Music as a Spandrel of Evolutionary Adaptation for Speech

The Doors of Imagination

Gregor Tomc (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

377 Seiten

2023 | Unabridged edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-5275-1876-6 (ISBN)

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Some forms of human behavior make no sense in the light of evolution. Music is one of them, and it is the main subject of this book. Here, it is interpreted from a holistic perspective; music is embedded in our nature, it is embodied in our organisms, and it is emergent, a language that opens the doors of imagination for us.The first half of the book is dedicated to cognitive aspects of acoustic signalization: of learned bird song, of automatic mammal calls, and of speech and music in humans. The second part of the books deals with the culture of music in European modernity. The question of the relation of music and imagination is also addressed. The book posits that music makes it easier for us to depart from paramount reality and become creative – not bad for something that started as a spandrel of speech.

Gregor Tomc is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He began his scientific carreer as a researcher in main-stream social science, with his interests ranging from criticism of socialism, such as his book From Poland to Pol Pot (1984); to youth subculture studies, for example his book The Other Slovenia (1989). In the 1990s, the focus of his research shifted towards cognitive science. Today, he would describe himself as a social neuroscientist, combining natural and social sciences. His last two books on these subjects are Genes, Neurons & Languages (2011) and Lime-tree gods (2019). He also teaches at University of Ljubljana – more specifically, in the Department of Cultural Sciences; creativity, music and religion at the Faculty of Social Sciences; and bioethics at the Faculty of Biotechnology.

Erscheinungsdatum	26.07.2023
Verlagsort	Newcastle upon Tyne
Sprache	englisch
Maße	148 x 212 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-5275-1876-0 / 1527518760
ISBN-13	978-1-5275-1876-6 / 9781527518766
Zustand	Neuware