This dissertation aims to revive wave theory in the philosophy of sound. Wave theory identifies sounds with compression waves. Despite its wide acceptance in the scientific community as the default position, many philosophers have rejected wave theory and opted for different versions of distal theory instead. According to this current majority view, a sound has its stationary location at its source. I argue against this and other alternative philosophical theories of sound and develop (...) class='Hi'>wave theory into a more defensible form. Philosophers of sound tend to emphasise how sounds are experienced to be in their arguments. Most often, it is assumed that that which appears to be a distally located bearer of auditory properties in an auditory experience is a sound. Chapter 1 argues that if this distal entity is the sound source instead, many of the existing theories of sound will be severely affected. Chapter 2 discusses auditory perception and criticises the common assumption that we hear non-sound entities in virtue of hearing sounds. I show that this assumption begs the question against certain theories of sound and that the contrary view that sound sources can be directly heard is more plausible. If sound sources can be directly heard, then features commonly attributed to sounds based on auditory experiences might rather be features of sound sources. I examine eight of such features in Chapter 3. Only four of them survive. Chapters 4 and 5 review the existing theories of sound. After a taxonomy of existing theories of sound, each theory is criticised one-by-one. Some of them are problematic precisely because they rely on the implausible assumption that that which appears to be distally located in an auditory experience is a sound rather than a sound source. Lastly, Chapter 6 focuses on wave theory. It begins with two positive arguments for wave theory in general, followed by my replies to two common objections in the literature. I then move on to develop my version of wave theory. There are two core aspects of my view. The first one is a metaphysics of compression waves; the second is an account of what it is to hear compression waves. After comparing my view with a similar theory, I demonstrate the explanatory power of my view in two steps. First, the eight commonly accepted features of sounds examined in Chapter 3 are revisited. It turns out that my view can accommodate all of them. Second, explanations for four special sound-related phenomena are offered at the end of the chapter. I conclude in the last chapter with the suggestion that, as a philosopher, the best way to defend wave theory is to offer a better understanding of auditory perception which explains how compression waves are experienced. (shrink)

Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and IndustryManhattan Project to the Santa Fe Institute: The Memoirs of George A. Cowan by Leo Beranek; George A. Cowan.

I defend and develop a traditional view in the metaphysics of sound, The Wave Theory of Sound. According The Wave Theory, as developed herein, sounds are not patterned disturbances so much as their propagation. And the propagation of a patterned disturbance is not a form of travel, but a dynamic in-formation, the wave-form successively inhering in diferently located parts of the dense and elastic medium. This conception, along with the assumption that we hear not only (...) sounds but their sources, has the resources to address many of the most recent criticisms of this traditional view. (shrink)

Sound is one of the types of waves that can be felt by the sense of hearing (ears). In physics, the definition of sound is something that is produced from objects that vibrate. Objects that produce sound are called sound sources. The sound source that vibrates will vibrate the molecules into the air around it. Sound is mechanical compression or longitudinal waves that propagate through the medium. This medium or intermediate agent can be liquid, (...) solid, gas. So, sound waves can propagate for example in water, coal, or air. Most sounds are a combination of various vibratory signals composed of harmonic waves, but pure sound can theoretically be explained by oscillating vibrational speed or frequency measured in Hertz (Hz) vibration units and amplitude or loudness of sound with measurements in decibels (dB). The effect sounds can have on us humans is simply astounding. While everyday life becomes stressful, overcrowded and increasingly hectic, we seek ways for inner peace and balance. The power of music, felt through overtone-rich sound therapy and sound massage, can be a solution. No matter how much scientific explanation is behind it, healing through music remains fascinating, even magical. This paper introduces a new field called cymatics and sound healing with their plausible impact to spirituality and consciousness research. (shrink)

The life and work of Renaissance man Leo Beranek: scientist, professor, engineer, busisess leader, inventor, entrepreneur, musician, television executive, philanthropist, and author.

This study sought to find out the effect of the Hot Seat Strategy on eighth graders’ achievement in Wave Motion and Sound Unit in their Life and Science textbook. The researcher used the quasi-experimental design to achieve the aim of the study. The population of the study was all eighth graders (No=934) in Qalqilya public schools. The study sample, randomly chosen, was 208 students in the eighth grade. Of five eighth-grade sections, the researcher randomly chose two sections: one (...) experimental and another control. After data collection, it was obtained that the Hot Seat Strategy positively impacted students’ achievement. There was a statistically significant difference at α = 0.05 in students’ achievement level as well as level of knowledge, memorization, understanding, and application in favor of the experimental group. (shrink)

... ISBN0199215928 ... -/- Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted (...) philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned. -/- . (shrink)

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based (...) on the decomposition of complex sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

The spatial misrepresentation objection (SMO) against the wave theory of sound argues that if sounds are compression waves, then our auditory experiences are massively illusory for not representing sounds as propagating in the medium. Thus, it claims that the wave theory should be rejected because it is unreasonable to accept such an error theory of hearing. This paper presents a metaphysics of compression waves to show that the wave theory correctly implies that we cannot hear sounds (...) as propagating. Moreover, I argue that the SMO is based on a mischaracterisation of the phenomenology of auditory experiences. A new conception of auditory perception is then proposed to explain how a sound source and its compression wave are both represented in the same auditory experience. Finally, I compare my view with some alternative theories of sound. Overall, it is found that the SMO is more of an objection against the traditional conception of hearing than a challenge to the wave theory of sound. (shrink)

