User talk:James H. Bath

“Rhythm Our Cosmic Instinct”

by

James H. Bath

Music is universal to all humans. Everyone can appreciate it and even create it to some degree or another, whether conducting an orchestra or simply humming a tune or drumming our fingers on a tabletop. Researchers wonder about this universal instinct for music and analyze the question in a variety of laboratory settings. But the answer is not all that complicated when you count rhythm as an indispensable part of life.

You can hear an unlearned child pluck notes on a piano or guitar which have no apparent rhythm. But embedded in each note struck by the little hands are frequencies of sound waves passing through the air and into the ear. A “C” note is a periodic train of airwaves striking the ear with a certain frequency while a “D” note is the same thing but with a different frequency. Though some note combinations are discordant and others harmonious, it is all rhythm. Steady frequency is rhythm. Day and night cycles have steady frequencies of coming and going, and they too are rhythm.

Rhythm abounds. It comes from the Sun as a plethora of frequencies making up the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared, visible light, x-ray, gamma ray, and other frequencies pulsate through space and into our atmosphere with relentless consistency. They pound us with tempo every day. They drive this beat into our plants, into the molecules of the air we breathe, the waters of our oceans, into our skin, eyes, and hair, and into everything else that makes up our environment on Earth and beyond. It’s no wonder rhythm is universally recognized, instinctively as well as consciously.

Language itself, once learned, is musical for we find rhythm in the act of expressing ourselves, whether orally or written. We make and hear the smooth rhythms of dialect we learn to speak over a lifetime. We take these so for granted that we don’t even notice we regularly use this polished and musical skill.

We can hear the rhythm of language best when listening to someone speak in a tongue we know little or nothing about because at such times we are not distracted by the “meanings” of the words. We hear only the sounds of the words, their music, not what they mean. And, of course, meaning itself can be rhythmic and musical, as in the case of poetry (I mean the harmonious arrangements of the imagery, as well as the tempo or meter). Heartbeat is another rhythm, or form of natural music which has its origins deep in the cosmic recesses of the universe.

Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson won the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics for their 1964 accidental discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This radiation is often called the echo of the Big Bang from which the universe allegedly began. It permeates the universe. It’s a rhythm that is everywhere.

In the late 6th century BC, Pythagoras made reference to the “Music of the Spheres”, a sound he said he could hear. He attributed this to the movement of things in the heavens. The rhythm and music were big parts of his teachings and the lives of his disciples. It was considered an organizing factor of life. They sang hymns to Apollo and used the lyre to cure illness of the body and soul. And they recited poetry before and after sleep to sharpen memory.

In ancient India, a system of yoga meditation emerged called Shabd Yoga, translated as “Sound Current Yoga.” Possibly Pythagoras knew about this. The practice of this yoga involves immersing one’s total attention into a high-pitched sound emanating from within his or her body and brain, and then following this sound consciously to its source, which is said to be God. This may be directly or indirectly related to the cosmic microware background radiation that Penzias and Wilson so recently discovered.

Rhythm affects us on our deepest levels. Even our cells are dancing to the natural music. Using advanced imaging techniques and lasers, Daniel Ou-Yang’s research group at Lehigh University studied intracellular molecular signals to learn about natural rhythms in endothelial cells. The skeletal rigidity of these cells change in a rhythmical pattern in the vicinity of their organelles (the cell’s organs).

“This rhythm tells us something is alive," says Ou-Yang. "But it raises other questions. What triggers this rhythm? And what is its significance?”

Working with Ou-Yang was Elizabeth Rickter, a graduate student in physics, who was the first person to observe the rhythmic behaviors that appear to originate from endothelial cytoskeletons. Also working with the group was Laura Morkowchuk, a bioengineering student who studied the effect of the cytoskeletal vibration on the transport of proteins from the blood stream into a cell's interior.

Ou-Yang’s team was interested in cytoskeletal rhythm because it plays an important role in cell division. Learning how to control it might lead to more effective ways to fight the runaway cell division observed in cancerous tumors. Certain chemical treatments that are used to fight cancer induces rigidity in the cytoskeleton, effectively choking the tumor of its blood supply which is regulated by endothelial cells.

For more information on this study, see “With Optical 'Tweezers,' Researchers Pinpoint The Rhythmic Rigidity Of Cell Skeletons” ScienceDaily 2003-12-05 at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031204073933.htm

So rhythm is everywhere. It is a sine qua non of our existence.

We are creatures of habit; therefore we dance to our own rhythms everyday. Sadly, many of these rhythms are discordant with the rest of society and even with the other areas of our lives. One such discordant rhythm is the so-called “work” rhythm which we dance to in an uncoordinated and spastic way when we employ ourselves in occupations for which we have no aptitude or affection. We suffer miserably when doing this, for then we go against our own grain, our natural rhythm, the rhythm of the universe.

Our lives are music, and so we should do things that are musical to us. We should dance to the rhythm of the universe.

End.