Man — A Musical Instrument: Models of the Brain and Mental Functioning before the Computer

Research for this paper was made possible by the Australian Research Grants Scheme. Acknowledgment is due also to Dr Denyse Rockey, whose careful and constructive criticisms of my work-in-progress (The role of music in the transformation of knowledge) led me to undertake this present study. I should like to thank the translator, W. R. Albury, and the copyright holder, Abaris Books, for permission to quote from É. de Condillac Bonnot , La logique / logic, translation and introduction by Albury W. R. (New York, 1980).

Kassler M. Howe H. S. Jr , “Computers and music”, in Sadie S. (ed.), The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians (20 vols, London, Washington, Hong Kong, 1980), iv, 603–15.

Regarding the importance of aerophones and chordophones, see Kassler J. C. , “Apollo and Dionysos: Music theory and the Western tradition of epistemology”, in Maniates R. Strainchamps E. (eds), Music and civilization: Essays presented to Paul Henry Lang (New York, forthcoming). For an introduction to the classification of musical instruments, see Wachsmann K. , “Instruments, classification of”, in Sadie, op. cit. (ref. 2), ix, 237–45.

Oatley K. , Perceptions and representations: The theoretical bases of brain research and psychology (London, 1978), 57.

Marti-Ibáñez F. , “Foreword”, in Riese W. , A history of neurology (New York, 1959), 11–12.

Riese , ibid., 25. Riese adds that here are “the sources of error implied in all doctrines, assigning to life or soul their local residences and to the nervous system its inevitable chief position in the hierarchy of human structures and activities”.

Aristotle, Problems II, with an English translation by Hett W. S. … (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 171–2.

My account of Descartes's physiological psychology has been guided by several commentators, but especially Riese W. , “Descartes's ideas of brain function”, in Poynter F. N. L. (ed.), The history and philosophy of knowledge of the brain and its functions (Oxford, 1958), 115–34, and Fearing F. , Reflex action: A study in the history of physiological psychology (New York and London, 1964), which incorporates Fearing's article, “René Descartes: A study in the history of the theories of reflex action”. Psychological review, xxxvi (1929), 375–88. See also Crombie A. C. , Mahoney M. S. Brown T. M. , “René du Perron Descartes”, in Gillispie C. C. (ed.), Dictionary of scientific biography (16 vols, New York, 1970–80), iv, 51–65. Descartes's interest in music is manifest in his very first treatise, Compendium musicae, written in 1618 but not published until 1650. In this work Descartes reduced sensory perception to a strictly mechanical, and therefore a measurable, function. See Augst B. , “Descartes's Compendium of music”. Journal of the history of ideas, xxvi (1962), 119–32.

Descartes R. , Discourse on method, optics, geometry, and meteorology, translated, with an introduction, by Olscamp P. J. (Indianapolis, New York, Kansas City, 1965), 87–88.

Ibid., 88–89.

Ibid., 114.

Descartes R. , Treatise on man, French text with translation and commentary by Hall T. S. (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 71.

Ibid., 71–72. Descartes elsewhere (pp. 33–34) says: “To understand … how external objects that strike the sense organs can incite [the machine] to move its members in a thousand different ways: Think that [a] the filaments (I have already often told you that these come from the innermost part of the brain and compose the marrow of the nerves) are so arranged in every organ of sense that they can very easily be moved by the objects of that sense and that [b] when they are moved, with however little force, they simultaneously pull the parts of the brain from which they come, and by this means open the entrances to certain pores in the internal surface of this brain; [and that] [c] the animal spirits in its cavities begin immediately to make their way through these pores into the nerves, and so into muscles that give rise to the movements in this machine quite similar to [the movements] to which we [men] are naturally incited when our senses are similarly impinged upon.” As Fearing, op. cit. (ref. 8), points out, Descartes did not distinguish clearly between sensory and motor nerves but believed that the nerve tubes contained the delicate filaments essential to sensory action and served as a conduit through which the animal spirits were conducted to the muscles. Motor action consisted in the inflation of the muscle by the animal spirits which were conducted to it by the nerve. According to Riese , op. cit. (ref. 8), Descartes's analogy to the organ was particularly fortunate, since it implied the chronological structure of nervous function.

Descartes , op. cit. (ref. 12), 46.

Ibid., 47.

Ibid., 48. Here, the measurable aspects of Descartes's theory are most clear, for the underlying notion in this passage is a mathematical system of tuning.

Descartes , op. cit. (ref. 9), 89.

Ibid., 89.

Ibid., 90.

