Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

He suggests that music is an auditory parasite, free riding on emotionally evocative aural sensitivities that long ago provided survival value to our forebears. For example, sounds whose frequencies are harmonically related (frequencies that are multiples of a common frequency) indicate a single and potentially identifiable source (basic physics reveals that when a linear object vibrates, whether a predator’s vocal cords or a weapon made from hollowed bone, the vibrational frequencies tend to fill out a harmonic series). Those of our forebears who responded more pleasurably to such organized sounds would have paid them more attention and thus garnered greater awareness of their environment. The heightened cognizance would have tilted the survival scales in their favor, enhancing their well-being and promoting the further development of auditory sensitivity. Increased receptivity to other information-rich sounds, from thunder to footfalls to cracking branches, would have further sharpened attentiveness and thus filled out environmental awareness yet further. And so those of our ancestors who were more sonically attuned possessed a fitness advantage, promoting the spread of aural sensitivity throughout subsequent generations.