Music and the Making of Modern Science

252 Chapter 16

Theory of Sound (1877) refers only occasionally to musical matters.^21 Rayleigh makes

clear that his real subject is “ the theory of Vibrations in general ” ; he stresses “ the estab-

lishment of general theorems by means of Lagrange ’ s method, ” a sophisticated mathemati-

cal technique, rather than the far more empirical, musically oriented approach of

Helmholtz.^22 Rayleigh, and seemingly Balmer also, seemed to think that the sheer physi-

cality of music was best sublimated into disembodied theory, as if the more mathematical

representation were to be accounted more true, or at least most general.

It would be too facile to conclude that they and others were simply ashamed of music

as atavistic or unscientific; arguably, they treated music as an empirical level on which the

modern edifice of acoustics was built. But that completed building necessarily would cover

and hide the foundations on which it rested. Thus, in Balmer ’ s later publications on spectra,

the musical analogy with which he began faded into the background as he became involved

in more and more detailed calculations of spectra for elements besides hydrogen; the others

who followed his lead into this field do not mention acoustics or overtones at all, as if

they had been merely suggestive scaffolding no longer relevant once they had given birth

to the mathematical theory, whose general terms carried no reference to its sonic

beginnings.^23

This process might be considered an example of what Edmund Husserl called “ sedi-

mentation or traditionalization, ” the modern scientist ’ s constitutional proclivity to assume

and subsume prior foundational work so as to incorporate “ the constant presuppositions

of his [own] constructions, concepts, propositions. ” He goes on: “ Are science and its

method not like a machine, reliable in accomplishing obviously very useful things, a

machine everyone can learn to operate correctly without in the least understanding the

Figure 16.4

Balmer ’ s 1885 table showing his calculations, compared to contemporary observations.