Posted by Rick Denney on January 20, 2004 at 21:54:30:
In Reply to: Re: Tubas and Test-tubes posted by Art H on January 19, 2004 at 23:16:00:
It is perhaps folklore, but I recall being taught that the repeating nature of the periodic table of the elements was first conceived by a fellow who was thinking about musical scales and their repeatability.
Music and other art organizes the mind around patterns that provide the framework for other patterns to emerge. There is a rhythm to nature, and music is just as much an expression of it as science. You cannot divorce the two.
There is also an emotion to science. Some of my most emotional moments have been when I first perceived certain complex effects not previously seen by anyone else. The emotion of these small (and unimportant) but new discoveries feels quite similar to the exhiliration I feel when hearing some works of music. Music feeds the intellect as profoundly as science, and science feeds the soul as profoundly as music.
The problem is that most folks who don't do science think that it is the deterministically dry search for mere fact. They don't realize that seeing an elusive pattern in nature might require as much emotional commitment as creating an elusive pattern in music. Science is expressive, even if most folks don't see the gesture.
Rick "who lives in a mysterious but not mystical world" Denney