source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 08:23:02 -0800 Subject: From Brian McLaren From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: Muddy thinking, the scientific method and John Cage - part 2 of 2 -- In the previous post, I mentioned that the scientific method is crucially important in microtonality. As Aristotle points out in the Rhetoric: "A speech has two parts. You must state you case, and you must prove it. You cannot either state your case and omit to prove it, or prove it without having first stated it." This is clearly an alien concept to Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor: but to the rest of us, it's obvious. So here's concrete proof of my claim for the importance of the scientific method in dealing with microtonality. Tune up an open "fifth" in which the fifth has the ratio 2^[3/5]. This is an interval of 720 cents. If you play this interval bare using a timbre with integer harmonics and plenty of high overtones, the interval will be hard to take. It may even grate on your ears. Now, however, play the progression I-IV-V-I in such bare fifths, same timbre, but with I, IV, V and I in 15-TET. You will suddenly discover that the interval which sounded grating in the first instance now sounds remarkably euphonious and concordant. The ear, in short, readily accepts the 720-cent "perfect" fifth as part of a multiple-of-5/oct equal tempered microtonal scale. This example can be repeated with 7-TET "perfect" fifths, which are nearly as far from just fifths (685.4 cents) as is the flagrantly non-just 720-cent fifth of 5-TET, yet which in the context of the 7-TET scale sound astonishingly euphonius and perfectly acceptable. Now tune up the 19-tet perfect fifth and play the progression I-IV-V-I. You'll discover that the progression sounds all but indistinguishable from the same progression in 12-tet, except that if you use full triads the chords sounds slightly smoother in 19-tet. Yet theorists condemned 19-tet throughout the 19th century because of its supposedly "unacceptable" 7-cent-flat perfect fifths. Barbour dismissed 19-tet as "musically useless" for this reason-- yet he never even *heard* music in 19-tet. Without experiment to serve as a check on our purely mathematical calculations, we cannot even begin to approach microtonality in an intelligent way. Instead, we would find ourselves flailing like bugs stuck in yogurt, as Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor have done repeatedly on this tuning forum. Without physical and psychoacoustic experiment to back up our claims, we would make foolish unproven statements which turn out to be nonsense--as Eric Lyon and Greg Taylor have done repeatedly on this tuning forum. -- It's worth taking two posts to discuss the various remarkably feeble defenses offered in service of John Cage, charlatan, because these wan and etiolated arguments in favor of Cage are symptomatic of the faulty reasoning and fuzzy grasp of fact found all too often on this tuning forum and throughout society in general (I'm talking about American society here --I can't speak for Europe). Yes, ladies 'n gents, there's a *REASON* why psychic help phone lines are so popular in America nowadays... Fuzzy thinking and slipshod logic lead to a pervasive abuse of words, a wanton violation of their recognized meanings, a disdain and a contempt for precision in the use of the English language. To use a word so fundamental to the outlook of modern western culture as "experimental" (in the way Cage does) and willfully pervert its recognized meaning is to grossly and culpably misuse the word "experimental." This, both Cage and Lyon have done by claiming that it means something other than its dictionary definition as soon as we kidnap the poor word "experiment," jam a hood over its head, stick a gun in its back, and frog-march it into the realm of modern music. Of course, if we want to make up the meaning of the words we use, we are certainly free to do so. Thus I can refer to Eric Lyon as a slubberdegullion and explain by this that slubberdegullion means "fine fellow." If we choose to go this route, we will quickly come a-cropper, and our discourse will degenerate into pure nonsense. We will straightways wind up talking about the importance of sofas in swimming pools ("sofa" here means "mathematics," while "swimming pool" in this context means "tuning system") and so on. The only alternative, ladies and gentlement, is to think clearly and use words with some concern for their recognized meanings. -- This points up the Bengal Tiger trap hidden in my previous post, and into which Eric Lyon so fulsomely tumbled. "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing [with] the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible." [Orwell, George, "Orwell: The Complete Essays, 1963, pg. 163] Alas, careless and sloppy use of words--particularly of terms borrowed from the sciences--is a chronic problem in music theory and indeed in all post-1945 art theory. While John Cage was irremediably sloppy and careless in his use of words, he is far from atypical of modern art theorists; in fact Cage's incoherenece and murkiness is symptomic of a larger problem. As Orwell points out, "In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning." [Orwell, op