they will be very important in our futures -- especially if we become artists, musicians, writers, actors, and business people.
Sorry for misinterpretation.
My point is that people should be educated in more areas, so that the scientist understands part of what the artist's work, and the artist understands part of the scientist's work.
Note that the artists don't usually understand much of science either.
A basic question for any reform proposal is how it functions at various levels of adoption. Some might do well if implemented throughout a state, but fail for any smaller entity that acted outside of the state's protocols. Others might need acceptance by a swathe of the public outside government as well, such as among employers, while others might only require a school dedicated to them, etc. Such smaller scale ideas might primarily be better ways of meeting district-wide instrumental values, and as such not provide too much benefit over the status quo if implemented.
I think you should clarify your words to explain exactly what you mean.. Tell us what your ideal national education system would look like, but if so, please refrain from advocating for it. Tell us your plan to improve your life, granted the system you find yourself in. Tell us how and why you influence others, and how you would hope to run a private charter school, or home-school your children, if you like. Just keep the scope clear so I know what you mean.
It's not just for me though, one wants to be sure that one isn't suggesting something that would only be rational in ideal circumstances, e.g. if no one stole other people's stuff, society could save a lot of effort that currently goes towards security. Therefore, I will not buy a padlock for my gym locker, nor bother to lock my front door, etc.
Calculus, mechanical physics, chemistry, microbiology etc are areas describing objective reality. They explain how the world we live in works on a fundamental level, i.e the very fabric of reality. Not only do they give answers to basic questions of human life, they also activate the students toward systematic analytical thinking and questioning.
Do you really mean that people would be better off never being exposed to ("interesting but useless") natural science? Would you prefer a society where most people doesn't have a clue about how things around them came to be or how they work? How would a potential engineer or a researcher build up its interest towards science if never exposed to it systematically?
Learning about music and art is good, but not at expense of science!
Do you really mean that people would be better off never being exposed to ("interesting but useless") natural science? Would you prefer a society where most people doesn't have a clue about how things around them came to be or how they work?
I suspect that your are making and destroying a straw man here. The original (admittedly rather rambling) post did not advocate never exposing students to science, but rather a specific way of doing it, a sort of a loose version of Socratic questioning.
shend, shimux. I am not questioning the overall thesis of the post. Just reacting to:
"I think the problem here is that people can’t understand what is really important. Calculus, mechanical physics, chemistry, microiology, etc. are interesting to learn, perhaps. But, they are relatively advanced topics. People don’t use them in daily life unless they are professionals. Why not learn things that we think about every day instead of those that will frankly be useless to most? "
People don’t use [calculus, physics, chemistry, etc] in daily life unless they are professionals.
Isn't this statement true?
It depends on how you define 'use'. People are trying to make sense of reality all the time. Different scenarios needs different tools and different ways of thinking. Basic high school science helps you understand parts of the news flow, some aspects of the mechanisms of your household appliances, transportation related concepts like time, velocity, acceleration, your body and so on.
As a general principle, resolving ambiguities in other people's assertions so those assertions are true is more charitable, and more likely to allow us to understand their point.
If a sentence "people don’t use X in daily life unless they are professionals" is followed by "why not learn things that we think about every day", it's reasonable to assume that "use" in the former sentence means the same as "think about" in the latter, not "use professionally".
I suppose I can see how one could interpret the post the way you did, though the author emphatically did not advocate teaching art instead of science, just a different way of teaching (or, rather, not teaching) in general.
Actually, I was never saying that we shouldn't learn about science or any other "areas describing objective reality." I love science myself. I just think that we shouldn't focus on these areas exclusively, like many schools do now. For example, I think that an engineer who loves listening to music all day should at least learn the basic theory of how music works, so that he can appreciate it more intellectually and understand it better. Why should we choose to understand some aspects of life and not others?
Many schools focus on science and math exclusively? I don't believe that is at all true-- even for science and technology magnet programs.
While I agree that education does needs some considerable improvements your claim that there's a need for a universal-experience class doesn't really hold water.
In school we learn wonderful things like how to find integrals, solve equations, and how to calculate valence electrons of elements based on their atomic numbers. Because, obviously, they will be very important in our futures -- especially if we become artists, musicians, writers, actors, and business people.
Ironically despite being intended as sarcasm this statement (sarcasm aside) is fairly accurate. However you're referring to the usefulness of being able to solve particular kinds of mathematical and scientific problems rather than the actual subjects in question. When you take all of the subjects into account rather than those cherry picked items you find that they are indeed useful for artists, musicians, writers, actors, and business people.
Just to start off with learning Physics is very different to learning (for example) the equation for calculating gravitational attraction. Physics is about being able to find the equation for gravitational attraction though observation and analysis without needing to be given it. That sort of analytical problem solving would actually be incredibly useful for someone going into business. Similarly the development of curiosity and imagination that should go hand in hand with learning physics is vital for the arts. The principles of resonance are actually useful to a musician for understanding why their instruments work the way they do. I'd go on but I'm sure you get the point.
