Music is perhaps the most natural of human arts. We are all, as Daniel J. Levitin says, expert listeners from an early age. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a fascinating study of neuroscience and music. I began exploring this connection about a decade ago when studies on religion and neuroscience were only just beginning to appear. Music, although closely related to religion in many ways, does not bear the stigma of “belief” and although music programs are often tragically cut from school budgets, we all value music because not to do so makes us less-than-human. Levitin shows clearly how music accompanies the most important parts of our lives and how it forms and develops the brain.
Music is somewhat easier to define than religion. Those who decry the humanities, I suggest, should be locked away with no access to music for a few years to see if they change their tune. I suspect they would. We need music, and music’s impact on the brain is an analog to that of religion. More studies of religion and the brain have begun to appear, and one gets the sense that materialists are a little bit angry and disappointed that religion hasn’t disappeared the way that it was predicted to have done by now. That’s because being human is more than being molecules and chemical reactions. It involves what we call the humanities.
Our brains are our gateways to all of human experience. They are complex in ways that computer designers emulate, but there’s a messy something about biology that straightforward mechanics seems to have trouble replicating. Our brains are part of one large, organic whole that encompasses life on this little planet. While studying the brain to understand it is indeed a good idea, calling it a meat computer is not. While software may be coded to compose music, of one thing we can be sure. Computers can’t enjoy music. It takes a brain to appreciate music, and the brain that appreciates music is mere synaptic connections away from seeing why religion is still important.
Politics Magazine
