MUSIC, MAGIC, AND SCIENCE IN THE MODERN WORLD

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Lower-Level

Modern science, as a privileged domain of knowledge of the world and of ourselves, has profoundly affected almost every aspect of our lives. This class will take a historical perspective on the relationship between science and modernity with a particular focus on music—a topic which has puzzled philosophers for millennia, and one which poses special problems for the modes of knowledge that characterize scientific modernity. Is music a “universal language”? Why does music so powerfully affect our emotions? Why are some sounds pleasing and others are not? Our goal in this class is to explore what scientific approaches to these questions can tell us about the place of science in the modern world—as well as how and why science has become so important to our imagining of ourselves as thinking, feeling, and willing beings. Armed with this historical knowledge, we will also read recent examples of popular science writing on sound and music a way to think about how we can we become better consumers of scientific knowledge as it is disseminated in the public sphere. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: MUSI 530 .