leap years

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"What other 'not synchronous' things are you specifically referring to? Eclipses for example?"

Well, yes, eclipses would fit the bill, of course, but I was thinking in more general terms. People get unsettled by all sorts of things that upset the harmony of their lives. In fact "harmony" is a great analogy. When music is harmonious it's because the individual notes have synchronous relationships - the wavelengths are related by the ratios of small integers. The less correlated these ratios become, the more discordant the music sounds. Even cultures that have different musical scales from our own still embrace the overall concepts of harmony, so it's fairly clear that there must be some fundamental preference within the human brain for harmony rather than discord.

This preference in music seems to operate at a level below that of normal conscious thought and is therefore likely to be very ancient indeed. It may therefore be a reasonable indicator that the general preference for order and harmony and a fear of discord and chaos is also ancient.

Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs were founded on the desire to impose order on chaos. Their whole way of life was dependent on the cyclic flooding of the Nile and the desire to ensure that this continued was fundamental to many of their rituals.

"When music is harmonious it's because the individual notes have synchronous relationships - the wavelengths are related by the ratios of small integers. The less correlated these ratios become, the more discordant the music sounds. Even cultures that have different musical scales from our own still embrace the overall concepts of harmony, so it's fairly clear that there must be some fundamental preference within the human brain for harmony rather than discord."


Steve , sorry to be a wee bit off topic and probably pedantic but the harmonic series which gave birth to the major scale is not quite as smooth as you suggest . To be very dull the 5th harmonic which gives us the major third is slightly sharper than the natural third and the 7 th harmonic is quite a bit sharper . Roger Sessions who was opposed to the hard wired view said "physics and music are different spheres that touch at certain moments" .Some of the worlds most intricate and beautiful music has no harmony and utilises scales that show no synchronous relationships i.e. the notes would not form "harmonious" chords to unsophisticated ears but would be perfectly normal in 20th C "serious " music and the melodies minus harmony would be perfectly melodic if a little strange to western ears.