--On Saturday, April 21, 2001 1:15 PM -0400 jobling@acsu.buffalo.edu wrote:
> In this interview, Geoffrey Miller deals with a wide range of topics that
> have been discussed on this list -- among them, sexual selection and its
> relationship to the evolution of language and music, and behavior genetic
> research on intelligence.
Not to be obtuse, but it's not obvious to me what you mean by "deals with"
the topic of the relationship between sexual selection and music. Although
what he says seems sensible, I see a fundamental problem that undermines
the whole discussion. For example, Miller writes:
"Darwin thought the same should apply to human music, that human music was
largely an outcome of courtship displays. That's a wonderful overlooked
theory, and it's surprising that people have scrambled for a century,
coming up with all kinds of silly hypotheses about music functioning to
make people in a group feel closer to each other and to facilitate group
cooperation, for example?that's a favorite idea. If you go to any nightclub
in London or New York or Berlin or Tokyo you can see the proper context for
understanding music's function. Although it's done in groups the point of
it is individual display."
Who is on display here? From what he says here and later he seems to be
speaking of *dance*, not musical performance. If he means dance display,
where music functions to facilitate dance display, then that's fine (I
should leave that matter to the dance scholars), but the claim that he's
explaning something about musical display is not supported by what he says.
But let's say that Miller meant musical display (playing and/or singing,
and not dancing). Would anyone be attracted to the musical performances of
the average person? (I'm assuming that's a fair and reasonable question,
but I may be overlooking something.) Who among us believes that they could
use their own musical display to attract a mate? (Of course, people can
and do use recordings of other people's musical displays - a sort of
second-order display - both to establish an atmosphere and to facilitate
dance, but that does not seem to be what Miller has in mind.)
In another post, Ian writes:
> It has always been a staple of male sexual wisdom that one of the best
> ways to get laid is to join a rock band.
Let's say that were true. Does it matter what percentage of males actually
join rock bands (AND actually get a chance to mate thereby)? I would think
it does matter, and I would imagine that the percentage in both cases is
quite small.
(Along a different line: how common is it for mothers to sing to their
infants, and how might this fit into the picture?)
Arnie Cox
Assistant Professor Office (440) 775-8945
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music Home (440) 775-3174
77 W. College St. Fax (440) 775-8942
Oberlin, OH 44074 Arnie.Cox@oberlin.edu
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