One of the more radical ideas to have emerged in recent metaphysics of quantum theory is wave function realism, according to which the fundamental spatial framework of the world is one of very many dimensions. At first sight this idea sounds similar to the notion of a multidimensional implicate order the physicist David Bohm proposed on the basis of quantum theory in the 1980s. This paper briefly considers Bohm’s various attempts to provide a realist interpretation of the wave (...) function in order to clarify whether or not Bohm was anticipating and even endorsing wave function realism with his implicate order theory. The underlying question is what quantum theory — and non-locality in particular — is trying to tell us about the more fundamental nature of the physical world. (shrink)

This chapter argues that sounds are best conceived not as pressure waves that travel through a medium, nor as physical properties of the objects ordinarily thought to be the sources of sounds, but rather as events of a certain kind. Sounds are particular events in which a surrounding medium is disturbed or set into wavelike motion by the activities of a body or interacting bodies. This Event View of sounds provides a unified perceptual account of several pervasive sound phenomena, (...) including transmission through barriers, constructive and destructive interference, and echoes. (shrink)

Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds. On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the (...) audible qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework. In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses— namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation. (shrink)

This article reflects on an ongoing artistic research practice that deals with sound, gender, power, spatiality, and human–nonhuman entanglement. Sparked by a sound design for a less crunchy “lady-friendly” crisp, the research inquires the relationship between gender and sound at human–nonhuman encounter through making and thinking. Drawing on queer theory, sound studies, and posthumanism, it aims to transcend essentialist, vision-focused, and anthropocentric conceptualisations of gender and, as an insight gained from working with low-frequency sound waves, (...) it reflects on sound as material-philosophically demonstrating human–nonhuman interconnectedness. The latter, as this article proposes, may encourage us to horizontalise hierarchies between the human and nonhuman. Finally, this text situates sonic thinking as a mode of trans*formative thinking: a process-oriented philosophy that aims to embrace the messy, queer ways of human–nonhuman relationality, which characterises a vibrant space from which this artistic research will further develop. (shrink)

Relationalism maintains that mind-independent objects are essential constituents of veridical perceptual experiences. According to the argument from hallucination, relationalism is undermined by perfect hallucinations, experiences that are introspectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptual experiences but lack an object. Recently, a new wave of relationalists have responded by questioning whether perfect hallucinations are possible: what seem to be perfect hallucinations may really be something else, such as illusions, veridical experiences of non-obvious objects, or experiences that are not genuinely possible. This paper (...) argues that however well new wave relationalism may handle brains in vats, drug users “seeing” pink elephants, and other extraordinary hallucinations, it struggles to accommodate mundane hallucinations, such as “hearing” your child cry out from the room down the hall when she is actually sound asleep or “feeling” vibrations on your thigh even when your phone isn't in your pocket. Mundane hallucinations are best explained as byproducts of noise in the perceptual system, and noise-induced hallucinations are resistant to the strategies that new wave relationalists deploy to explain away other hallucinations. Mundane hallucinations can thus underpin an especially powerful version of the argument from hallucination. (shrink)

People who live near wind turbines complain of symptoms that include some combination of the following: difficulty sleeping, fatigue, depression, irritability, aggressiveness, cognitive dysfunction, chest pain/pressure, headaches, joint pain, skin irritations, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and stress. These symptoms have been attributed to the pressure (sound) waves that wind turbines generate in the form of noise and infrasound. However, wind turbines also generate electromagnetic waves in the form of poor power quality (dirty electricity) and ground current, and these can adversely (...) affect those who are electrically hypersensitive. Indeed, the symptoms mentioned above are consistent with electrohypersensitivity. Sensitivity to both sound and electromagnetic waves differs among individuals and may explain why not everyone in the same home experiences similar effects. Ways to mitigate the adverse health effects of wind turbines are presented. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the widely held assumption that loudness is the perceptual correlate of sound intensity. Drawing on psychological and neuroscientific evidence, I argue that loudness is best understood not as a representation of any feature of a sound wave, but rather as a reflection of the salience of a sound wave representation; loudness is determined by how much attention a sound receives. Loudness is what I call a quantitative character, a species (...) of phenomenal character that is determined by the amount of attention that an underlying perceptual representation commands. I distinguish quantitative from qualitative character; even qualitative characters that represent degrees of sensible magnitudes are phenomenally and functionally distinct from quantitative characters. A bifurcated account of phenomenal character emerges; the phenomenal is not exhausted by the qualitative. (shrink)

In Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception, authors Mark Grimshaw and Tom Garner introduce a novel theory that positions sound within a framework of virtuality. Arguing against the acoustic or standard definition of sound as a sound wave, the book builds a case for a sonic aggregate as the virtual cloud of potentials created by perceived sound. The authors build on their recent work investigating the nature and perception of sound as used in (...) computer games and virtual environments, and put forward a unique argument that sound is a fundamentally virtual phenomenon.Grimshaw and Garner propose a new, fuller and more complete, definition of sound based on a perceptual view of sound that accounts more fully for cognition, emotion, and the wider environment. The missing facet is the virtuality: the idea that all sound arises from a sonic aggregate made up of actual and virtual sonic phenomena. The latter is a potential that depends upon human cognition and emotion for its realization as sound. This thesis is explored through a number of philosophical, cognitive, and psychological concepts including: issues of space, self, sonosemantics, the uncanny, hyper-realism, affect, Gettier problems, belief, alief, imagination, and sound perception in the absence of sound sensation.Provocative and original, Grimshaw and Garner's ideas have broader implications for our relationship to technology, our increasingly digital lives, and the nature of our being within our supposed realities. Students and academics from philosophy to acoustics and across the broad spectrum of digital humanities will find this accessible book full of challenging concepts and provocative ideas. (shrink)

Theorists have recently defended rival analyses of sound. The leading analyses reduce sound to sensations or mental representations, longitudinal compression waves, or sounding objects or events. Participants in the debate presuppose that because the features of the world targeted by these reductive strategies are distinct, at most one of the analyses is correct. In this article I argue that this presupposition is mistaken, endorsing a polysemy analysis of ‘sound’. Thus the ‘What is sound?’ debate is largely (...) merely verbal, or so I argue. All participants in this debate agree that there are the various reductions, they simply differ over which of them ‘is sound’. Yet there is no reason to think that, say, psychologists studying auditory sensations/representations, audio physicists studying sound waves, and anthropologists/ethnomusicologists studying sounding objects/events aren’t just studying different reductions of ‘sound’ despite the different explananda of their research. According to the polysemy theory of sound, we do not need to uniquely identify sound with one of these various explananda, outside of some context. (shrink)

One argument for the moving spotlight theory is that it better explains certain aspects of our temporal phenomenology than does any static theory of time. Call this the argument from passage phenomenology. In this paper it is argued that insofar as moving spotlight theorists take this to be a sound argument they ought embrace a new version of the moving spotlight theory according to which the moving spotlight is a cresting wave of causal efficacy. On this view it (...) is more than just presentness that is temporary: a range of other fundamental properties are also temporary because presentness synchronically changes the fundamental properties that are instantiated in the present moment, from those instantiated when that moment is future, or past. On this view having experiences as of presentness co-varies with the presence of presentness, allowing the moving spotlight theorist to provide a compelling explanation for why we have the temporal phenomenology we do, and to explain how we can know that we are present by reflecting on the nature of said phenomenology. (shrink)

Sound propagation within certain non-relativistic condensed matter models obeys a relativistic wave equation despite such systems admitting entirely non-relativistic descriptions. A natural question that arises upon consideration of this is, “do devices exist that will experience the relativity in these systems?” We describe a thought experiment in which ‘acoustic observers’ possess devices called sound clocks that can be connected to form chains. Careful investigation shows that appropriately constructed chains of stationary and moving sound clocks are perceived (...) by observers on the other chain as undergoing the relativistic phenomena of length contraction and time dilation by the Lorentz factor, \, with \ the speed of sound. Sound clocks within moving chains actually tick less frequently than stationary ones and must be separated by a shorter distance than when stationary to satisfy simultaneity conditions. Stationary sound clocks appear to be length contracted and time dilated to moving observers due to their misunderstanding of their own state of motion with respect to the laboratory. Observers restricted to using sound clocks describe a universe kinematically consistent with the theory of special relativity, despite the preferred frame of their universe in the laboratory. Such devices show promise in further probing analogue relativity models, for example in investigating phenomena that require careful consideration of the proper time elapsed for observers. (shrink)

The debate over the metaphysics of sounds is about the nature of what we immediately auditorily perceive. There are good reasons to identify a sound with some kind of event. But what kind of event? I articulate and defend the _broad event view_ of sounds, on which a sound is identified with a broad event that produces and shapes an acoustic wave. I show that other views that identify a sound with some kind of event face (...) serious problems. In particular, Casati and Dokic’s (La philosophie du son, Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 1994 ) monadic event view fails to capture the full range of sounds, while O’Callaghan’s (Sounds: a philosophical theory, Oxford University Press, 2007 ; in: Nudds, O’Callaghan (eds) Sounds and perception: new philosophical essays, Oxford University Press, 2009 ; Oxford Stud Metaphys 5:247–270, 2010 ) relational event view identifies sounds with too narrow of an event, leading to problems capturing important differences between sounds and putting the perceiver at an unnecessary remove from the kind of broad events she typically cares about. The broad event view avoids these pitfalls. (shrink)

Sounds are heard, sometimes even felt, but in most cases they remain unseen. This ephemeral and invisible nature of sound was already considered a problem when the science of acoustics took form in the seventeenth century. The fact that sound could not be seen was described as a significant hindrance to its understanding. But it was precisely during this time that a wide variety of sounds attracted broad scientific attention across Europe. Scholars, natural philosophers, and mathematicians investigated and (...) experimented with sound and musical instruments and developed theories of hearing. This article looks at the role of images, diagrams, and visualization techniques in late seventeenth-century acoustics, bringing together the history of sound and the history of scientific images. Focusing on water and light as the dominant analogies for sound, the article demonstrates that visualization was an important tool for thinking about sound and allowed for the circulation of theories and experiments. At the same time, the epistemic status of these images remained contested, as there was no single model that could explain the different ways sound behaves as it moves through space and that could be visualized. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive introduction to wave scattering in nonstationary materials. G. F. Roach's aim is to provide an accessible, self-contained resource for newcomers to this important field of research that has applications across a broad range of areas, including radar, sonar, diagnostics in engineering and manufacturing, geophysical prospecting, and ultrasonic medicine such as sonograms. New methods in recent years have been developed to assess the structure and properties of materials and surfaces. When light, sound, or (...) some other wave energy is directed at the material in question, "imperfections" in the resulting echo can reveal a tremendous amount of valuable diagnostic information. The mathematics behind such analysis is sophisticated and complex. However, while problems involving stationary materials are quite well understood, there is still much to learn about those in which the material is moving or changes over time. These so-called non-autonomous problems are the subject of this fascinating book. Roach develops practical strategies, techniques, and solutions for mathematicians and applied scientists working in or seeking entry into the field of modern scattering theory and its applications. Wave Scattering by Time-Dependent Perturbations is destined to become a classic in this rapidly evolving area of inquiry. (shrink)

The recent extension of quantum theory to sound waves in solids is briefly outlined and then discussed from a specific philosophic (Kantian) perspective.

Ernst Mach is the only person whom Einstein included on both the list of physicists he considered his true precursors, and the list of the philosophers who had most affected him. Einstein scholars have been less generous in their estimation of Mach's contributions to Einstein's work, and even amongst the more generous of them, Mach's great achievements in physics are seldom mentioned in this context. This is odd, considering Mach was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics three times. In (...) this paper, I examine some of Mach's work in physics that bears conceptually on Einstein's 1905 paper on Special Relativity ("On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"). Mach was the first to give the correct explanation of the Doppler Effect, and he presented it in a way that Einstein echoes in his 1905 paper: laying out two apparently contradictory principles and showing how both can be retained. It is also notable that Mach's explanation was explicit about not relying on the existence of a medium of transmission for the propagation of light waves. In his work on supersonic shock waves, Mach invokes the constancy of the velocity of sound (i.e., its independence of the motion of the sound source) , just as he had invoked the constancy of the velocity of light in his work on the Doppler Effect for Light. I examine the analogies between light and sound that were drawn upon by Einstein and Mach, as well as one analogy that Einstein could have, but did not make: Cherenkov radiation, or "singing electrons", i.e., cases in which the sound of light in the medium of transmission is exceeded, which results in an optical analogue of supersonic shock waves. (shrink)

This book comprises original chapters that address the central questions and issues that define the emerging philosophy of sounds and auditory perception. This work focuses upon two sets of interrelated concerns. The first is a constellation of debates concerning the ontology of sounds. What kinds of things are sounds, and what properties do sounds have? For instance, are sounds secondary qualities, physical properties, waves, or some type of event? The second is a set of questions about the contents of auditory (...) experiences and of hearing. How are sounds experienced to be? What sorts of things and properties are experienced in auditory perception? For example, in what sense is auditory experience spatial; do we hear sources in addition to sounds; what is distinctive about musical listening; and what do we hear when we hear speech? An introductory chapter summarises many of the issues discussed, provides a summary of the contributions and shows how they are connected. (shrink)

