Music Of The Spheres Theory

[Clidia Panahon]

Some thinkers suppose that the motion of bodies of that size must produce a noise, since on our earth the motion of bodies far inferior in size and in speed of movement has that effect. Also, when the sun and the moon, they say, and all the stars, so great in number and in size, are moving with so rapid a motion, how should they not produce a sound immensely great? Starting from this argument and from the observation that their speeds, as measured by their distances, are in the same ratios as musical concordances, they assert that the sound given forth by the circular movement of the stars is a harmony. Since, however, it appears unaccountable that we should not hear this music, they explain this by saying that the sound is in our ears from the very moment of birth and is thus indistinguishable from its contrary silence, since sound and silence are discriminated by mutual contrast. What happens to men, then, is just what happens to coppersmiths, who are so accustomed to the noise of the smithy that it makes no difference to them.

Aristotle rejected the idea, however, as incompatible with his own cosmological model, and on the grounds that "excessive noises ... shatter the solid bodies even of inanimate things", and therefore any sounds made by the planets would necessarily exert a tremendous physical force upon the body.[5]

Boethius believed that musica mundana could only be discovered through the intellect, but that the order found within it was the same as that found in audible music, and that both reflect the beauty of God.[7]

In the final book of Harmonices, Kepler explains how the ratio of the maximum and minimum angular speeds of each planet (i.e., its speeds at the perihelion and aphelion) is very nearly equivalent to a consonant musical interval. Furthermore, the ratios between these extreme speeds of the planets compared against each other create even more mathematical harmonies.[11] These speeds explain the eccentricity of the orbits of the planets in a natural way that appealed to Kepler's religious beliefs in a heavenly creator.[10]

While Kepler did believe that the harmony of the worlds was inaudible, he related the motions of the planets to musical concepts in book four of Harmonices. He makes an analogy between comparing the extreme speeds of one planet and the extreme speeds of multiple planets with the difference between monophonic and polyphonic music. Because planets with larger eccentricities have a greater variation in speed they produce more "notes." Earth's maximum and minimum speeds, for example, are in a ratio of roughly 16 to 15, or that of a semitone, whereas Venus' orbit is nearly circular, and therefore only produces a singular note. Mercury, which has the largest eccentricity, has the largest interval, a minor tenth, or a ratio of 12 to 5. This range, as well as the relative speeds between the planets, led Kepler to conclude that the Solar System was composed of two basses (Saturn and Jupiter), a tenor (Mars), two altos (Venus and Earth), and a soprano (Mercury), which had sung in "perfect concord," at the beginning of time, and could potentially arrange themselves to do so again.[11] He was certain of the link between musical harmonies and the harmonies of the heavens and believed that "man, the imitator of the Creator," had emulated the polyphony of the heavens so as to enjoy "the continuous duration of the time of the world in a fraction of an hour."[10]

Kepler was so convinced of a creator that he was convinced of the existence of this harmony despite a number of inaccuracies present in Harmonices. Many of the ratios differed by an error greater than simple measurement error from the true value for the interval, and the ratio between Mars' and Jupiter's angular velocities does not create a consonant interval, though every other combination of planets does. Kepler brushed aside this problem by making the argument, with the math to support it, that because these elliptical paths had to fit into the regular solids described in Mysterium the values for both the dimensions of the solids and the angular speeds would have to differ from the ideal values to compensate. This change also had the benefit of helping Kepler retroactively explain why the regular solids encompassing each planet were slightly imperfect.[10] Philosophers posited that the Creator liked variation in the celestial music.[12]

For there is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the eare, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony.

In celestial mechanics, orbital resonance occurs when orbiting bodies exert regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually because their orbital periods are related by a ratio of small integers. This has been referred to as a "modern take" on the theory of musica universalis.[14] This idea has been further explored in a musical animation, created by an artist at the European Southern Observatory, of the planetary system TOI-178, which has five planets locked in a chain of orbital resonances.[14][15]

A concert band arrangement by Philip Sparke has also used the name "Music of the Spheres" and is often used as a set test piece, with a notable studio performance recorded by the YBS Band while led by maestro Professor David King.