cit., pg. 168] --Also in modernist postwar music theory, one needs must add. The culprit, again, is the willfull misuse and shameless abuse of scientific terms. Eric Lyon himself touches on this important problem when he states "indeed the confusion of artistic and scientific methodologies is one major reason that many American university music departments have become somewhat inhospitable for artists." To put it bluntly, if you propose to use terms borrowed from the sciences you had better use them properly and with some understanding. Cage did not. Eric Lyon does not. Most modern "music theorists" do not. If you fail to properly use terms borrowed from the sciences, you are practicing pseudo-science. Another word for a person who practices pseudo-science is "charlatan"-- which the American College Dictionary defines as "1. One who pretends to more knowledge than he has; a quack." John Cage and his rivals at Darmstadt, along with PIerre Boulez' group in Paris were, by dictionary definition, charlatans one and all. They spouted meaningless pseudo-scientific drivel, and the intent of their "theories" appears to have been to obfuscate and impress, rather than to elucidate and specify. This is the charge made against John Cage in my topic 3 of TD 803, and the charge stands. Eric Lyon has not refuted the charge, since clearly he does not understand the dictionary definition of "experimental" any better than John Cage did. I don't blame Eric Lyon for this, any more than I hold Greg Taylor responsible for the fractured logic and twisted reasoning of his posts. Clearly these people are the victims of an educational system which has turned out college graduates who can't locate England on a world map and who think Neville Chamberlain was a basketball player. Because they have never been taught to think clearly or trouble themselves about the meaning of the words they use, these casualties of a failed system of so-called "higher" education are singularly vulnerable to argument by authority and proof by assertion. Lyon tries his hand at the latter when he states "The most cursory glance at Cage's writings displays his obvious intelligence and musical knowledge." This is an attempt at proof by mere unsubstantiated claim. As we all know, this is no proof at all. Countless crackpots have uttered unsubstantiated claims with great conviction... which claims turn out to be utter bilge. The most memorable example? Cyrus Teed. This 19th century cult leader claimed that the earth was not spherical but hollow and that we all live on the inside. Teed stated that the convexity of the earth's surface was due to "an unfortunate optical illusion." Teed made his claim with great authority, enough to convince hundreds of followers. Need I say more? Perhaps I do. Lyon speaks of what we learn from "the most cursory glance at the writings of John Cage." Fine. Let's take a cursory glance. Cage writes: "Does being musical make one automatically stupid and unable to listen? Then don't you think one should put a stop to studying music? Where are your thinking caps?" [Cage, John, "Silence," page 49] Let's see: Studying music must...therefore "make one automatically stupid." Right. -- Again: "For in this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those that are notated and those that not." [Cage, John, "Silence," page 7] This is true of *all* music. And so what? A fine example of a meaningless truism, since music by definition involves sounds, and all sounds performed in a musical concert are either notated, or not notated. This like saying "The visual arts involve optical aesthetic objects" or "the defining quality of a circle is its circularity." In short, this is trivial crap dolled up in pompous language to pass as profundity. Typical of Cage's writing. -- Again: "What might have given rise, by reason of the high degree of indeterminacy, to no matter what eventuality (to a process) becomes productive as a time-object." [Cage, J., "Silence," pg. 28] A simpler way to say this is: "shit happens." Why didn't Cage say that? Could it be because if he did, we would realize how assininely otiose the statement is? Any "thing" which "gives rise" to "no matter what eventuality" eventually becomes "a time-object" in music. This is as true as it is meaningless. -- Again: "Musical habits include...the study of the timbres, single and in combination of a limited number of sound-producing mechanisms. In mathematical terms these all concern discrete steps." [Cage, John, "Silence," page 9] Here Cage makes the ignorant blunder of claiming that all sounds have spectra which can be described in "discrete steps." This is completely wrong. In fact, many acoustic sounds have continuous spectra--all noisy sounds do. Cymbals, fricatives, plosives, whispered speech, flute multiphonics, loud brass notes, sul ponticello violin or viola or bass or 'cello notes; shaken thunder sheets, guiros, guajiras, shakers, rasps, drums, brushed metal plates, banged rocks, tambourines, etc. Only a very few instruments exhibit anything *like* discrete overtones and even then--as Xavier Sera showed in his Stanford doctoral thesis--*all* sounds have an acoustically important stochastic (contuous spectrum, essentially a noise) component, which (if left out) renders the resynthesis much more "artificial" and harf proof by authority. The Bible states that the earth was created in seven days. Who wants to argue in favor of this claim? This "authoritative" claim contradicts all available fossil evidence, all available radiocarbon evidence, isotoptic-proportion evidence, evidence from the microwave background radiation of the universe, evidence from radial red shifts of distant galaxies, ad infinitum. Proof by authority might have passed muster back when the Inquisition was burning witches, but that method of proof doesn't cut it nowadays, Eric. In fact, authorities, as history shows, are usually *wrong.