Waves are among the most fundamental phenomena in nature. From sound in air and light in vacuum to seismic tremors and quantum matter waves, their mathematical descriptions are traditionally expressed through continuum field equations. Yet every measurement of a wave ultimately yields discrete outcomes. Infinitesimally Punctured Waves proposes a unifying framework in which this apparent tension between continuity and discreteness is resolved at a structural level. The Infinitesimally Punctured Wave (IPW) approach models a wavefield as the macroscopic (...) limit of an ultra-dense lattice of interacting “punctures”—elementary carriers of physical quantities coupled through local dynamical rules. In the limit of vanishing lattice spacing, the familiar partial differential equations of acoustics, elasticity, electromagnetism, gravity, and quantum mechanics emerge. For finite spacing, the same formalism predicts systematic corrections, controlled dispersion, and experimentally testable deviations. Developed rigorously and applied across multiple physical domains, the IPW framework connects: • acoustic and elastic wave propagation, • electromagnetic and optical phenomena, • linearised gravitational dynamics, • quantum wave evolution and measurement theory, and • nonlinear effects including shocks and solitons. Beyond conceptual unification, the lattice structure provides a transferable computational methodology applicable to multiphysics metamaterials, analogue gravity systems, and high-frequency wave engineering. The book integrates theoretical development with proposed experimental tests, offering concrete pathways to probe finite-scale effects. Written for researchers and advanced students in physics, applied mathematics, and engineering, Infinitesimally Punctured Waves presents a coherent, cross-disciplinary language for wave phenomena and outlines a research programme extending from practical device design to foundational questions in spacetime physics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of sound individuation (SI) and its connection to sound ontology (SO). It is argued that the problems of SI, such as aspatiality, extreme individuation, indexical perplexity and duration puzzles are due to SO’s uncertainties. Besides, I describe the views in SO, including the wave view (WV), the property view (PV), and the event view (EV), as Casey O’Callaghan defends it. According to O’Callaghan, EV offers clear standards to individuate sounds. However, this claim (...) is countered by the consideration that any view could also defend the standards in SO, and thus, EV does not solve any of the problems mentioned above. As a way of showing the difficulties inherited by sound’s inner ontology, the problem of its linguistic representation is also addressed. The problem of SI can be developed within the frame of the philosophy of language and, specifically, regarding the discussion about mass vs count-­sortal terms. Is the term sound a mass or a count­-sortal? It is shown that, for reasons pertaining SO, the decision regarding the case of sound as a mass or count-­sortal term remains open. SI is, thus, covered from the SO to the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Euler ’s wave theory of light developed from a mere description of this notion based on an analogy between sound and light to a more and more mathematical elaboration on that notion. He was very successful in predicting the shape of achromatic lenses based on a new dispersion law that we now know is wrong. Most of his mathematical arguments were, however, guesswork without any solid physical reasoning. Guesswork is not always a bad thing in physics if it (...) leads to new experiments or makes the theory coherent with other theories. And Euler tried to find such experiments. He saw the construction of achromatic lenses, the explanation of colors of thin plates and of the opaque bodies as proof of his theory. When it came to the fundamental issues, the correctness of his dispersion law and the prediction of frequencies of light he was not at all successful. His wave theory degenerated, and it was not until Augustin Fresnel introduced transverse waves and an elaborate notion of interference that the wave theory again progressed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Sounds and Silences:Acknowledging Political EngagementJulia Eklund KozaThis symposium grapples with such questions as "Should music educators participate in political understandings?" The term "politics" often brings to mind "Big P" political matters, including citizenship, governance of the state, the election of officials, and the formation of public policy. Another way of thinking about politics is to associate it with power relations in social interactions of any kind. If one (...) thinks about it in the second way, then wherever there are two or more people, there are politics. Questions such as "Should we participate in politics?" and "How engaged should we be?" become meaningless. Michel Foucault's discussions of the pastoral forms of governance employed by the modern state, specifically the uses of technologies of the self, challenged long-held views about relationships between the individual and the state. In particular, his claim that major dominations are the effects, not the causes, of myriad local and particular mobilizations of power provides a rationale for examining these local mobilizations.1 If major dominations and "Big P" politics are the effects of local mobilizations, then everyone participating in social interactions participates in "Big P" politics, as well.This more global conception of political engagement stands in sharp contrast to a narrower one, which can be described using a "swimmer-on the-shore" metaphor. The swimmer stands on a beach looking out at the sea and decides whether this is a day for a toe dip, wading to the knees, total immersion, or staying out of the water altogether. The swimmer can choose to stay dry (unless inundated by the tide or a tidal wave). This conception is evident in a comment reportedly made by a music education professor in response to two back-to-back annual meetings of the music education researchers at Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) institutions. Both meetings had been devoted to critique of MENC's policies and practices, and the disgruntled professor reportedly remarked, "That's enough about politics; let's get back to talking about music." In his view, which is shaped by the "swimmer" conception, some discussions are political, others are not; while some curricular areas, such as civics and sex education, are political, music is not, nor should it be. If, however, we assume that there is power in all social relations, then the "swimmer" conception has no salience because everyone is immersed; music, because it is a social activity, is political. Its engagement in politics is neither good nor bad, in and of itself; rather, it is inevitable. [End Page 168]Some may concede that although it is not possible to be disengaged, it is necessary and good for scholars and teachers to be politically "neutral." Conceptions of neutrality rely on a one-dimensional linear integers model of political engagement. On the line representing the integers, there is a plus side, a minus side, and zero, the zero presumably being the point of neutrality. People and views associated with the far ends of the line are extreme, while those closer to the zero point are moderate. In addition, positions on the line are assigned a moral value; depending upon the issue and the perspective from which the line is being viewed, plus can be good but minus is bad, plus can be bad but minus is good, neutral can be good, or neutral can be bad. If every issue and every social relation is political, however, and if we assume that people and relationships change, then the linear integers model is inadequate because it fails to embody the dynamic, multi-dimensional character of the complex social relations in which all of us engage. Another problem with the linear integers model is that it fails to interrogate the power vested in whomever or whatever decides what will constitute extreme, moderate, or neutral—what will be deemed reasonable and what outrageous. Sometimes this responsibility has been assigned to a fictitious "reasonable" person without much thought having been given to the political dimensions of the construction of reasoning. What is deemed outrageous in one system of reasoning may be perfectly reasonable in another.Belief that education can and should be objective and neutral comes from... (shrink)

Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial setting. I argue that this is at least in part due to Fanon’s background in phenomenology, and the crucial role that intersubjectivity plays in the phenomenological account of the subject. I begin by demonstrating the phenomenological underpinnings of Fanon’s chapter on language. I then further develop the background phenomenological account of the subject, showing how this informs Fanon’s project. I then develop a sonic account of (...) the subject, arguing that metaphors of sound best represent the phenomenological account of the subject. Finally, I build on this sonic account to draw out the implications for our thinking about communication and liberation in Fanon’s work and beyond. (shrink)

