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0 pointsPaulDavisThe1st5y ago0 comments

I worry from this brief description that you may be ignoring cultural aspects to our perception of consonance and dissonance.

Also, harmony itself is a distinctly western concept whose musical role expanded dramatically with the advent of polyphony. Many (most!) musical cultures around the world don't give harmony much, if any role, and place higher importance on melodic structure.

Also, music harmony and the other kinds of harmony you mention seem to me to be related only by the language used for this particular metaphor. There seems to me to be no likelihood of there being any interesting relationship between musical consonsance and "harmony with technology and harmony with nature".

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dr_dshiv5y ago

I agree that the central scientific question is whether harmony is a metaphor or mechanism, e.g., for psychological constructs like Cognitive Dissonance. My guess is that harmony is so pervasive that it ceases to have original meaning -- like in the manner that every atom is a harmonic oscillator or how brainwaves are based on an "octave" structure (e.g., Beta is double Alpha, Gamma is double Beta, etc). However, this question of metaphor or mechanism should be resolvable with science, eh?

However, I disagree that harmony is primarily a western phenomena. It is a central feature to Confucianism and Daoism. It also plays a major role in Native American philosophy.

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