Today there is still much debate over how music gets its meaning. Of course, music can be interpreted many different ways by different listeners, but there are many general emotional characteristics which appear to be universal to music. A central question is how much of these characteristics come directly from the music itself and how much from cultural association. The sciences of neurobiology and evolutionary psychology and the field of ethnomusicology are slowly making progress in answering this and related questions. People may associate certain sounds with certain emotions based on cultural conditioning, but some fundamental types of sounds are probably naturally pleasing or displeasing.
Also being investigated is the question of why music developed in the first place. The first attempts to put music in an evolutionary framework were made by Charles Darwin who said in his 1871 book The Descent of Man, "Musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex." Today there is active research in the evolution of music, with some evidence supporting Darwin's hypothesis that it was used for mating and other evidence suggesting that music was a means of social organization and communication in early cultures. A few leading evolutionary psychologists argue that music has no adaptive purpose at all, but simply manages, as the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written, to "tickle the sensitive spots" in areas of the brain that evolved for other purposes. In his 1997 book How the Mind Works, Pinker dubbed music "auditory cheesecake" a phrase that in the years since has served as a challenge to the musicologists and psychologists who believe otherwise.
Also being investigated is the question of why music developed in the first place. The first attempts to put music in an evolutionary framework were made by Charles Darwin who said in his 1871 book The Descent of Man, "Musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex." Today there is active research in the evolution of music, with some evidence supporting Darwin's hypothesis that it was used for mating and other evidence suggesting that music was a means of social organization and communication in early cultures. A few leading evolutionary psychologists argue that music has no adaptive purpose at all, but simply manages, as the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written, to "tickle the sensitive spots" in areas of the brain that evolved for other purposes. In his 1997 book How the Mind Works, Pinker dubbed music "auditory cheesecake" a phrase that in the years since has served as a challenge to the musicologists and psychologists who believe otherwise.
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