Christopher Webber, replying to Len Fehskens, writes:

>As to real-world modelling, just because you can't build a cantilever
>football stand using musical logic does not mean that it's any less utile
>as a real world tool.  Take, for instance, the current research into the
>well-established and perfectly quantifiable therapeutic effects of Mozart
>on cows and students ...

Wow, what a case stretching for an argument!  If Christopher lives
otherwise than in a tree, and is maintained otherwise than by gathering
roots and berries, he might notice that the principles of physics/engineering
finds application in the construction of many more objects than
stadiums---they underly the construction of everything he lives in and
uses.  Moreover, if a therapeutic effect of Mozart on cows is the BEST
example he can come up with on his side, then his argument is lost at
the outset to the point of comedy.

I think we will find ourselves on firmer ground if we take music as A
BRANCH of mathematics: abstracted from the symbolic system of quantity
relationships which, we find, has deep roots in the real world.  This
doesn't mean that one uses music to build bridges, any more than one
employs topology theory in prescribing medication.  Only that the
relationships underpinning the activities in question share certain logic
connections.  By the same argument, baseball and billiards are branches
of mathematics as well, and I will stand by that.  Maybe literature is
too, although it is harder to trace the connections.

Jon Gallant      [[log in to unmask]]