Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

538 J HOW THE MIND WORKSwalking, running, chopping, scraping, and digging have an optimalrhythm (usually an optimal pattern of rhythms within rhythms), which isdetermined by the impedances of the body and of the tools or surfaces itis working with. A good example is pushing a child on a swing. A constantrhythmic pattern is an optimal way to time these motions, and weget moderate pleasure from being able to stick to it, which athletes callgetting in a groove or feeling the flow. Music and dance may be a concentrateddose of that stimulus to pleasure. Muscle control alsoembraces sequences of tension and release (for example, in leaping orstriking), actions carried out with urgency, enthusiasm, or lassitude, anderect or slumping body postures that reflect confidence, submission, ordepression. Several psychologically oriented music theorists, includingJackendoff, Manfred Clynes, and David Epstein, believe that musicrecreates the motivational and emotional components of movement.6. Something else. Something that explains how the whole is morethan the sum of the parts. Something that explains why watching a slidego in and out of focus or dragging a filing cabinet up a flight of stairs doesnot hale souls out of men's bodies. Perhaps a resonance in the brainbetween neurons firing in synchrony with a soundwave and a naturaloscillation in the emotion circuits? An unused counterpart in the righthemisphere of the speech areas in the left? Some kind of spandrel orcrawl space or short-circuit or coupling that came along as an accident ofthe way that auditory, emotional, language, and motor circuits ard packedtogether in the brain?This analysis of music is speculative, but it nicely complements thediscussions of the mental faculties in the rest of the book. I chose themas topics because they show the clearest signs of being adaptations. Ichose music because it shows the clearest signs of not being one.The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people,so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives." At leastthe narrator of Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer acknowledges the difference.Television stations get mail from soap-opera viewers with deaththreats for the evil characters, advice to the lovelorn ones, and bootiesfor the babies. Mexican moviegoers have been known to riddle thescreen with bullets. Actors complain that fans confuse them with their