Full Description
This book stresses the interrelatedness of knowledge by extricating models that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. For example, science can find models from the technology and semantic field of music, music can find its models from the technology and semantic field of science, and each domain may be guided by a philosophical or metaphysical principle - thus, the title of the book. But the book itself is structured as a mirror image of its title. Chapters 1-6 provide instances of the role of music in such domains as epistemology and logic, as well as in the early modern sciences of developmental biology, continuum mechanics, anatomy and physiological psychology, whereas Chapters 7-10 provide instances of what some other domains of knowledge have given back to the philosophy and theory of music.
Contents
Contents: Preface; Apollo or Dionysus? Music and the growth of knowledge; A conjunction of concepts: music and the emergence of probability; Making inferences: music and the mechanisation of logic; The ovum as initial datum: Harvey, starting points and creativity; On the stretch: Hobbes, mechanics and the shaking palsy; Blowing the organ: Willis, hydro-pneumatics and hierarchy; The science of music to 1830; Music as matter in motion; Music as unfolding life; The problem of 'musical ear'; Index.
