Divertimentos Alvaro Corral - Complexity Science Hub Vienna · Complex-Systems Science: Usefulness and \Divertimentos’8 Zipf’s law Serr a et al. Sci. Rep. 2012 1. The Size of

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CSH Vienna Annual Conference & External Faculty Meeting,May 2018

Complex-Systems Science:

Usefulness and “Divertimentos”

Alvaro Corral 27

Complex-Systems Science: Usefulness and “Divertimentos’ 2

On the relevance of studying complex systems

• The main problems that humankind faces in the 21st century are due to ourinhability to understand/deal with/tame complexity

? The climate

? The economy / politics

? Diseases

? etc...

Watts, Nature, 2007

Hindustan Times


What about music?

• Is it just a “divertimento” ( entertainment )?


What about music?

• Is it just a “divertimento” ( entertainment )?

• Note:

? It is exclusive of humans (not animals! not apes at all!) Ball, The Music Instinct, 2009


What about music?

• Note: It is common to all human cultures (of all times!)

Music is believed to be previous to language Rousseau, Darwin – Ball


What about music?

• Note:

? It really interests people (people even pay for it!)


What about music?

• Note:

? It really interests people (people even pay for it!)


What about music?

• Note: It conveys emotions

Marc Chagall


What about music?

• Note: It conveys emotions

Marc Chagall

• Is music a form of language?


Culturomics Michel et al. (inc. Google Books), Science, 2011

• They (Google) scanned and digitized 5 millions books of all times

Linguistic analysis:

? Size of (English) vocabulary: more than 1 million words

? Evolution of grammar (regularization of verbs)



• Cultural studies: Evolution of ideas and concepts



• Cultural studies: Evolution of ideas and concepts


What about music?

• Large-scale empirical study of (digitized) music

? Would we replicate what musicologists already know?

? Would we arrive at new insights?

? Musicologists lack:∗ Precise measurement, quantification∗ Objectivity


Big-data science versus complex-systems science

• Is this just big-data science?

No, or, not only

Music (as language) seems to fulfill simple complex-systems laws


Big-data science versus complex-systems science

• Is this just big-data science?

No, or, not only

Music (as language) seems to fulfill simple complex-systems laws

• Arnold Schonberg: “Two impulses struggle with each other ...: the demand forrepetition of pleasant stimuli, and the opposing desire for variety, for change,for a new stimulus.”

Damian Zanette: “Music conveys a subtle balance of reiteration and change,of redundancy and novelty, of recurrent shapes and fresh figures.”

As many other complex systems, music seems to be at the edge between orderand chaos, in a sort of “critical equilibrium”

Zanette, Music, Complexity, Information, 2008; Nature, 2008


Zipf’s law Serra et al. Sci. Rep. 20121. The Size of Earthquakes 16

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• Origin? Language-like? Purely aesthetic (sort of magic proportion)?



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• Origin? Language-like? Purely aesthetic (sort of magic proportion)?

• Other statistical laws? Zipf’s law could be the tip of the iceberg of quantitativemusicology


Conclusion

• Philip Ball: “Music is not simply a kind of mathematics. It is themost remarkable blend of art and science, logic and emotion, physics andpsychology, known to us” Ball, The Music Instinct, 2009

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Divertimentos Alvaro Corral - Complexity Science Hub Vienna · Complex-Systems Science: Usefulness and \Divertimentos’8 Zipf’s law Serr a et al. Sci. Rep. 2012 1. The Size of