z-logo
Premium
The Conformal Motive in Birdsong, Music, and Language: An Introduction
Author(s) -
MERKER BJORN
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1196/annals.1360.003
Subject(s) - sketch , imitation , perspective (graphical) , embodied cognition , cognitive science , the arts , human culture , psychology , perception , sociology , communication , aesthetics , epistemology , art , computer science , visual arts , philosophy , social psychology , neuroscience , anthropology , algorithm
A bstract : Human song and music are part of what may be called a ritual stratum of human culture. As such, they involve special behaviors and neural mechanisms with an uneven but interesting distribution in nature. This may be turned to account not only for shedding light on the biological background of human song and music, but also for elucidating the nature of the cultural traditions within which these arts are practiced and elaborated. The purpose of this chapter is accordingly threefold: (1) to highlight the uniqueness of human culture compared to that of other primates by defining and contrasting two very different types of traditions that coexist within it: those of instrumental culture and those of ritual culture; (2) to outline the crucial role of the mechanism of vocal learning as an enabling device for ritual culture, specifically, by way of the well‐studied behavioral biology of birdsong; and (3) to introduce the conformal motive as a so‐far neglected, but essential, aspect of the neural mechanisms required for vocal learning. Taken together, these considerations will then be used to sketch some of the roles this postulated conformal motive appears to play in human culture, stratified into instrumental, ritual, and language traditions. Some of the implications of this perspective for our understanding of a number of issues related to the human facility for imitation, expressive mimesis, and deliberate teaching are also briefly touched upon.

This content is not available in your region!

Continue researching here.

Having issues? You can contact us here