source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 13:01:03 -0700 Subject: Re: Chinese 12TET - overkill? From: Michael Wathen 556-9565 Another source of interest is an article in the , Volume 44 (1987), pp.471-488. The article by H. Floris Cohen is entitled "Simon Stevin's Equal Division of the Octave". It analyzes his treatise "Vande Spiegheling der Singconst". It argues that Stevin was trying to deal with the problem of Consonance of intervals. Through the analysis of the source material available... we find that Stevin's theory, which makes no sense if interpreted as an early stage in the 'evolution'of equal temperament, was meant as a solution---as freshly original as it was wrongheaded--to this perennial problem of consonance, which has continued to baffle some of the best scientific minds from the very beginning of science to the present day. One of Stevin's ideas was that of considering the ratio of an equal tempered fifth as "true" and the just ratio 3/2 as an approximation! Michael Wathen Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 06:12 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id VAA26823; Thu, 19 Oct 1995 21:11:46 -0700 Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 21:11:46 -0700 Message-Id: <951020001105_75797777@emout06.mail.aol.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu