1. Interesting that those Monkeys don't even appear to have the necessary "hardware". The BBC did a number of experiments in the 1950s/60s along somewhat similar lines, although investigating the "software" side of things in humans. They took various music recordings (some classical, such as Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, etc., and some popular music hits) to various places in India, other Asian countries, even some remote tribes in Africa and played them to people who had never heard western music before. The results were very interesting, broadly: While they could easily differentiate the recordings from other sounds/noise (IE. Unlike the tested monkeys, they had the "hardware"), they couldn't identify what it was, they didn't recognise it as music, it was just a different (but unidentifiable) sort of noise, IE. They didn't have the "software"! However, the ability to identify the noise/sound as music increased with some of the popular music recordings. After asking the subjects questions, the BBC staff concluded that the popular music was more readily recognisable because of the rhythmic percussion (drumkit for example) and it's vague similarity with local music. The vast majority of ethnic/traditional music employs some form of rhythmic drums/percussion, sometimes exclusively. The music which was most difficult to recognise was the music less reliant on rhythmic percussion and more reliant on harmony (chords and chord progressions), EG. Most classical music. Along with other evidence, the conclusion is that while we all have the hardware to detect harmony, we don't have the software to identify it as music, it's a learned response, or to continue with the vernacular of the article, we self-develop the software. I'm care not to say that we aren't born with the software, because there's quite a bit a evidence to suggest this learning process does (or can) begin while we're still in the womb. Incidentally, it's virtually impossible to repeat those BBC experiments today. Due to globalisation there are very few people in the world (possibly none at all) who have never been exposed to western music.
2. I maybe wrong (pretty high probability!) but I'm not sure that is a development in the science of sound. It depends on how we define "sound". In classical science, sound is defined as a pressure wave travelling through a medium, which for our practical purposes is air. In other words, a sound-wave is countless trillions of atoms/molecules (of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon dioxide, etc.) that are forced to move up and down in sequence by the force of pressure. If you have two sub-atomic particles (in this case electrons) how is it possible for them to propagate a sound-wave? What medium is there between the two electrons, even a single atom of Nitrogen is absolutely massive compared to an electron and you're going to need a whole bunch of atoms and molecules to propagate a sound-wave? From my understanding (which at this level is very limited!) what they're actually talking about is "vibrational energy", which isn't sound/sound-waves per se, but presumably have the potential to be, if you had enough of them, with enough energy to propagate a sound wave.
[1]I'm honestly not quite sure what you mean by this. I introduced some specific concepts for clarity, but the actual points I was trying to make were very broad. I tried to avoid getting bogged down in details in order to avoid criticism of the technical aspects of the post.
[1a] I did actually read your post mostly as a technical clarification to anyone else coming along, but the questions included and concerns with word choice threw me off.
1. Unfortunately though, the example you used was one already argued over at the beginning of the thread and was another example of the misunderstanding/misuse of a term (in that case, "resolution"), which was particularly ironic as the poster went to the trouble of saying it was important to accurately define the term, and then incorrectly defined it!
1a. It's entirely possible that I've become over-sensitive here over the years, due to the almost constant word/term abuse. For example, if I were to correctly/scientifically state that it would be incredibly unlikely that some effect could be audible, it's very probable that some audiophile will then reason along the lines of:
"Incredibly unlikely doesn't mean impossible and what maybe "incredibly unlikely" for an average consumer is much more likely for me, with my much better gear and experience identifying fine details. Coupled with the fact that I heard an audible difference, there obviously IS an audible difference and what's more, as the science doesn't disagree with me, science is on my side! If members of this subforum then tell me there is no audible difference, they are obviously wrong because I know what I heard (and they can't know what I heard) and what's more, they're disagreeing with the science and therefore not being scientific!". The reality of course is that this audiophile is the one not being scientific, they do not understand the terms "incredibly/extremely unlikely" and "impossible" as used in science. In common speech we often use the word "impossible" but in science we rarely use it, because in science we have to be much more precise and as science cannot prove a negative, instead of the word "impossible" we would typically say "incredibly unlikely" or "extremely unlikely". The above audiophile reasoning is therefore wrong, the scientific use of "incredibly unlikely" translated into common speech DOES typically mean "Impossible"! "Impossible in any practical/real world, foreseeable circumstance" and an audiophile with audiophile gear IS a real world, foreseeable circumstance! BTW, I know you know this but it's for the benefit of others.
G
