So far, though, the sonifications of high energy physics data sound much more like electronic or computer music than the Romantic or Pythagorean sublime. Even after World War II, physics re-engaged archaic Pythagorean imagery in the service of new theoretical initiatives at the same time, electronic and film music created new “sounds of space” that contrasted with the “cosmic sublime” invoked by Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg. We particularly wish to raise this “Pythagorean paradox” as a significant problem that deserves larger attention as well-known as the theme of the “music of the spheres” may be, it has drawn surprisingly little interpretation or analysis that goes beyond observing how wide-spread and long-lasting has been its presence in Western cultural history. His acknowledgment of the “Pythagorean creed” at work in modern physics at the same time raises questions about what he considers its “naive and even silly” quality. What exactly does this Pythagorean apotheosis mean and why did it seem so compelling to those who wrote and read it? Why, toward the end of the twentieth century, should those ambitious to promote a cutting-edge “theory of everything” have turned to millennia-old Pythagorean musical imagery rather than more up-to-date “scientific” descriptions and concepts that would seem more congruent to a modern theory? Why should recourse to (perhaps inaudible) cosmic music justify a recondite model of theoretical physics?įor instance, Leonard Susskind, a physicist active in the development of string theory, has critiqued “the myth of uniqueness and elegance” that he traces back to “a mystical mathematical harmony of the universe” he ascribes to Pythagoras and Euclid: “While the connection between music and physics may seem to us naive and even silly, it’s not hard to see in the Pythagorean creed the same love of symmetry and simplicity that so motivates modern physicists” (Susskind 2005: 118–119). First conceived in the late 1960s, string theory was increasingly presented with explicit reference to the classic Pythagorean themes, especially in more popular treatments. Though the focus of this paper will be on the second half of the twentieth century, the nature of the developments we consider require that we contextualize them in the longue durée that stretches back into antiquity and forward to the present day. Here, we will address the “sounds of space” in the search for cosmic harmonies in contemporary physics, specifically in string theory and the sonification of data. By the time he wrote, that quest had already moved philosophers for two millennia, as it continues to do to this day, a story which goes far beyond the confines of this paper.
Thus Johannes Kepler expressed in 1620 his deep-felt commitment to the search for Pythagorean harmonies in the planetary spheres above his war-torn Earth, exhorting his readers to join him in the quest. Let us despise the barbaric neighing which echo through these noble lands and awaken our understanding and longing for the harmonies. In vain does the God of War growl, snarl, roar, and try to interrupt with bombards, trumpets, and his whole tarantantaran.
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