Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who has also had a part-time career as a musician. From a lifetime's thinking, he offers this extraordinary synthesis exposing the deepest connections between science, music, and mathematics, while avoiding equations and technical jargon. He begins with perception psychology and the dichotomization instinct and then takes us through biological evolution, human language, and acausality illusions all the way to the climate crisis and the weaponization of the social media, and beyond that into the deepest parts of theoretical physics — demonstrating our unconscious mathematical abilities.He also has an important message of hope for the future. Contrary to popular belief, biological evolution has given us not only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that biological evolution is more than a simple competition between selfish genes. Rather, he suggests, in some ways it is more like turbulent fluid flow, a complex process spanning a vast range of timescales.Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) and has worked on problems as diverse as the Sun's magnetic interior, the Antarctic ozone hole, jet streams in the atmosphere, and the psychophysics of violin sound. He has long been interested in how different branches of science can better communicate with each other and with the public, harnessing aspects of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity principles' that underlie skilful communication.

Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who has also had a part-time career as a musician. In this book he offers an extraordinary synthesis, revealing the many deep connections between science, music, and mathematics. He avoids equations and technical jargon. The connections are deep in the sense of being embedded in our very nature, rooted in biological evolution over hundreds of millions of years.Michael guides us through biological evolution, perception psychology, and even unconscious science and mathematics, all the way to the scientific uncertainties about the climate crisis.He also has a message of hope for the future. Contrary to popular belief, he holds that biological evolution has given us not only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that biological evolution is far more than a simple competition between selfish genes. Instead, he argues, in some ways it is more like the turbulent, eddying flow in a river or in an atmospheric jet stream, a complex process spanning a vast range of timescales.Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) and has long been interested in how different branches of science can better communicate with each other, and with the public. His work harnesses aspects of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity principles' that underlie skilful communication, principles related to the way music works — music of any genre.This Second Edition sharpens the previous discussion of communication skills and their importance for today's great problems, ranging from the widely discussed climate crisis to the need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence.

What human qualities are needed to make scientific discoveries, and which to make great art? Many would point to 'imagination' and 'creativity' in the second case but not the first. This book challenges the assumption that doing science is in any sense less creative than art, music or fictional writing and poetry, and treads a historical and contemporary path through common territories of the creative process. The methodological process called the 'scientific method' tells us how to test ideas when we have had them, but not how to arrive at hypotheses in the first place. Hearing the stories that scientists and artists tell about their projects reveals commonalities: the desire for a goal, the experience of frustration and failure, the incubation of the problem, moments of sudden insight, and the experience of the beautiful or sublime. Selected themes weave the practice of science and art together: visual thinking and metaphor, the transcendence of music and mathematics, the contemporary rise of the English novel and experimental science, and the role of aesthetics and desire in the creative process. Artists and scientists make salient comparisons: Defoe and Boyle; Emmerson and Humboldt, Monet and Einstein, Schumann and Hadamard. The book draws on medieval philosophy at many points as the product of the last age that spent time in inner contemplation of the mystery of how something is mentally brought out from nothing. Taking the phenomenon of the rainbow as an example, the principles of creativity within constraint point to the scientific imagination as a parallel of poetry.

A unique book providing a tour through the fascinating connections between mathematics and games.

From the beat of a tribal drum to a choir of crickets--music is everywhere. Math and Music explores the music of various cultures and the sounds heard in nature while highlighting the mathematical concepts, such as proportion, patterns, Fibonacci numbers, geometric transformations, and trigonometry, found in music. The companion poster explores mysterious connections between seemingly different entities, such as music and animals! A four-page guide explains the connections students may discover.

Ashton presents a short, illustrated introduction to the evolution of simple harmonic theory. Illustrations.

How music has influenced mathematics, physics, and astronomy from ancient Greece to the twentieth century.