Descartes R. , Philosophical letters, translated and edited by Kenny A. (Oxford, 1970), 69–70, p. 70.

Ibid., 71.

Descartes , op. cit. (ref. 12), 113.

Oatley , op. cit. (ref. 4), 56.

Willis T. , The remaining medical works … Englished by S. P[ordage] (London, 1681), 124.

Ibid., 126. Willis also employed a string analogy when he wrote concerning certain eye movements caused by affliction in the ‘Praecordia’ (parts about the heart): “Without doubt these so happen, because the animal Spirits, tending this way and that way in this diverting place between the Brain and the Praecordia, do at once strike those Nerves as the strings of a Harp.” See ibid., 110 (the nerves referred to are the intercostal). For the musicologist, Willis is important for offering the first account of the neural processing of music and for offering what also appears to be the first neurophysiological account of the origin of music.

That Descartes may have had in mind an hydraulic version of the pneumatic organ is suggested chiefly from one passage in op. cit. (ref. 12), 21–22, where he compared the nerves to the tubes of hydraulic instruments.

Ord-Hume A. W. J. G. , Barrel organ: The story of the mechanical organ and its repair (South Brunswick, N.J. and New York, 1978), 42. Until recent times, circulation and respiration were regarded as strictly involuntary and, hence, as irrational functions. Traditionally, wind instruments have been used as models for irrationalism. See Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 3).

According to Temkin O. , “The classical roots of Glisson's doctrine of irritation”. Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxxviii (1964), 297–328, the concept from which irritability emerged, irritation, has a long history.

Digby K. , Two treatises: In the one of which the nature of bodies: In the other, the nature of mans soule, is looked into … (London, 1645), 334–5.

Ibid., 336.

Ibid., 344.

Ibid., 345.

Ibid., 347.

Ibid., 349.

Ibid., 349.

Haller A. , First lines of physiology, translated … under the inspection of Cullen W. … (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1786), i, 201.

Rockey D. , Speech disorder in nineteenth century Britain: The history of stuttering (London, 1980), 137. According to Rockey, Mueller regarded the medulla as the highest motor centre.

For music-theoretical aspects of Hartley's work, see Kassler J. C. , The science of music in Britain. 1714–1830: A catalogue of writings, lectures and inventions (2 vols. New York and London, 1979), i, 456–9.

Young R. M. , “David Hartley”, in Gillispie , op. cit. (ref. 8), vi, 138–40, p. 139.

Hartley D. , Observations on man his frame, his duty, and his expectations. In two parts (London, 1749), 108–9.

For a survey of the various terms used to denote secondarily automatic actions, see Fearing , op. cit. (ref. 8), 252–3.

Whitehorn J. C. Zipf G. K. , “Schizophrenic language”, (A.M.A.) Archives of neurology and psychiatry, xliii (1943), 831–51, p. 831.

Jones R. , Hieroglyfic: Or a grammatical introduction to an universal hieroglyfic language; consisting of English signs and voices … (London, 1768), unpaginated.

Arnott N. , Elements of physics, or natural philosophy, general and medical (3rd edn, London, 1828). For bibliographic details see Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), i, 22–23.

Rockey , op. cit. (ref. 37), 226.

Bloomfield L. , Outline guide for the practical study of foreign languages (Baltimore, 1942), 12, quoted in Jett A. , “The analogy of ‘learning a language’ and ‘learning music'”, Modern language journal, lii (1968), 436–9, who puts forward his own version of the analogy.

Bonet J. P. , Reduction de las letras, y arte para ensenar a ablar los mudos (Madrid, 1620), whose work is noticed by Mullett C. F. , “‘An arte to make the dumbe to speake, the deafe to heare': A seventeenth-century goal”. Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, xxvi (1971), 123–49.

Cull R. , “Stammer”, in Long G. (ed.), Penny cyclopedia (30 vols, London, 1833–58), xxii, 433.

Ibid., 434. Cull was a pupil of the elocutionist and speech therapist, John Thelwall, who drew extensively on music theory in forming his own theory of prosody. See Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), ii, 1007–12.

Arnott , op. cit. (ref. 44).

Ibid.

Brain W. R. , Speech disorders: Aphasia, apraxia and agnosia (2nd edn, London, 1965), 73.

Regarding the aphasia/amusia analogy, see Kassler M. , “A question by Spender on amusia explored”, Musicology VII: Articles, reviews, abstracts, 1982 (Melbourne, 1982), 131–5, an answer to Spender N. , “The neuropsychology of music”. Musical times, cxix (1978), 676–8.

