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From: ISSSSM@NUSVM.BITNET (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: RE: WHY NO ONE CARES WHAT S. PAGE DOES
Message-ID: <9106230259.AA12032@lilac.berkeley.edu>
Date: 23 Jun 91 02:59:31 GMT
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X-Unparsable-Date: Sun, 23 Jun 91 10:58:29 SST

In article <1991Jun20.194837.19912@rand.org> edhall@rand.org (Ed Hall) writes:
>In article <9106190528.AA17412@lilac.berkeley.edu> ISSSSM@NUSVM.BITNET
>(Stephen Smoliar) writes:
>>  Rather, I would argue
>>that music theory is as susceptible to Sturgeon's Law as is any other domain,
>>meaning that I tend to dismiss about 90% of what I read in music theory to
>>have
>>been a waste of my time.  FINDING that other 10% is often a neat trick, but a
>>little bit of persistence helps.
>
>Hmmm...  One might as well ask where that 10% of un-dumb palm-readers
>are, or the 10% of un-dumb tea-leaf readers.

Most of them are probably practicing psychiatry!  (Remember, these are people
who are seriously consulted for advice.  Some of them happen to have enough
insight into human nature that they know how to give GOOD advice.  If they
happen to use palm lines or tea leaves to make up a story which will lend
credibility to the advice, that does not lessen the value of the advice.)

>  Sometimes the paradigm
>(to use a well-warn word) is the problem, not just the practicioner.
>It seems that music theory itself might be suspect.  I'm sure the
>thoretician is just as likely to be kind to children and small animals
>as the rest of us.  But the practice of music theory often seems to me
>much like nuclear physics limited to particles whose names contain the
>letter "e".
>
Unfortunately, Ed, you have said nothing to support your case as far as the
paradigm is concerned.  Yes, there are those who practice music theory who
may devote their lives to cataloging interval relationships in WOZZECK;  but
there are also thesis-hungry physics students who may very well end up looking
at nothing other than "particles whose names contain the letter 'e'."  We are
still in the arena of practice!  If you want to haul out paradigm, then you are
obliged to say WHICH paradigms of music theory (if any) are making it "suspect"
(to use your word).

===============================================================================

Stephen W. Smoliar
Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore
Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Kent Ridge
SINGAPORE 0511

BITNET:  ISSSSM@NUSVM

"He was of Lord Essex's opinion, 'rather to go an hundred miles to speak with
one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town.'"--Boswell on Johnson