Music and Evolution

I was just listening to a drum solo in a performance by Yes and it struck me - why in the world would evolution produce the ability to perform these extremely complex actions that are not related to anything one does in life other than play the drums?

This circuitry in the brain takes resources, and increasing resource demand is, other things being equal, gonna be bad evolutionwise, I would think.

What use is this skill in the absence of some reason to do it, like enjoying it? But why enjoy something as useless as music?

Well, many of us aren't using that circuity for much right now anway.

Humans are not an evolutionary success, which is why we developed tools and language to overcome our environment. If we weren't such massive failures at evolution, we'd be something as elegant, ancient, and stupid as the snake. Evolution is not a very useful way to judge the accomplishments and aptitudes of humanity since the breeding of tool-users with fire, weapons, and wit is not restricted by natural selection.

Well, I wouldn't at all agree that we are aren't an evolutionary success.

We seem to be doing ok so far as increasing our population goes.

Other animals use their survival techniiues, we use ours, which are math and writing and transmitting knowledge from generation to generation and other geeky things like that.

Just because our survival techniques are more cerebral than claws and teeth doesn't mean we don't get to take credit and gloat about them.

I don't think natural selection has an opt out plan.

Evolution is based on natural selection, the ability to procreate, and the survival of the offspring. We stopped being limited by evolution around the time we started conquering our environment because we took natural selection out of the equation. We don't even have any real instincts beyond rooting. Look it up.

We are part of nature. We haven't flown off to some ethereal realm where natural law does not apply.

Natural selection is not avoidable. Saying that natural selection does not work on humans is like saying gravity doesn't work on us because we make airplanes and rockets.

Just sayin'.

An interesting side note on this topic:

Years ago I remember reading about a species of coral that reproduced asexually. It also didn't appear to age, it just grew indefinitely (and was killed back by weather and animals). If memory serves, the theory scientists concocted by observing the coral was that since the defect of age occurs well after the phase of sexual procreation (of which the coral had none and since they never developed the defect, they didn't really age and die), it was beyond the scope of evolution through natural selection to correct. They tested their theory by performing UNNATURAL selection on fruit flies, breeding only the ones most fit and able at the end of their lifespans that could actually procreate. They did this with every successive generation and after many generations they doubled their lifespans. When normal fruit flies were dying, these were just entering midlife and were perky and more resistant to disease. They could never correct the defect, but they could ward it off with this method. Theoretically, we could do the same for humans with some selective breeding. Although it would be unethical, it sure would be useful for space travel and for keeping wisdom in the world longer. :\

You live in your world and I'll live in mine where human beings don't have less partners to fuck because winters grew longer. Just sayin'.

...or stupidity in the world longer. Perhaps this was the selective pressure that shortened all our lives?


With regard to musical ability, we should all recognise that going to band camp dramatically enhances one's chances to procreate.

Hence humanity's remarkable skill with musical instruments...

For the love of God, Allah or Darwin, can we all just STFU already?

The easy answer to this question was put succinctly by Mark Knopfler: "money for nuthin' and your chicks for free".

The longer answer is that this has been pondered and investigated by evolutionary psychologists and they say pretty much the same thing but more verbosely. Why develop the arts? Because they are attractive. How attractive? Very, and attention getting too. Mate choice is an extremely powerful force in natural selection, so much so that Darwin's second book was devoted to it because it was too big an idea to fit into the first one.

I'll deviate from my norm and keep this short. Music is sexy; it gets you laid. That alone is more than sufficient for selection to strongly favor it. Ask women why they love the man they love and one of the most frequent answers is "he makes me laugh". Intelligence is sexy too, so much so that it may well have been the primary force that selected for our extremely rapid brain swelling over the last few million years. Bibliography upon request.

Music is sexy to creatures that have evolved an appreciation of music, but not to those who haven't. An early human with no appreciation of music might look at the primitive drummer and grunt to themselves, "What a loser, hitting rocks with sticks instead of doing something useful like capturing something to eat, plus for god's sake, the racket, make it stop! There's no way I would mate with that mental defective!"

Perhaps the physical aspect of makingt he the movements associated with music production is part of what gives us our incredible skill at object manipulation. Drumming involves apatial pattern recognition, and converting spatial relationships into temporal ones.

Maybe music in humans is not some kind of attractive piece of fluff but part of the origin of our mathematical skills and time binding.