Bergson H. , Matter and memory, translated from the fifth French edition by Paul N. M. Palmer W. S. (London, 1911), 165. Bergson's speculations, which often are dismissed as rhapsodies, were recognized for their clinical value by Brain, op. cit. (ref. 52).

Ibid., 165–6.

Bergson's conception of a mental ear is somewhat similar to that of ‘central deafness’. For a criticism of the latter concept, see D. Roberts (afterwards Rockey), “An evaluation of the term ‘central deafness'”, Journal of the Australian College of Speech Therapists, xviii (1968), 6–21.

Riese , op. cit. (ref. 8). For a modified version of the Cartesian figures, see Oldroyd D. R. , “Some ‘Philosophical Scribbles’ attributed to Robert Hooke”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxv (1980), 17–32. The phonograph record and the tape recorder were to become, models for those who advocated the notion of variable engrams.

Lubin C. K. , Language disturbance and intellectual functioning… (The Hagueand Paris, 1969), 15. See also Brain W. R. , “Hughlings Jackson's ideas of consciousness in light of today”, in Poynter, op. cit. (ref. 8), 89–91.

Lubin , op. cit. (ref. 58), 15–16.

Jackson J. H. , Selected writings… (2 vols, London, 1958; first issued, 1931), 159–60.

Ibid., 159–60.

Ibid., 188 note.

Ibid., 188 note.

Ibid., 188–9 note.

Ibid., 189.

Ibid., 165, 191–204.

Ibid., 205.

Vartanian A. , La Mettrie's L'Homme machine: A study in the origins of an idea (Princeton, 1960), 27.

Condillac , op. cit. (ref. 1), 163–81, p. 165.

Ibid., 179, where Condillac adds: “The habits which the fingers have acquired are easily noticed: Those of the ears cannot be equally observed, still less those of the brain: But the analogy proves that they exist.”.

Ibid., 169.

Ibid., 169–71.

Ibid., 173.

Ibid., 173–5.

Ibid., 175–7.

Ibid., 177.

Ibid., 171.

The activity of reading from signs remains implicit in Condillac; but Erasmus Darwin attempted to specify explicitly the sequence of actions involved in this process. He divided the whole of human nature into two substances — Spirit and matter — The former of which possessed the power to commence or produce motion, the latter, to receive or communicate motion. Darwin regarded motions of matter as either primary or secondary, secondary motions being given to, or received from, matter in motion. In treating the ‘catenation’ of motions, Darwin observed that to catenate is to cause; and he gave instances of various catenations in a young lady learning to play the harpsichord: When a young lady begins to learn music, she voluntarily applies herself to the characters of her music-book, and by many repetitions endeavours to catenate them with the proportions of sound, of which they are symbols. The ideas excited by the musical characters are slowly connected with the keys of the harpsichord, and much effort is necessary to produce every note with the proper finger, and in its due place and time; till at length a train of voluntary exertions becomes catenated with certain irritations. As the various notes by frequent repetitions become connected in the order, in which they are produced, a new catenation of sensitive exertions becomes mixed with the voluntary ones… [e.g., reasoning, imagining, recollecting]; and not only the musical symbols of crotchets and quavers, but the auditory notes and tones at the same time, become so many successive or synchronous links in this circle of catenated actions. See Darwin E. , Zoonomia; or, the laws of organic life (2 vols, 2nd edn, corrected, London, 1796), i, section 17. See also Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), i, 259–64.

Swift J. , Gulliver's travels, edited by Dixon P. Chalker J. with an introduction by Foot M. (Penguin, 1967), 227–9 and plate. The principal problem here is one of meaning, a problem that is brilliantly explored by Swift's successor, Samuel Beckett, in his novella, Watt (Paris, 1953).

The relations between music, music theory and combinatorial logic is merely touched on by Knobloch E. , “Musurgia universalis: Unknown combinatorial studies in the age of baroque absolutism”. History of science, xvii (1979), 258–75; but the subject deserves much further investigation. For an example of the relations from a medieval text, see Kassler J. C. , “Music as a model in early science”. History of science, xx (1982), 103–39. The “Musarithmica Mirifica” of Samuel Pepys is a composing ‘machine’ based on combinatorial logic and modelled after a similar machine described by Kircher A. , Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et ilissoni… (Rome, 1650). For other composing machines based on combinatorial logic, see Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), i, 191, 228–9, 286, 360, 362, 363, 381–4, 518, 556, 562, 673; ii, 762–3, 811–13, 927, 932, 1044–5, 1123–6, 1132, 1157, 1178–9.

