It’s not because of its sonority, its emotion, its excellence, or its beauty. No, forget all that; none of those messy, unscientific explanations get to the bottom of why we like music. The real truth has at last been revealed in its fulness:
Whether it’s the Beatles or Beethoven, people like music for the same reason they like eating or having sex: It makes the brain release a chemical that gives pleasure, a new study says.
[From Study: Love music? Thank a substance in your brain - Yahoo! News]
Aahh, that delightful evening in the concert hall, or that weekend afternoon in the living room listening to the stereo: isn’t life just a remarkable series of brain-based neurochemical reactions?
January 10th, 2011 | 4:26 pm | #1
Reductionism is so easy.
January 11th, 2011 | 11:33 am | #2
Oh, darn, that reminds me, I’m late for my appointment with Professor Frost in the Objective Room.
January 11th, 2011 | 1:31 pm | #3
The best of the trilogy–nice reference.
January 11th, 2011 | 2:15 pm | #4
I distinctly recall the positive neurochemical reactions produced in my brain when I read the trilogy some years ago, and my neurochemical reactions would express to you at this time their positive response to your providing me with still more positive neurochemical reactions by way of this allusion.
January 12th, 2011 | 8:49 pm | #5
Reductionism at its finest. How it tingles my neurons!
The hollowness of the modern scientific mind is a marvel worth studying in a science lab. That is, if they believe the mind exists. A mind is a shaky proposition in a world where the only reality is what you can see with your eyes and cradle in a test tube.
January 20th, 2011 | 8:43 pm | #6
Ice melts because it releases water!
January 21st, 2011 | 12:11 pm | #7
Meredith, I have to tell you how I read your comment and my reaction. First you need to know that as an author here I have access to a screen that lists nothing but comments, with the most recent ones first. I check in on that screen via my mobile phone once or twice a day to see what’s going on in the discussions. That screen indicates which blog post a comment is attached to, but that part is in small print.
When I read your comment here I missed the small print at first. I just read what you wrote, without at first connecting it to where you placed it. And my initial reaction was, “Wow. That’s quite a sorry bit of unscientific nonsense. Why would anyone think that?”
Then I saw the rest of it and realized what you were doing. It brought home for me, much stronger than before, what a sorry example of unscientific nonsense that article on music was. Thanks for your pithy yet effective illustration.
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