I'm not explaining this at all well tonight, gah! First, music can be viewed as a special case of generally entertaining and fun things. Homonids have been social for a really long time and like all the rest of [/i]Hominoidea (gorillas, chimps, us) spend a lot of time just hanging out with each other. Someone who is enjoyable to be with (where "enjoy" is intentionally undefined) is more interesting than one who isn't - this tends to breed for both enjoyable and capable-of-enjoying simultaneously. This is due to "linkage disequilibrium" that you don't want me to explain but causes preference-for-X be selected for along with tendency-to-do-X.

Music goes back much further. As one writer put it, there are three ways to induce ovulation in female songbirds 1) put her with a male of the species 2) inject her with the right hormones 3) play a recording of male's song for her. Music has been powerful stuff before mammals even hit the scene.

The hypotheses that place music as a special case of tool use likey point in the wrong direction as being clever, witty, entertaining, and affable predate both, and music predates tools by eons.

And as a bass player, I can attest that the drummer get's laid more often than anyone else in the band, i.e. Tommy Lee....

What do you call a Drummer without a girlfriend? Homeless...

What do you call a guy that hangs around with musicians? A drummer... badum bump...

[/i]
Bird songs don't involve the birds manipulating objects at all.

Perhaps there was some mutation that linked up existing musical abilities with our developing manipulative skills.

Imagine what a trip that would be, instead of doing your music with your voice like your ancestors had done for so long, all of sudden while you are hitting something for some functional reason like cracking a nut you get this cool tingling sensation when your nut cracking movements start triggering your musical appreciation sense.

--- and

Since humans didn't evolve from birds, what does music abilty in birds have to do with the origin of music in humans? Is there any evidence at all of music ability in a common ancestor of birds and humans?

--- Also ---

If being clever , witty , and entertaining is so old, when is this behavioral pattern going to hit the forums?

Music serves the function of providing social identity and cohesion. Therefore in a social animal like us, it has a definite survival value.

Music, for me, has long been something not just about the music itself, but how it affects others and how people react. Be it emotionally on a base level, or if someone writes a detailed "intelligentsia" critique. I find music is often like a train, and has provided many tasty analogies for me over the years. Playing the piano has helped my typing speed. Relationally, extremely quick reflexes that come with being a virtuoso musician can help someone escape death, or in a number of everyday tasks. I suppose that would help me to survive in a computer world like Second Life.

That need could be satisfied by singing and whistling and other things done with mouth and larynx, and thus offers no explanation at all for the ability to play a drum set like the one below with the skill of someone like Buddy Rich or Neil Peart.


As for the use of drumming skill in combat, very few predators or other dangers align themselves in a proper fashion and remain stationary and get rendered non-threatening not from the magnitude of the impact but from being hit in an extremely complex manner that produces a sound which makes people feel a variety of strong emotions.

Based on the discussion so far, the above photograph is merely that of a device used to enhance pleasure and increase the odds of procreation.

I'm not sure you are allowed to show pictures of such things in forums.

Were it your personal set, I'd take it as a lurid tease toward all of us, but hopefully it was anonymous and simply shown as a clinical, educatory tool.

Either way, I am impressed by it.

Also, the need to eat could be satisfied entirely with bare hands, I could go study bears for a while and then go pluck salmon out of streams - it's the use of tools like fishing poles and nets that we've developed that work even better.

Music and it's psychological and emotional effects, much like humor's psychological and emotional effects, are things that I think we barely have begun to grasp yet. Why are we amused with/laughing at things we find humorous? Why do we find interest in music? One could just as easily ask why do we find interest in anything other than procreations, self preservation, and struggling for power?

Please, understand my reply is just to prove a point, and I'm not making fun of you - just illustrating that it's all about perspective.

I was watching one dog sniff another dog's butt the other day, and it struck me - why in the world would evolution produce the ability to perform this extremely smelly action that is not related to anything the dog does in life other than discover "what is causing that rank odor"?

This circuitry in the dog's brain takes resources, and increasing resource demand is, other things being equal, gonna be bad evolutionwise, I would think.

What use is this skill in the absence of some reason to do it, like enjoying understanding just how dirty the other dog's rear-opening is? But why enjoy something as useless as doggie doo s

Why in the world did you even bother to ask this question, Suzanne, when all you wanted was to expound on your theory in the first place? Couldn't you have just made your "statement of opinion" and be done with it, saving us your rebuttal to everyone's replies?

What is it exactly that you think my theory is?