Hearing the Field

The entwined stories of Charles Wheatstone and Michael Faraday interwove sound and electromagnetism, as had Hans Christian Ørsted’s original discoveries in that field. Though Faraday lacked mathematical education, his feeling for music complemented his visual and experimental turn of mind. Wheatstone also lacked scientific education but came from a family of instrument builders and invented a number of musical devices, including the concertina. Wheatstone extended Ernst Chladni’s work to investigate dynamic, transient vibrations of bodies, especially the transmission of sound along rods. In his lectures at the Royal Institution, Faraday demonstrated Wheatstone’s ongoing work, including some experiments involving Javanese instruments and guimbardes (“Jew’s harp”). This chapter discusses how their unusual collaboration led Wheatstone to discover telegraphy and Faraday to the intensive investigations of sound immediately preceding and preparing his discovery of electromagnetic induction, as indicated by his notebooks and letters. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Music and the Origins of Ancient Science

Music entered deeply into the making of modern science because it was a crucial element of ancient natural philosophy, through which it thereafter remained active well into the formation of the “new philosophy” during the seventeenth century. The Pythagorean connection between music, numbers, and the sensual world remained potent in the quadrivium, the four-fold study of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that was the centerpiece of higher education until about the eighteenth century. This chapter surveys the ongoing connection between music and its sister sciences in the quadrivium from Plato and the Pythagoreans to Nicomachus and Boethius. The mythical story of Pythagoras in the blacksmith shop arguably represents the earliest recorded experiment, in the later sense of that word. Ancient Greek distinctions between number and magnitude were crucial elements in the unfolding interaction between arithmetic, geometry, and music. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Tuning the Atoms

During the nineteenth century, the study of spectra brought the music of the spheres to the atomic level. Anders Jonas Ångstrom’s initial treatment of the bright spectral lines of hydrogen relied on Leonhard Euler’s theory of resonance oscillations. This chapter explores the acoustical underpinnings of G. Johnstone Stoney and Johann Balmer’s search for the order in elemental spectra. Stoney used the musical analogy of atomic vibrations to explain spectral lines as “overtones,” comparing the fundamental vibration of hydrogen to a violin string. Though sometimes depicted as having guessed his formula for the spectral lines of hydrogen, Balmer explained it in terms of overtones from which he deduced their fundamental tone and then explained recently discovered spectral lines in hot white stars. In his later writings, Balmer omitted the explanatory material about the theory of overtones, seemingly in accord with Edmund Husserl’s concept of sedimentation, but which this book contests: earlier strata (such as musical presuppositions) will not always remain sedimented but can emerge into view. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Helmholtz and the Sirens

Hermann von Helmholtz’s investigations of physiological optics and acoustics reflected his profound interest in music. After devising instruments to measure the space and time parameters of visual and auditory response, Helmholtz produced “color curves” characterizing the complex response of the eye to the appropriate “dimensions” of hue, saturation, intensity. In so doing, he critiqued Newton’s attempt to impose the musical scale on vision. Through experiments on sirens, Helmholtz generalized auditory perception from vibrating bodies to air puffs. He gradually formed the view that recognition of musical intervals was closely analogous to spatial resemblance or recurrence. His unfolding conception of the “manifolds” or “spaces” of sensory experience radically reconfigured and extended Newton’s connection between the musical scale and visual perception via Thomas Young’s theory of color vision. In the process, Helmholtz’s studies of hearing and seeing led him to compare them as differently structured geometric manifolds. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Young’s Musical Optics

Building on the work of Leonhard Euler, Thomas Young advanced the wave theory of sound and light. This chapter describes how Young found his way to music against the strictures of his Quaker milieu. His new-found passions for music and dance informed his studies of sound and languages. His early work on the accommodation of the eye remained a touchstone for his later scientific development. At many points, his understanding of sound influenced and shaped his approach to light, including the decisive experiments that established its wave nature. His early investigations into the sounds of pipes led him to make an acoustic analogy that could explain optical phenomena such as Newton’s rings. He introduced a new system of temperament and used the piano as a scientific instrument. His comprehensive Lectures on Natural Philosophy included many plates that juxtaposed acoustic and optical phenomena. When Young turned to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, he relied on sound and phonology. His final suggestions about the transverse nature of light waves again turned on the comparison with sound. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Electric Sounds