Jevons W. S. , “On the mechanical performance of logical inference”. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, xvii (1870), 166–9, p. 168, abstracted from his more detailed article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society, clx (1870), 497–518 and plates 32–34.

Jevons W. S. , The principles of science: A treatise on logic and scientific method with a new introduction by E. Nagel (New York, 1958; first issued, 1874). 108.

Ibid., 111–12. Regarding the logical abacus and logical piano, see also Jevons W. S. , Letters and journal… edited by his wife [ Jevons H. A. ] (London. 1886), 205, 213, 220–1, 226, 236, 238, 241, 247, 351; Mays W. Henry D. P. , “Jevons and logic”. Mind, lxii (1953), 484–505; Gardner M. , Logic machines and diagrams (New York, Toronto, London, 1958), 92–103; and Gridgeman N. T. , “William Stanley Jevons”, in Gillispie , op. cit. (ref. 8), vii, 103–7. Jevons's logical notation and piano have, I believe, a fundamental relationship to music, for during his residence in New South Wales, he wrote a book about music and invented a new system of musical notation (apparently now lost). Moreover, he was a keyboard performer. Just how important music was to Jevons is clear from a letter dated 28 February 1858 to his sister, Henrietta, where he observes that “Music is always to me the same, a condition of my existence, a part of me. I believe I could live a life of Music.” See Black R. D. Collison Könekamp R. (eds), Papers and correspondence of William Stanley Jevons (7 vols, London, 1972–81), i, 32; ii, 319.

Ord-Hume , op. cit. (ref. 27), 409ff. illustrates the method.

Lasocki D. , “Preface”, in de Vaucanson J. , Le mechanisme du fluteur automate/An account of the mechanism of an automaton or image playing on the German-flute (Buren, 1979), unpaginated.

Vaucanson , ibid., 10.

Fryer D. M. Marshall J. C. , “The motives of Jacques de Vaucanson”, Technology and culture, xx (1979), 257–69.

Porter M. M. , “Embouchure”, in Sadie , op. cit. (ref. 2), vi, 152–3, pp. 150–1.

For example, Lasocki , op. cit. (ref. 85), states: “As far as I know, Vaucanson was the first person to write about the flute's acoustics, and indeed the only person in the 18th century.” Roger North, however, wrote on aspects of flute acoustics some six to ten years earlier, as may be seen in British Library Add. MS 32534, folios 77^r-79^v and elsewhere.

See Ord-Hume , op. cit. (ref. 27), for details.

Torres y Quevedo L. , “Essays on automatics”, in Randel B. (ed.), The origins of digital computers: Selected papers (2nd edn, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1975), 87–105.

The concept, ‘note’, includes (at the very least) pitch and duration. See Ord-Hume A. W. J. G. , Player-piano: The history of the mechanical piano and how to repair it (London, 1970); Bowers Q. D. , Put another nickel in: A history of coin-operated pianos and orchestrions (New York, 1966) and Encyclopedia of automatic instruments (New York, 1972). For an eighteenth century invention employing a paper roll (to record extemporary performance), see Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), i, 228–9.

Wittgenstein L. , Preliminary studies for the ‘Philosophical investigations’ generally known as the blue and brown books (2nd edn, Oxford, 1969), 121.

Ibid.

Ibid., 119.

Merleau-Ponty M. , The essential writings…, edited by Fisher A. L. (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, 1969), 369. Merleau-Ponty, like Swift and Beckett (ref. 78), is particularly concerned with the problem of meaning. For example, as against the view that the meaning of language lies in the elements composing it, he argues that the meaning of language lies in intention. Regarding the meaning of speech as “nothing other than the way in which it … plays modulations on the keyboard of acquired meanings”, see ibid., 199.

Ibid., 372.

A useful overview is provided by Crombie A. C. , “Mathematics, music and medical science”, XII^e Congrès international d'histoire des sciences, Paris 1968, Actes, Tome IB(Paris, 1971), 295–310. See also Hunt F. V. , Origins in acoustics: The science of sound from Antiquity to the Age of Newton (New Haven and London, 1978).

Fearing , op. cit. (ref. 8), ch. xiv, 232–53.

Gould S. J. , Ontogeny and phytogeny (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1977), 99.

See, for example, Dumas A. , Joseph Balsamo (The memoirs of a physician)… (London and Glasgow, no date; 1st French edn, 1846–47), esp. 100–3.

Tayler J. J. , “Some remarks on the nature of genius” [read 31 October 1823], Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, iv (1824), 373–426. See also Kassler , op. cit. (ref. 38), ii, 1002.