Michael Nielsen: belief

Transcript context

…Why do the sounds of the universe not appeal to us so much? It’s beautiful visually, but aurally it’s, eh. We create very complicated things, which we call music, which are beautiful. That’s a great question. I don’t know why music is beautiful. People have made attempts. There are things like chirp sounds that might be produced near a black hole and ideas like this. And you’re right, they tend not to be all that beautiful. The only ones that I can think of offhand — it’s being produced by evolution. Birdsong is beautiful, but we are actually quite closely related to birds, so it’s maybe not so surprising. If I think about things like — Ron Sexsmith, I think his name is — a composer in Toronto, has made these musical pieces based on the different periods in the solar system. The time that the earth takes, the one year to go around the sun, but also then Mars and Jupiter and all these. They are noticeably not particularly attractive musical pieces. So, that’s a good question. I wonder if the beauty of light isn’t part of the reason for the beauty of the universe. As human beings, maybe we’re evolved to be attracted to light. It gives you an integrated theory of the beauty of the universe and beauty of paintings. Vermeer, a great painter — he’s very attractive to people because of how he uses light. When you look at the universe, you’re typically seeing signatures of light in many cases. If you look at the Milky Way, right?…

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