A recent rethinking of the early history of Quantum Mechanics deemed the late 1920s agreement on the equivalence of Matrix Mechanics and Wave Mechanics, prompted by Schrödinger's 1926 proof, a myth. Schrödinger supposedly failed to prove isomorphism, or even a weaker equivalence (“Schrödinger-equivalence”) of the mathematical structures of the two theories; developments in the early 1930s, especially the work of mathematician von Neumann provided sound proof of mathematical equivalence. The alleged agreement about the Copenhagen Interpretation, predicated to a (...) large extent on this equivalence, was deemed a myth as well. In response, I argue that Schrödinger's proof concerned primarily a domain-specific ontological equivalence, rather than the isomorphism or a weaker mathematical equivalence. It stemmed initially from the agreement of the eigenvalues of Wave Mechanics and energy-states of Bohr's Model that was discovered and published by Schrödinger in his first and second communications of 1926. Schrödinger demonstrated in this proof that the laws of motion arrived at by the method of Matrix Mechanics are satisfied by assigning the auxiliary role to eigenfunctions in the derivation of matrices (while he only outlined the reversed derivation of eigenfunctions from Matrix Mechanics, which was necessary for the proof of both isomorphism and Schrödinger-equivalence of the two theories). This result was intended to demonstrate the domain-specific ontological equivalence of Matrix Mechanics and Wave Mechanics, with respect to the domain of Bohr's atom. And although the mathematical equivalence of the theories did not seem out of the reach of existing theories and methods, Schrödinger never intended to fully explore such a possibility in his proof paper. In a further development of Quantum Mechanics, Bohr's complementarity and Copenhagen Interpretation captured a more substantial convergence of the subsequently revised (in light of the experimental results) Wave and Matrix Mechanics. -/- I argue that both the equivalence and Copenhagen Interpretation can be deemed myths if one predicates the philosophical and historical analysis on a narrow model of physical theory which disregards its historical context, and focuses exclusively on its formal aspects and the exploration of the logical models supposedly implicit in it. -/- . (shrink)

The ear is one of our sensory organs that allow us to perceive our surroundings. We perceive with it the voices that the objects possess by means of the waves within the mass of air surrounding us. In this sense, the ear has an important value for being. In the Qur'an, besides being an ear or a sensory organ, it reveals a person who reflects his level of consciousness and perception, revealing his awareness. It is not just the voices heard; (...) the ear is special importance in understanding what is being said and what is said. Other sense organs and mold are mentioned together because of the feature. Of course, the word "voice" is also on the agenda when the ear is concerned. The verses found at the base of the basic qualities that man should possess present important dynamics about sound. Beyond being a symptom of voice being an inherent symptom, the latest discovery is pointing to the dimension of telling the apocalypse. This study tries to show in what context the hearing aid ear is expressed in the verses and its distinctive features, and its associated value, as well as its inherent value. (shrink)

This article investigates the figurative role of water in martial similes, metaphors, and personifications in the Iliad. Such imagery, it is argued, is generally informed by a thematic association of Greeks and their camp with the sea, and Trojans and their territory with rivers; as heroes sound and move like waves and streams, bodies of water become sympathetically animated warriors, and gods of sea and river rush into battle. The conclusion is that an ancient antithesis between saltwater and freshwater (...) lends the Iliad a sense of unity in setting and plot and endows heroic action with greater cosmic and theological significance. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to connect the recent debate in the philosophy of quantum mechanics concerning the nature of the wave function to the historical debate in the philosophy of science regarding the tenability of scientific realism. Being realist about quantum mechanics is particularly challenging when focusing on the wave function. According to the wave function ontology approach, the wave function is a concrete physical entity. In contrast, according to an alternative viewpoint, namely the primitive (...) ontology approach, the wave function does not represent physical entities. In this paper, I argue that the primitive ontology approach can naturally be interpreted as an instance of the so-called ‘explanationism’ realism, which has been proposed as a response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism. If my arguments are sound, then one could conclude that: (1) contrarily to what is commonly though, if explanationism realism is a good response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument, it can be straightforwardly extended also to the quantum domain; (2) the primitive ontology approach is in better shape than the wave function ontology approach in resisting the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism. (shrink)