* Aristotle is a superb example. Aristotle claimed that ice floats because its shape does not pierce the surface of water, while iron sinks because iron objects' shape do pierce the surface of water. Aristotle's authoritative statement was believed for thousands of years, simply because Aristotle was THE AUTHORITY. No one dared question THE AUITHORITY...until Galileo in the 1550s placed a thin iron needle on the surface of a pan of water and showed that the iron needle floated; then he pushed a piece of ice under the water and showed that even though its shape pierced the surface of the water the piece of ice inevitably rose to the surface. In short, proof by authority is meaningless because *no* authority is omniscient. No matter how prestigious any high panjandrum, s/he can be utterly and completely wrong. An excellent modern example is Linus Pauling's proposed structure for the DNA molecule. Pauling's model used 3 strands of nucleic acid, a structure which could not have held together at the molecular level. Pauling was a genius, a Nobel prize winner, an authority on chemistry, and he was also 100% dead wrong. If we wish to separate truth from nonsense and gibberish from meaningful statements, we must have recourse to evidence from the physical world. Nothing else will do. So please, people, stop quoting authority figures. I don't give a fat rat's ass what Milton Babbitt or John Cage or Bach or Beethoven or the King of Siam or Allah or Boddhisatva says, this means *NOTHING* to me. I'm from Missouri. I have to be shown. Authority figures mean *zero*. If you claim there will be a dawn tomorrow, your unsubstantiated opinion is amusing and no doubt charmingly naive; but if you want anyone to *believe* that there will be a dawn tomorrow, you had better run us through orbital dynamics and observed measurement of the planets' orbits, Newton's law of gravitation and the 3 laws of motion along with plenty of experimental evidence for 'em and (just to be on the safe side) an extensive computer simulation of the solar system to make sure it doesn't exhibit radically chaotic behavior. *Then* we'll believe there *might* be a dawn tomorrow. Otherwise, your statements amount to meaningless unproven gibberish--exactly like the statements of Eric Lyon and John Cage. -- Sadly, Eric Lyons' arguments conform to the tried and true principles of pseudo-science. Instead of proof, he offers only assertion; instead of reference to physical evidence, he genuflects to authority figures; and instead of using precisely defined terms clearly and coherently, he grossly misuses recognized scientific terms. (Viz., the word "experiment.") Thus, predictably, Lyon offers no evidence to back up his unsubstantiated claim that "the most cursory glance at Cage's writings displays his obvious intelligence and musical knowledge" other than testimony to that effect by Milton Babbitt. Since Babbitt is (if possible) even more musically and scientifically and mathematically incompetent than John Cage, this is like using the testimony of a witch doctor to back up the claims of a dowser. In fact, the most cursory glance at Cage's writings demonstrates 4 qualities: [1] Disdain for the recognized meaning of words; [2] incoherent reasoning and disjointed logic; [3] contempt for scientifically demonstrated facts; [4] a profound ignorance of music, mathematics, science, statistics and the laws of probability. -- Unlike Eric Lyon and so many other casualties of our intellectually bankrupt system of higher education who've attempted in vain to rescue John Cage from the consequences of his own gross incompetence, I propose to substantiate my claims that John Cage is a charlatan. I will demonstrate quote by quote and fact by fact that John Cage is a musical swindler "who pretends to more knowledge than he has; a quack." (The dictionary definition of a charlatan.) And in fact the proof is set forth in a series of 16 posts on John Cage coming up directly. This constant knee-jerk defense of John Cage's scientific illiteracies is no surprise; this is typical, usual, standard, ordinary and quotidian for the academic establishment and those whose reasoning capacities have been blunted by extensive exposure to it. And so the persistent defense of Cage's idiocies and quackeries on this forum is not alarming at all. It is to be expected. Having never been taught to think, what else can most of the forum subscribers do other than hysterically deny obvious facts? What *is* alarming is the uniformly low quality of reasoning and the utter lack of hard evidence produced by John Cage's defenders on this forum. Their feeble efforts