We live in the best of all possible worlds
Gottfried LeibnizRead
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Music is a form of unconscious arithmetic that provides pleasure through rhythm and structure.
In this quote, Leibniz suggests that music, while seemingly an emotional and creative pursuit, is fundamentally rooted in mathematical principles. The ability to derive pleasure from music lies in its underlying structures, which we comprehend without consciously counting or analyzing them. In essence, music's beauty stems from the intricate relationships and patterns that flow through it, often unnoticed by listeners.
Themes
MusicArithmeticPleasureCountingEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about the impact of music on emotions and psychology.
More from Gottfried Leibniz
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It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
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According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.
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..This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
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...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
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