Music and the Making of Modern Science

Abstract

A wide-ranging exploration of how music has influenced science through the ages, from fifteenth-century cosmology to twentieth-century string theory. Music and the making of ancient science -- The dream of Oresme -- Moving the immovable -- Hearing the irrational -- Kepler and the song of the Earth -- Descartes' musical apprenticeship -- Mersenne's universal harmony -- Newton and the mystery of the major sixth -- Euler: the mathematics of musical sadness -- Euler: from sound to light -- Young's musical optics -- Electric sounds -- Hearing the field -- Helmholtz and the sirens -- Riemann and the sound of space -- Tuning the atoms -- Planck's cosmic harmonium -- Unheard harmonies.