Superfreakonomics, global warming, and music

A contrarian chapter on global warming in Superfreakonomics has sparked intense controvery.  I am partcularly intriqued by the "shape" of the debate -- the kinds of arguments that are being used in both directions. 

I found the following paragraph, from this Bloomberg blog post, to be particularly interesting:

Dubner wonders why everyone is so angry. In part, it’s because the book’s blithe remedies – “We could end this debate and be done with it, and move on to problems that are harder to solve,” Levitt told the U.K. Guardian newspaper – are an insult to the thousands of scientists who have devoted their careers to this crisis.

Hmmm.  Let's paraphrase that paragraph as follows.

Mr. Inventor wonders why everyone is so angry. In part, it’s because his invention's blithe remedy is an insult to the thousands of people who have devoted their careers to this crisis.

People who have devoted their careers to Paradigm A can become very angry when you make a case for Paradigm B. Their anger spills over from attacks on Paradigm B (which are an intrinsic part of the scientific process) to personal attacks on those who dare to back it (which are an intrinsic part of human nature).

If JIMS Isomorphic Music System starts to gain momentum, I can reasonably expect to have such anger directed at me, for daring to challenge established music theoretical and music education orthodoxy. In a way, this would be a sign of progress. Such anger would prove that the Establishment was on the defensive, which is a big step forward for something that is currently beneath the Establishment's notice.

The Importance of a Good Notation

In his 1911 book An introduction to mathematics, Alfred North Whitehead wrote (p. 59):

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the [human] race. Before the introduction of the Arabic notation, multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play the highest mathematical faculties.

Probably nothing in the modern world would have more astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that, under the influence of compulsory education, a large proportion of the population of Western Europe could perform the operation of division for the largest numbers. This fact would have seemed to him a sheer impossibility. The consequential extension of the notation to decimal fractions was not accomplished till the seventeenth century. Our modern power of easy reckoning with decimal fractions is the almost miraculous result of the gradual discovery of a perfect notation.

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Great quote, isn't it? 

It clarifies the two essential benefits of a good notation, to wit, that it:
1. Enables domain specialists to advance the state of the art; and it
2. Enables a higher percentage of non-specialists to master the domain's fundamentals.

That's a pretty powerful combination, which explains why notational improvements have been the key to so many of humanity's great leaps forward.

Likewise, JIMS Isomorphic Music System (JIMS)
1. Enables creative artists to advance the state of the art (through such novel effects as Dynamic Tonality), and
2. Enables a higher percentage of non-musicians to master the musical domain's fundamentals.

Or, at least, that's my claim.  Time will tell.  ;-)

In the meantime, today's music education establishment will continue to argue -- as Greek mathematicians did in their day -- that their domain's high failure rate is due to the inherent difficulty of their domain, not due to the imperfection of their notation (and instrumentation). Perhaps JIMS, too, will astonish domain experts by doing the impossible.