Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 269

Th ese forms of structure may be refl ections of our more general capacity
for structure abstraction. In his book Musicophilia, the late Oliver Sacks
says, “In all socie ties, a primary function of music is collective and com-
munal, to bring and bind people together. People sing together and dance
together in every culture, and one can imagine them having done so
around the fi rst fi res, a hundred thousand years ago.” Sacks adds, “In
such a situation, there seems to be an actual binding of ner vous systems
accomplished by rhythm.”^14

“BINDING” OF NER VOUS SYSTEMS

Such “binding” of ner vous systems is exactly what happens in the cog-

nitive dynamics of the social animals (from ants to wolves). Th ose self-

organ izing dynamics have amazingly creative results for groups and

individuals. But it depends on under lying pattern abstraction. Indeed, the

capture of structure in experience, from the molecular ensembles of the

cell to advanced cognitive systems, is what makes a system intelligent. It

leads from a state of uncertainty to one of predictability. When humans

fi nd it or discover it—in nature, pictures or human faces, for example—

they describe it as beautiful and harmonious and they feel better about

it. Humans deliberately contrive such structured experience in simplifi ed

forms in music (as well as art, dance, etc.).

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Oliver Sacks’s account should

lead Holger Hennig to the question: Is there any under lying and quanti-

fi able structure to the subjective experience of “musical binding”? From

what has been said about the nature of cognition, we would surely expect

so. Accordingly, Hennig examined its statistical nature by getting pairs

of humans to play rhythms in synchrony. Th e results provide further

clues to the true nature of human culture and human intelligence.

It has been known for a long time that anyone playing an instrument

gets the timing of each beat very slightly wrong— a few milliseconds be-

fore or aft er the metronome. It turns out, though, that in any individual

sequence, the deviations are not random. Th ey correlate with each other

over long intervals in the sequence. Th at is, they reveal an under lying sta-

tistical de pen dency, or structure (also known as fractal structure).

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