The: Foolish HumanWhat skyclad devilry is this?

I found a few articles today that I think are really interesting.

1. The Search for Universal Music, by Philip Ball .

All cultures make music, though no one knows why; it’s not obviously useful in the way cooking or language are. A number of musicians, including some notable composers, claim that music is a universal form of human communication which transcends barriers of culture and language. Now psychologists are putting this universality back on the agenda, and are investigating whether certain elements of music are hard-wired into the brain.

2. To Be or Not To Be, Brendan Kelly.

An interesting article on death and suicide in King County:

A total of 13,339 people died in King County in 2008. (The data for 2009 hasn’t been tabulated yet.) Sixteen percent of them—2,121 people—became cases for the county Medical Examiner’s Office: 85 were murdered, 163 died in traffic accidents, and 210 committed suicide. Of the suicides, 93 shot themselves. (In the same year, there were 45 gun-related murders: If you’re going to die by gunfire in these parts, you’ll most likely be pulling the trigger.) Forty-eight hanged themselves. Twenty-nine took drugs or poison. Thirteen died from jumping, eight from asphyxia, five from cutting or stabbing, four from carbon-monoxide poisoning, three from drowning, another three from self-immolation, and four from “other.”

3. We Need a General Theory of Individuality, by David P. Barash.

Needed, an oxymoron: a general scientific theory of individual differences. To focus upon individuality is to celebrate particularity, whereas any general theory must, by definition, submerge the individual case in a wider sea of pattern. Each of us cherishes our own separate, individual personhood, making much of the “fact” that we are different from everyone else (while also insisting, of course, that we aren’t all that different). But attention to individual differences runs the risk of being unscientific, insofar as science aims at generalizing, raising our heads above the individual trees to recognize the forest. Yet the need is there. When Kierkegaard insisted that his tombstone say “That Individual,” he was identifying both an existential truth and a profound scientific dilemma.