When I resumed this blog on March 12, 2013 I mentioned a book that had recently been given to me as a gift. I also stated how often I had observed that it was the “best book that I have ever read!” That book is The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. As we continue our considerations about music I need to return to this wonderful volume. At first this may seem like a detour away from our current subject matter, but I plan to draw some direct links to our future considerations about music.

With deep gratitude the following is from one of the beginning chapters of The Art of Possibility:

“Most people already understand that, as with cultural differences, interpretations of the world vary from individual to individual and from group to group. This understanding may persuade us that by factoring out our own interpretations of reality, we can reach a solid truth. However, the term it’s all invented points to a more fundamental notion – that no matter how objective we try to be, it is still through the structure of the brain that we perceive the world. So, if there are absolutes, we have no direct access to their existence. The mind constructs. The meanings our minds construct may be widely shared and sustaining for us, but they may have little to do with the world itself. Furthermore, how would we know?

Even science – which is often too simply described as an orderly process of accumulating knowledge based on previously acquired truths – even science relies on our capacity to adapt to new facts by radically shifting the theoretical constructions we previously accepted as truth. When we lived in a Newtonian world, we saw straight lines and forces, in an Einsteinian universe, we noticed curved space/time, relativity, and indeterminancy. The Newtonian view is still valid – only now we see it as a special case, valid within a particular set of conditiions. Each new paradigm gives us the opportunity to see phenomena that were before as invisible to us as the colors of the sunset to the frog.

To gain greater insight into what we mean by a map, a framework, or a paradigm, let’s revisit the famous nine-dot puzzle, which will be familiar to many readers. As you may or may not know, the puzzle asks us to join all nine dots with four straight lines, without taking pen from paper. If you have never seen this puzzle before, go ahead and try it . . .” (12-13)

More to follow in the next post!