“As far as biological cause and effect are concerned,” Pinker wrote in The Language Instinct (and paraphrased in the talk he gave to us), “music is useless. It shows no signs of design for attaining a goal such as long life, grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction of the world. Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged.”