Background: how mind functions is subject to continuing scientific discussion. A simplistic approach says that, since no convincing way has been found to model subjective experience, mind cannot exist. A second holds that, since mind cannot be described by classical physics, it must be described by quantum physics. Another perspective concerns mind's hypothesized ability to interact with the world of quanta: it should be responsible for reduction of quantum wave packets; physics producing 'Objective Reduction' is postulated to form the (...) basis for mind-matter interactions. This presentation describes results derived from a new approach to these problems. It is based on well-established biology involving physics not previously applied to the fields of mind, or consciousness studies, that of critical feedback instability. -/- Methods: 'self-organized criticality' in complexity biology places system loci of control at critical instabilities, physical properties of which, including information properties, are presented. Their elucidation shows that they can model hitherto unexplained properties of experience. -/- Results: All results depend on physical properties of critical instabilities. First, at least one feed-back or feed-forward loop must have feedback gain, g = 1: information flows round the loop impress perfect images of system states back on themselves: they represent processes of perfect self-observation. This annihilates system quanta: system excitations are instability fluctuations, which cannot be quantized. Major results follow: -/- 1. Information vectors representing criticality states must include at least one attached information loop denoting self-observation. -/- 2. Such loop structures are attributed a function, 'registering the state's own existence', explaining -/- a. Subjective 'awareness of one's own presence' -/- b. How content-free states of awareness can be remembered (Jon Shear) -/- c. Subjective experience of time duration (Immanuel Kant) -/- d. The 'witness' property of experience – often mentioned by athletes 'in the zone' -/- e. The natural association between consciousness and intelligence -/- This novel, physically and biologically sound approach seems to satisfactorily model subjectivity. -/- Further significant results follow: -/- 1. Registration of external information in excited states of systems at criticality reduces external wave-packets: the new model exhibits 'Objective Reduction' of wave packets. -/- 2. High internal coherence (postulated by Domash & Penrose) leading to a. Non-separable information vector bundles. b. Non-reductive states (Chalmers's criterion for experience). -/- 3. Information that is: a. encoded in coherence negentropy; b. non-digitizable, and therefore c. computationally without digital equivalent (posited by Penrose). -/- Discussion and Conclusions: instability physics implies anharmonic motion, preventing excitation quantization, and totally different from the quantum physics of simple harmonic motion at stability. Instability excitations are different from anything hitherto conceived in information science. They can model aspects of mind never previously treated, including genuine subjectivity, objective reduction of wave-packets, and inter alia all properties given above. (shrink)

Paolo Giordano’s novel, _The Solitude of Prime Numbers_ (2009), seemingly a coming-of-age romance, mixes narrative with the language of mathematics. The two protagonists, Alice and Mattia, are equaled to two twin prime numbers: solitary and isolated numbers, close to each other but separated by a single number. Similarly, they are united by the same differences, attracted to each other, but never truly together because divided by an insurmountable obstacle. Giordano’s fiction is a window into the twenty-first century, a space in (...) which individuals are kept apart (or together) by waves of solitude, silence, and marginalization. (shrink)

How might argumentation scholars approach sound? Using the analytics afforded by strategic maneuvering, this essay identifies three unique features of sonic presentational devices: they are immersive, immediate and embodied. Although these features offer arguers presentational resource, they also pose new problems to the reasonable resolution of disagreement: immersion hazards overlap, immediacy risks rate of delivery beyond reflection, and materiality can coerce listeners. To theorize strategic use of sound, I reconstruct and analyze a popular Radiolab segment “The Unconscious Toscanini (...) of the Brain.” I find Radiolab uses three different sonic figures: synchronicity, or the translation of data into sound to foreground temporal relations; musical stings, an auditory invocation of embodied memory and the wave, a sonic strategy to arouse and narrow attention. I conclude that Radiolab’s use of sound is reasonable because it extends the critical discussion. (shrink)

Think of the sublime: images come to mind first. Images of mountains, oceans, deserts, and other wild natural sites. Images of pyramids, cathedrals, skyscrapers, and other colossal cultural artifacts. Most of these mental images are probably still and silent, very much like photos. They might also portray dynamic situations, like big waves breaking on a rocky shore, or high trees moved by a thunderous storm, or the wind howling across the ruins of an ancient temple. Yet these scenes are likely (...) to be imagined as sublime independently of their inner temporality, perhaps as animated still pictures like GIFs or “live” smartphone photos.But maybe something else comes to your mind. If you are a classical music lover, you... (shrink)

A recent rethinking of the early history of Quantum Mechanics deemed the late 1920s agreement on the equivalence of Matrix Mechanics and Wave Mechanics, prompted by Schrödinger’s 1926 proof, a myth. Schrödinger supposedly failed to achieve the goal of proving isomorphism of the mathematical structures of the two theories, while only later developments in the early 1930s, especially the work of mathematician John von Neumman (1932) provided sound proof of equivalence. The alleged agreement about the Copenhagen Interpretation, predicated (...) to a large extent on this equivalence, was deemed a myth as well. If such analysis is correct, it provides considerable evidence that, in its critical moments, the foundations of scientific practice might not live up to the minimal standards of rigor, as such standards are established in the practice of logic, mathematics, and mathematical physics, thereby prompting one to question the rationality of the practice of physics. In response, I argue that Schrödinger’s proof concerned primarily a domain-specific ontological equivalence, rather than the isomorphism. It stemmed initially from the agreement of the eigenvalues of Wave Mechanics and energy-states of Bohr’s Model that was discovered and published by Schrödinger in his First and Second Communications of 1926. Schrödinger demonstrated in this proof that the laws of motion arrived at by the method of Matrix Mechanics could be derived successfully from eigenfunctions as well (while he only outlined the reversed derivation of eigenfunctions from Matrix Mechanics, which was necessary for the proof of isomorphism of the two theories). This result was intended to demonstrate the domain-specific ontological equivalence of Matrix Mechanics and Wave Mechanics, with respect to the domain of Bohr’s atom. And although the full-fledged mathematico-logical equivalence of the theories did not seem out of the reach of existing theories and methods, Schrödinger never intended to fully explore such a possibility in his proof paper. In a further development of Quantum Mechanics, Bohr’s complementarity and Copenhagen Interpretation captured a more substantial convergence of the subsequently revised (in light of the experimental results) Wave and Matrix Mechanics. I argue that both the equivalence and Copenhagen Interpretation can be deemed myths if one predicates the philosophical and historical analysis on a narrow model of physical theory which disregards its historical context, and focuses exclusively on its formal aspects and the exploration of the logical models supposedly implicit in it. (shrink)