serve as a brutal indictment of our failed system of "higher "education, and in particular of college professors' complete failure to teach students to think clearly, respect evidence, instill scholarship and inculcate a respect for logic. Indeed, "A bill of indictment for the professors' crimes against higher education would be lengthy. "Here is a partial one: *They are overpaid, grotesquely underworked, and the architects of academia's vast empire of waste. *They have abandoned their teaching responsibilities and their students. (..) *In pursuit of their own interests--research, academic politicking, cushier grants--they have left the nation's students in the care of an ill-trained, ill-paid, and bitter academic underclass. *They have distorted university curriculums to accomodate their own narrow and selfish interests rather than the interests of their students. *They have created a culture in which bad teaching goes unnoticed...and good teaching is penalized. *They insist that their obligations to research justify their flight from the college classroom despite the fact that fewer than one in ten ever makes any significant contribution to their field. (..) *They have cloaked their scholarship in stupefying, inscrutable jurgon. This conceals the fact that much of what passes for research is inane. *In tens of thousands of books and hundreds of thousands of journal articles, they have perverted the system of academic publishing into a shceme that serves only to advance academic careers and bloat libraries with masses of unread, unreadable, and worthless pablum. *They have twisted the ideals of academic freedom into a system in which they are accountable to no one, while they employ their own rigid methods of thought control to stamp out original thinkers and dissenters. *In the liberal arts, the professors' obsession with trendy theory--which is financially rewarding--has transformed the humanities into models of inhumanity and literature into departments of illiteracy. *In the social sciences, professors have created cults of pseudo-science packed with what one critic calls "sorcerors clad in the paraphenalia of science...woolly- minded lost souls yearning for gurus," more concerned with methodology and mindless quantification than with addressing any significant social questions. (..) *In schools of education, their disdain for teaching and the arrogance with which they treat their student has turned the universities into the home office of educational mediocrity, poisoning the entire educational system from top to bottom. *They have constructed machinery that so far has frustrated or sabotaged every effort at meaningful reform that might interfere with their boondoggle. *Finally, it has been the professors' relentless drive for advancement that has turned American universities into vast factories of junkthink, the byproduct of academe's endless capacity to take even the richest elements of civilization and disfigure them..." [Sykes, Charles J., Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Regnery Gateway: Washington DC, 1988, pp. 6-7] Thus, it ill behooves me to criticize those like Eric Lyons and Greg Taylor, since they are merely the symptoms of the disease--namely, those "vast factories of junkthink" called univerities. Obsessed with defending intellectually bankrupt charlatans like John Cage, the music professors in the universities of the world have no time to explore new microtonal realms. And so it's no surprise that J.A.M. Salinas complains of a grossly inadequate university education which purports to have familiarized him every aspect of avant-garde music and yet left him uniformed about even the barest elements of microtonality. Since microtonality is the cutting edge of today's music, it demands the utmost in clear thinking and the highest regard for acoustics and mathematics if we are to come to terms with the subject. This leaves most university professors of modern music completely out of the picture, since like John Cage himself and all too many of his would-be defenders on this tuning forum, nearly all university music professors are pervasively ignorant of acoustics, physics and mathematics, consistently unable to write or think clearly, systematically unaware of and disdainful of the facts of modern psychoacoustics, and almost universally incompetent in and ignorant of basic music theory and music history. (The few exceptions--Allan Strange, Brian Belet, William Alves, William Schottstaedt, Chris Chafe, John Chowning, et alii--merely prove this rule.) This is why it's so important to examine close up the full depth of Cage's charlatanry, and to contrast it at every turn with the manifold theoretical and acoustical depths of microtonality. Cage's swindles and perversions of 12-TET music theory are the disease; microtonality is the cure. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:43 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11103; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 18:45:09 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11186 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA04509; Thu, 28 Nov 1996 09:45:06 -0800 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 09:45:06 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu