Emblems of Mind: The Inner Life of Music and Mathematics
Emblems of Mind: The Inner Life of Music and Mathematics by Edward Rothstein
English | 1995 | ISBN: 0812925602 | 264 Pages | DJVU | 4.9 MB
English | 1995 | ISBN: 0812925602 | 264 Pages | DJVU | 4.9 MB
One is a science, the other an art; one useful, the other seemingly decorative, but mathematics and music share common origins in cult and mystery and have been linked throughout history. Emblems of Mind is Edward Rothstein’s classic exploration of their profound similarities, a journey into their “inner life.” Along the way, Rothstein explains how mathematics makes sense of space, how music tells a story, how theories are constructed, how melody is shaped. He invokes the poetry of Wordsworth, the anthropology of Lévi-Strauss, the imagery of Plato, and the philosophy of Kant. Math and music, Rothstein shows, apply comparable methods as they create their abstractions, display similar concerns with ratio and proportion, and depend on metaphors and analogies to create their meanings. Ultimately, Rothstein argues, they reveal the ways in which we come to understand the world. They are images of the mind at work and play; indeed, they are emblems of Mind itself.