Welcome!

Thursday, January 6th, 2022

Hello!

Today we will be covering…

• Introductions
• The plan for the quarter
• What is empirical musicology?
• What is science?
  • How does knowledge grow?

Empiricism

Empiricism isn’t a method, it’s just a smart thing to do.

–Gjerdingen (2011, SMT)

What is empirical musicology?

In short, there is no useful distinction to be drawn between empirical and non-empirical musicology, because there can be no such thing as a truly non-empirical musicology; what is at issue is the extent to which musicological discourse is grounded on empirical observation, and conversely the extent to which observation is regulated by discourse.

–Cook and Clarke (2004, p.3)

Data-Rich vs. Data-Poor

• Many aspects of musicology are “data-poor”
• We have no real surviving original manuscripts in Josquin’s own hand. Only a few contemporaneous ones.

Data-Rich Responsibilities

“…there would be grounds for legitimate criticism if musicologists working in data-rich fields did not take full advantage of the methds available under such conditions, instead restricting themselves to traditional”humanities” approaches developed for data-poor fields–and oe of the messages of this book is that musicology i or could be, in many instances, a significantly “data richer” field than we generally give it credit for.”

–Cook and Clarke, (p.4)

One more quote…

Empirical musicology, to summarize, can be thought of as musicology that embodies a principled awareness of both the potential to engage with large bodies of relevant data, and the appropriate methods of achieving this […]

– Cook and Clarke (2004, p.5)

Types of Knowledge

• Intuition
• Deductive Knowledge
• Empirical Knowledge

See Types of Knowledge

Intuition

• A man about to cross the street jumps back when he hears the sound of a car horn. The reaction is so fast, he is not even aware of having thought about anything.

Deductive knowledge

• If all people are mortal, and Socrates is a person, then Socrates is mortal.
• Seeing a guitarist move her finger one fret toward the tone hole, we conclude that the next pitch will be one semitone higher than the previous pitch.

Empirical knowledge (knowledge gained through observation)

• I’ve observed that some musicians can always identify the names of pitches (“perfect pitch”) and others can’t.

Induction

• “The problem of induction” (Hume)
• “Reasoning by drawing a conclusion not guaranteed by the premises” (Dienes, p. 164)

Induction

• Sam the swan is white;
• Georgina the swan is white;
• Fred the swan is white;
• …
• Emma the swan is white.
• Conclusion: All swans are white.

Proof

• Motivated by truth, with no hope of proof.
• We aim not to be right, but to be not not right.

Popper

• The goal of science is to test, criticize (and debunk) already existing theories.
• It’s not a bad thing if your theory is wrong.

Demarcation

• What makes something a science?
• For Popper, something was a science if it contained falsifiable hypotheses.

What makes something a hypothesis?

• Conjectures
• Hypotheses
• Theories

Why do you need a hypothesis?

• Humans are very good at constructing narratives.
• Hindsight bias is very real, and we should do everything we can to mitigate it.

Reductionism

• Methodological reductionism is not philosophoical reductionism.

• Philosophical Reductionism: A Belief about the World

• Methodological Reductionism: A Strategy for Discovery

• In research, reductionism is a method, not a belief

• We simplify problems, not because we believe problems to be simple, but because we believe problems to be complex.

Operationalizing Terms

Listening to Mozart makes people smarter.

Concept	Possible operationalization
“smarter”	will score higher on the Stanford-Binet IQ test
“Mozart”	all sound recordings that claim the music is composed by W.A. Mozart
“listening”	conscious while being exposed to 20 minutes of sound recordings
“people”	2nd-year undergraduate music students from the Northwestern University

Types of Studies

See this page on types of studies