Notes on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness -- Phil A231

William Jamison - Instructor

Necessity

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." Bertrand Russell 

Music presentation:

What makes music so beautiful to us?

I start with bird song and use an Audubon Society disk that is pretty ancient. You can get much the same effect by visiting here for an example -- the herring gull:

or the complete list maybe?

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/view_default.asp?rgn=&allSpecies=y&source=zipGuides&fromWhere=zipGuides&email=wsjamison@uaa.alaska.edu&subscribeAll=1&from=optin&zipGuide=on&regionZip=99577&btnSubmit.x=8&btnSubmit.y=10

 

I have not found a similar site with animal sounds though the same site does give lots of information for different species.

This is the Audubon book on line: http://www.audubon.org/bird/BoA/BOA_index.html 

Following this I move to "higher" animals following some selections on my music page: http://www.geocities.com/bethann_99577/Music/ but note that the music I have on the CD version is not available on the web. Still, you can see the CDs I selected -- all of which should still be available at the Loussac 4th floor.

I do go on to several other selections:

Voice of an Angel ~ by Charlotte Church (Audio CD)
Sogno ~ by Andrea Bocelli, Francesco / Quarantotto, Lucio Sartori, David / Sager, Carole Bayer Foster (Audio CD)
Hook: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack [SOUNDTRACK] ~ John Williams (Audio CD)

The invitation to the class is to select a favorite to share with the class.

If you did not have much time to look at the Voyager Record today here is a link to the site:

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

From that site you might also have a look at the stars to see what V-ger has seen!

 

Bibliography

Concepts of Beauty: A Feminist Philosopher Thinks About Paradigms and Consequences by Christine Koggel http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/beauty/koggeldoc.html

This page is maintained by William S. Jamison. It was last updated August 14, 2012. All links on these pages are either to open source or public domain materials or they are marked with the appropriate copyright information. I frequently check the links I have made to other web sites but each source is responsible for their own content.