Moreover the things you are suggesting should be taught in this universal experience class are things that would be already included in a proper education in the Arts, Sciences, Humanities and Mathematics. Leading me to suspect that the problem lies in that your education (like my own) has been found to be lacking these core skills. The problem leading to things being so badly taught is that they have very little bearing on the actual exams, you don't need to be able to derive the general derivative of x^n to be able to take the derivative of x^2. So such things get left out in the race to make sure students pass their exams.
Creating a universal experience class that wouldn't end up being reduced to memorization (somewhat like what has happened to philosophy these days) would require you to solve the problem outlined above; and if you can do that then it would render the universal experience class obsolete. Seeing as you could just apply that solution to all of the other classes and cover all the ground covered in the universal experience class and more to boot.
On a side note I'm curious as to what you mean by "everyday thinking"?
12-tone music is objectively superior to atonal music
I definitely don't understand this (not the aesthetic preference, but the assertion of its objective correctness). The only plausible account I'm aware of for how some music could be objectively better than some other music is the so-called "intersubjective" account, where music possesses more intrinsic quality the more widely liked it is by large numbers of people. This still runs into the problem of what it could possibly mean to tell someone who likes some unpopular music "I acknowledge that you like this, but you are incorrect" -- which I take to be a fatal flaw. But nevertheless, in the case of (let's say) tonal versus atonal music, it must be acknowledged that tonal music has various features that make it more pleasing to most people, and this can look like objective superiority in some respects (though I myself insist that it is best described as widespread agreement on its subjective superiority).
But in the case of 12-tone versus atonal music, there isn't even widespread agreement that one or the other is better. Most people don't like either kind and could not distinguish them from one another by ear. Among people who understand the difference, the relative merits of the two approaches is hotly disputed and has been essentially since the advent of the 12-tone system. So there isn't even the intersubjective reason in this case to create the appearance of a particular type of music's being objectively superior.
Some might insist that something about the presence of some type of "mandatory" structure in 12-tone music (vaguely akin to, though very different in practice from, the structuring influence of tonality in tonal music) makes it objectively superior to atonal music even if we can't demonstrate that people actually prefer one to the other in practice. I am quite sure that no argument of this type will hold water either, but I would need to know more of the particulars to know how to address my objections.
But nevertheless, in the case of (let's say) tonal versus atonal music, it must be acknowledged that tonal music has various features that make it more pleasing to most people, and this can look like objective superiority in some respects (though I myself insist that it is best described as widespread agreement on its subjective superiority).
And that is objective superiority, for sufficiently high values of "most". Because we're only talking about humans here. Ants will not value that kind of music highly, because they can't hear it. But we can make some claims about objective superiority when we limit ourselves to humans.
In school we learn wonderful things like how to find integrals, solve equations, and how to calculate valence electrons of elements based on their atomic numbers. Because, obviously, they will be very important in our futures -- especially if we become artists, musicians, writers, actors, and business people.
We learn so much in school. Yet, when most people look at paintings they don’t truly understand them. When most people listen to music, they don’t really know what they’re hearing. Most people would fail simple music theory tests, even though many have listened to music most days of the week since they were babies!
Similarly, if you have working eyes, you should ask “Why do shadows look like they do? What color is snow, really? Can I predict the colors of different colored materials at different times of the day? If not, why? I have been seeing them for years, haven’t I?”
I think the problem here is that people can’t understand what is really important. Calculus, mechanical physics, chemistry, microiology, etc. are interesting to learn, perhaps. But, they are relatively advanced topics. People don’t use them in daily life unless they are professionals. Why not learn things that we think about every day instead of those that will frankly be useless to most?
Why don’t we learn how to understand our senses?
Learning about sight, sounds, thoughts, etc. should fit in somewhere in the first year of high school. Everyone needs to learn the physics of art and color (e.g. this and this), music theory, rationality, and logic.
For example, why should people start learning (or pretending to learn) philosophy, the art of thinking, in college? Should we be able to make life-changing decisions without even knowing how to spot errors in our thinking?
As a science researcher, I know first hand how hard it is to find a good balance between being well versed in worldly topics and being focused on a field in order to excel in it. But, both of these areas of study should not be called the true basics, in my opinion.
As president of my school's philosophy club, I took a different approach to teaching the basics of philosophy and thinking than traditional classes do. Instead of asking students to discuss the lives and ideas of famous Greek philosophers, I asked them to analyze their own lives and make their own philosophies. As expected, they were terrible at it at first. But, by the end of the year people began to actually think about the world around them.
So, my point is that we should -- in life and in school -- emphasize actual everyday thinking more.
The biggest challenge is that it takes so long!