Background: The intrauterine hearing experience differs from the extrauterine hearing exposure within a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting. Also, the listening experience of a neonate drastically differs from that of an adult. Several studies have documented that the sound level within a NICU exceeds the recommended threshold by far, possibly related to hearing loss thereafter. The aim of this study was, firstly, to precisely define the dynamics of sounds within an incubator and, secondly, to give clinicians and caregivers (...) an idea about what can be heard “inside the box.” Methods: Audio recordings within an incubator were conducted at the Pediatric Simulation Center of the Medical University Vienna. They contained recorded music, speech and synthesized sounds. To understand the dynamics of sounds around and within the incubator the following stimuli were used: broadband noise with decreasing sound level in ten steps of 6 dB, sine waves (62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000 and 16000 Hz), logarithmic sweep (Chirp) over the frequency band 20 Hz to 21 kHz, singing male voice, singing and whispering female voice. Results: Our results confirm a protective effect of the incubator from noises above 500 Hz in conditions of “no-flow” and show almost no protective effect of an incubator cover. We, furthermore, observed a strong boost of low frequencies below 125 Hz within the incubator, as well as a notable increase of higher frequency noises with open access doors, a significant resonant effect of the incubator, and a considerable masking effect of the respiratory support against any other source of noise or sound stimulation even for “low-flow” conditions. Conclusion: Our study reveals high noise levels of air supply at high flow rates and the boost of low frequencies within the incubator. Education of medical staff and family members as well as modifications of the physical environment should aim at reducing noise exposure of preterm infants in the incubator. Audiovisual material is provided as supplementary material. (shrink)

Sounds are distally located events that require the presence of a medium. Events in which vibrating objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium in a wave-like manner best satisfy the desiderata for a theory of sounds. Such medium-disturbing events are individuated primarily in terms of spatio-temporal continuity. Worries about the metaphysical status of relational or causal events and about the perceptibility of medium-disturbing events are answered.

Two theories of sound stem from philosophical and scientific traditions. The philosophical view that counts sounds among sensible or secondary qualities, with colors and tastes, fails because sounds last through time and survive change. Furthermore, the identities of certain sounds are tied to patterns of change through time. Sounds are particular individuals that bear audible qualities, such as pitch, timbre, and loudness, and persist. The scientific view that treats sounds as waves is thus best understood as the view that (...) sounds are event-like, rather than object-like, particulars whose locations in the medium change over time. (shrink)

In this work we study the relativistic mechanics of continuous media on a fundamental level using a manifestly covariant proper time procedure. We formulate equations of motion and continuity (and constitutive equations) that are the starting point for any calculations regarding continuous media. In the force free limit, the standard relativistic equations are regained, so that these equations can be regarded as a generalization of the standard procedure. In the case of an inviscid fluid we derive an analogue of the (...) Bernoulli equation. For irrotational flow we prove that the velocity field can be derived from a potential. If in addition, the fluid is incompressible, the potential must obey the d'Alembert equation, and thus the problem is reduced to solving the d'Alembert equation with specific boundary conditions (in both space and time). The solutions indicate the existence of light velocity sound waves in an incompressible fluid (a result known in previous literature (19) ). Relaxing the constraints and allowing the fluid to become linearly compressible one can derive a wave equation, from which the sound velocity can again be computed. For a stationary background flow, it has been demonstrated that the sound velocity attains its correct values for the incompressible and nonrelativistic limits. Finally viscosity is introduced, bulk and shear viscosity constants are defined, and we formulate equations for the motion of a viscous fluid. (shrink)

In support of their contention that it is the absence of a subsisting medium that imbues the speed of light with fundamentality, Bryan Cheng and James Read discuss certain “fishbowl universes” in which physical influences evolve, not at the speed of light, but that of sound. The Lorentz transformation simulated in these sonic universes, which the authors cite from the literature of analogue gravity, is not that of Einstein, for whom an aether was “superfluous”, but that of the earlier (...) relativity of Lorentz and Poincaré, which did suppose such a medium. The authors’ intention is not to argue analogically, but simply to contrast the situation of light with that of sound. However, I argue that these universes are too successful as analogues to support the authors’ case. By reducing Lorentzian relativity to its bare essentials, they provide a compelling demonstration of the viability and explanatory strengths of the earlier theory. They show how a thoroughly wave-theoretic treatment of the elementary particles would explain why all aspects of matter transform in like manner, thereby avoiding a difficulty that was a significant reason for the demise of Lorentzian relativity after 1905. Importantly, these sonic universes suggest a unifying explanation, not only of the Lorentz transformation and de Broglie wave, but of the principle of relativity, which was merely postulated, rather than explained, by Einstein in 1905. (shrink)