Those who followed Leonhard Euler’s wave theory of light often re-engaged its relation to sound. The study of electricity and magnetism resonated with ongoing initiatives in light and sound, reflecting also wider philosophical ideas about the unity of nature epitomized by Naturphilosophie. This chapter examines the intertwined study of electricity and acoustics by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Johann Ritter, and Ernst Chladni. The search to unify the forces of nature often relied on analogies with sound, which in turn looked to electricity for new tools. Félix Savart studied the vibration patterns of violins; after reviewing this work, Jean-Baptiste Biot joined Savart in working on electromagnetism. In the aftermath of Thomas Young’s work, waves became a newly attractive explanatory approach to the problems of electricity. Building directly on Chladni’s sound figures, Hans Christian Ørsted discovered the synthesis of “electromagnetism” that brought a new unity to these two formerly separate forces, realizing the unitive hopes of Naturphilosophie. Ørsted’s discovery involved realizing the dynamic, transverse action of electromagnetism, qualities he had previously studied in vibrating plates. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Mersenne’s Universal Harmony

Music was completely central for the natural philosophy of Mersenne. This chapter begins with his musical arguments for heliocentrism, against the hermetist Robert Fludd. Mersenne’s Harmonie Universelle shows the closest relation between practical music, its theory, and natural philosophy. In it, he was able to reach certain results well before Galileo Galilei. Mersenne presented musical devices to make pioneering measurements of the frequency of vibrating strings and of the speed of sound. His detailed treatment of the mechanics of falling bodies, inclined planes and pendulums supported and enabled his ensuing deductions about vibrating bodies, which extended Descartes’s work. Mersenne’s understanding of overtones both profited from and struggled with his musical preconceptions, as did his attempt to incorporate atomism into his account of vibrating bodies. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Kepler and the Song of the Earth

Johannes Kepler, more than anyone, incorporated music into the foundations of his innovative astronomy. This chapter relates his interest in musical practice to his novel approach to its theory, which moved him to reject algebraic results that contradicted musical experience. Kepler’s search for cosmic polyphony points to Orlando di Lasso’s In me transierunt as a moving expression of the “song of the Earth,” down to the melodic spelling of the Earth’s song. Kepler presents cosmos and music as essentially alive and erotically active, based on his sexual understanding of numbers. The pervasive dissonance of the cosmic harmonies reflects the throes of war and eros. Like Oresme, Kepler realized the essential incompleteness of the cosmic music, which seemingly could never reach a final cadence, a universal concord on which the world-music could fittingly end. This would have been a heretical view, contradicting scriptural teachings about the finitude of time. Kepler treats this as an indication of divine infinitude, inscribed in the finite cosmos. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

The Dream of Oresme

As the leading natural philosopher of the fourteenth century, Nicole Oresme’s references to music show its continuing importance as part of the quadrivium; his arguments concerning geocentric cosmology considers its musical correlates and consequences. Music also figured importantly in his arguments about whether or not cosmic cycles can actually recur, reflected in the debate he staged between Arithmetic and Geometry. This chapter argues that Oresme finally sided with Geometry and in favor of incommensurability in the cosmic design, reflecting the biblical preference for a “new song” over incessant repetition. Oresme’s friendship with the eminent composer Phillipe de Vitry (a leading exponent of the ars nova) also marked his astronomical views. Oresme argued that issues of incommensurability ruled out cosmic recurrences such as the Platonic Year and also ruled out the simplest versions of the “music of the spheres.” Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).

Unheard Harmonies

Among early twentieth-century physicists, many considered their musical experiences formative of their relation to science. Albert Einstein’s famous devoted to music seems linked to his scientific work mainly through a general quest for harmony. Werner Heisenberg was a skilled musician who embraced a Platonic search for cosmic order after a revelatory performance of Bach. Even the unmusical Erwin Schrödinger found himself relying on musical analogies (as well as color theory) when he formulated his wave mechanics. The development of string theory reengages the mathematics of vibration, though the reality of the “strings” rests on analogy built on analogy, as shown in the progression Yoichiro Nambu described in his early work on this theory. Indeed, the concept of resonance remains important throughout physics, such as high-energy experiments. The Pythagorean theme of harmony remains potent in contemporary physics, though its harmonies are more and more unhearable and embedded in mathematical formalism. Throughout the book where various sound examples are referenced, please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/musicandmodernscience (please note that the sound examples should be viewed in Chrome or Safari Web browsers).