During the 2008 BBC Proms Doctor Who segment, a short interactive mini-episode starring David Tennant and written by showrunner Russell T Davies titled Music of the Spheres was played. This sees the Doctor attempting to compose Ode to the Universe, basing his works on the Music of the Spheres. This piece continues the metaphysical theories of the musica universalis by arguing that the audience themselves are part of the composition.

This was an attempt at connecting various realms of human knowledge, an interdisciplinary endeavor as we would say today, and to establish a mirror relationship between the world of people and abstract ideas and the world of nature.

Astronomers record signals from space, which can be translated into sounds; NASA has published recordings of such signals: it cannot exactly be called the music of the Spheres but certainly the Music of the Planets and of the Stars1, another twist of the expression that we are discussing here.

A metaphor is a rhetorical device used extensively to propose representations of the world. From religions, myths and early philosophy to modern science, which relies heavily on modeling, the metaphor mediates between reality and its representation. Modern models used in science can also be described as metaphors [5]. Paul Ricoeur probably published one of the most profound philosophical study of the metaphor [6]. He explains that the metaphor can be purely rhetorical, thus a formal shift in the use of a word, but if one steps beyond semiotics and into semantics, then it is the whole sentence which carries the meaning and that can also shift. At the more abstract level still of hermeneutics, then it is the narrative which takes precedence, as analyzed by narratology and storytelling [7]: the metaphor, la mtaphore vive, thus helps re-define reality according to a particular discursive style (poetry, philosophy or mathematical modeling) and thus creates a metaphorical truth.

The Venn representation of sustainability is based on circles but it does not have much to say about the music of these circles. The analogy with the old Musica Universalis approach is therefore weak and incomplete. It does not really represent how the world functions but rather seems to prescribe areas of cooperation, without getting into details: it is preaching about the need for change rather than proposing ways to manage the change.

There is another representation of sustainability based on the Pillar Model, which adopts the metaphor of a Greek or Roman classic temple as shown in Figure 4. It does not show any intersection of competing domains and therefore does not point out the difficulties to be tackled. It is rather a motivational model, stressing that the three pillars ought to support sustainability, which constitutes the tympanum of the construction, its achievement. It speaks to action-oriented people in political science or business management, rather than to scientists who would like to understand how the world ticks. It also posits coherence and cooperation between the Pillars, a harmony that echoes the Musica Universalis.

Analyzing how the various domains of sustainability interact rather than intersect has been on the agenda of Ecology, which does have the broader scientific purpose of explaining how the world operates in all of its complexity.

A number of spheres have been conceptualized by Geography and then by Ecology and Industrial Ecology:

• first, the planet itself, which is composed of the Lithosphere, the Geosphere3, the Atmosphere, the Hydrosphere and the Cryosphere. These are physical constructs originating from observations, but which do not require too much abstraction. The word sphere is used to designate both solid spheres and hollow spheres, like the lithosphere or the atmosphere, for example. Calling all of them spheres, however, stretches the word beyond its mathematical meaning as the hydrosphere and the cryosphere are located on a sphere, the lithosphere, but only in part of the world, and thus are subsets of hollow spheres;

the Hydrosphere actually contains all the water in the world, therefore the oceans and the sea, but also the streams and rivers, the underground water, either part of the hydraulic watershed or of the water tables but also deeper water, for example, in deep saline aquifers or in magmatic matter. The simplicity of the earlier definitions is now gone in favor of a more abstract vision of the set of water bodies present on the whole planet, near its surface, and, actually, inside other spheres, such as the aquifers enclosed in the lithosphere or the geosphere. The water embedded in living organisms is also part of the hydrosphere, which enormously increases its complexity. The hydrosphere is a three-dimensional patchwork, that percolate in all the sphere described in the previous list of spheres and in the next ones;

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