Smart quantum tunnelling

Abstract

Fascinating stories trace connections of consciousness and music from ancient world to the 21st century. This evolution is a struggle between differentiation and synthesis; it requires unified actions of language and music. From millennial history I select few episodes. In ancient Greece Apollonian and Dionysian consciousness is related to music from Homer to Attic tragedies. In the language of contemporary science I discuss Nietzsche’s comparison of tragedy to musical dissonance, and the death of tragedy in Socrates’ differentiation. Parallel evolution of consciousness and music is traced in ancient Israel from King David, Amos, and Seraphim antiphon in the vision of Isaiah to the last prophet Zechariah, at the same time when in Greece the first philosopher Thales pronounced “know thyself.” Contemporary consciousness emerges in parallel with Nehemiah’s antiphon. I trace synthesis and differentiation in consciousness and music during Early Christianity and Middle Ages; invention of musical notations and polyphony; love songs of troubadours and trouveres. I relate evolution of music during the Renaissance and Reformation including Baroque music to individuation of consciousness, music of Rococo and Classicism to rational consciousness, music of Romanticism to consciousness split by differentiation of the idea of rationality. Developments of consciousness in the 20th and 21st centuries away from the individual and toward the objective, collective socialism are related to dodecaphony, serialism, Modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, to elimination of emotions from music. Differentiation of the objective pushes against each other opposite tendencies in cognition and music. Parallel evolution of cognition and music is traced in tonal organization to the down of human evolution to before 250,000 BCE.