Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
SCIENCE OF MUSIC
Science of Music: _____ “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” is a song sung by actress and singer Marilyn Monroe on May 19, 1962, for President John F. Kennedy at a celebration of his 45th birthday, 10 days before the actual date (May 29). The event marked one of Monroe’s final public appearances; she was found dead in August 1962 at the age of 36, and JFK was assassinated the following year. _____ Prologue: The fascinating thing about music is that technically- in a very literal way- it doesn’t exist. A painting, a sculpture or a photograph can physically exist, while music is just air hitting the eardrum in a slightly different way than it would randomly. Somehow that air- which has almost no substance whatsoever- when vibrated and when made to hit the eardrum in tiny subtle ways- can make people dance, love, cry, enjoy, move across country, go to war […]
SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE
_ SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE: _ The figure above shows English to Gujarati mappings for consonants: _________ Prologue: Human life in its present form would be impossible and inconceivable without the use of language. To the question: “Who is speaking?” Mallarme, the French poet, answered, “Language is speaking.” The traditional conception of language is that it is, in Aristotle’s phrase, sound with meaning. Everybody uses language, but nobody knows quite how to define it. Language is arguably the defining characteristic of the human species, yet the biological basis of our ability to speak, listen and comprehend remains largely mysterious; about its evolution, we know even less. The origin of language is a widely-discussed topic. Whole doctorates have been based on it, thousands of books have been written on it, and scholars continue to argue about how and why it first emerged. Many animals can communicate effectively with one another but humans […]
