The name of the chapter caught me from the very beginning.
"Neither science nor the arts can be complete without combining their separate strengths. Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science."
I can't help thinking in how imagination and wonderment is implicit in all scientific or artistic discovery. It isn't like we only have reason in one side to think of science or just emotion when we think on creating music. We're creative, by nature.

Some chapters before, Wilson claimed in how arts and documented work made culture evolve faster. In this chapter, he wrote "gene-culture coevolution is, I believe, the underlying process by which the brain evolved and the arts originated." and there is, culture documented through the years making our artistic works evolve more and more.

Also, the origins of our artistic brain is theorized as a mechanism that started off by putting meaning to things we didn't understand in our surroundings. We have an aesthetic instinct, and I would dare to say that it is also a search for human seal in things. We like to see our genes printed throughout nature. And also, we have idealized beauty characteristics that come from our instinctual search for fertility and powerful genes.

This song is wonderful, it is a set of mixes made by different conferences of TED. Definitely, ideas in a song this way made me feel extremely happy. This types of lyrics are amazing! I like them a little more abstract though, but the goal... that is what I really liked.

Besides this video, we took time to watch others that told us a little of economic theory:

And a little of history of Nikolas Tesla and Che Guevara. It is extremely funny that wrong idea we have of certain people, such as Thomas Edison and Guevara. These people just became famous for reasons that aren't really true or legitimate. People using Che Guevara shirts, pretending to be rebels. People crediting Edison in all of the textbooks not considering that he wasn't the actual inventor of so many things.

This chapter was special. I have to confess, that before I started reading Consilience I had this certainty that we would never get to the bottom of anything. We, humans won't ever be able to find truth. But, ah, I was mistaken. There are something we can figure out. But one of the most difficult things that can be given a scientific explanations relies on social networks. In complex societies.

Culture is not alienated from genetics. In fact, these two interact and they interact based in epigenetics. There's a lot of interesting things concerning to universal cultural characteristics such as clothing, food, etc. But other interesting thing is that we also tend to divide things like "good' or "bad", and certain actions are correlated with each division. But, I wonder, is there an ethical concern here?

Other thing that is extremely interesting in this chapter is the fact that children, without any knowledge of what is "in tune" or "out of tune", are able to recognize and like symmetrical combinations of music over others. But before that, newborns are able to distinguish noise and tone. These is absolutely interesting!

On the last chapters we got to explore new terms like WYSIATI. (What You See Is All There Is). This is used to explain that overconfidence that we humans suffer. That illusion of knowledge we tend to have. A lazy System 2 would recall to the known, instead of doubting the known. 

Another term learnt was Mental Shotgun, it means that one is predisposed to compute more than the things we actually want to compute. For this, I might give the credit to the unconscious computations that Wilson speaks about in Consilience.

Since the impact of first impressions are great, one of the habits we want to improve is the habit of being amazed with the ordinary. That is what constitutes an extraordinary man.

Besides, I was really amazed in our matching skills with sounds. For this, I am asking myself the question: why do we react in certain forms toward a kind of musical scale or chord? Is there a language behind this? 

Dylan told us something about how the frequencies are a tool for us to have a perception of this matter, this was really interesting: Primitive men designed their caves in a certain way that the waves perceived by the brain are below the 20Hz our ears perceive. For this, the cavemen just felt weird vibes, these were infrasonic vibes!!

Today was Johann's morning meeting. He introduced us to a video called "The Transformative Power of Classical Music". He takes the audience through the language of a piece of Chopin. It was amazing! And I think there's a deep connection when talking about System 1 and System 2 here. First one needs to understand, and some effort. But once it becomes intuitive (like the descending scale, in this case), the wine flavor of complex music dazzles one's mind.

I will just let this video take over your mind, as it did with mine.

Listen. Then imagine what these sounds mean. Maybe an image of someone with tears on his eyes. Maybe a romantic scene. 

My morning meeting consisted in exploring semiotics and sounds. How do we interpret sounds is something really interesting. How some people prefer major over minor scales. It all depends in how we interpret these sounds. And we convert this meaning into a great experience. 

First, people had to make sounds of emotions, hiding their faces. The spectators had to guess what this sound meant. Interesting, even though one sound wasn't so easy to follow, most of the sounds were recognizable. We understand how some sounds reflect emotions.

Afterwards, I put 7 compositions from different composers, with the people not knowing the composition (or maybe yes), they would have to write the meaning they related with the track. Afterwards I told them the names of the songs and the meanings.

These were the tracks and some of the meanings that people gave to them:
1. Melancolie - Poulenc (1940)
Romantic passionate stories in a lake, at the 18th century. Deep desire. Ballet. France. Father teaching daughter how to dance. Love story. Discovery. Fall. Happiness and Hope. 

2. Cello Concerto (1st Movement) - Elgar (1920)
Passionate love about someone. Heartbreaks. Regret leaving to forgiveness. Sad romances. Tragedies. Suicide. Rural Russia in the 40's. Happy.

3. Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky (1876)
People had previous knowledge of this track, and that changed their way to imagine in this track.
People thought of the movie Black Swan, Fantasia and Ballet.

4. Saeglopur - Sigur Rós (2006)
People who knew the band was limited by previous knowledge.
But the ones who didn't had previous knowledge thought on old films, a person on the top of the world, happiness and peace, journeys, rain, movement and presence.

5. Winter - Vivaldi (1723)
Factories, childhood, wars and happy victories, anticipation, awaiting, fun, uncertainty, big festivals and people sharing.

6. Silentium - Arvo Part (XX century)
Darkness, grief and sadness, family being separated, being left, no humans around, peaceful, memoirs, nostalgia, old houses, the movie Big Fish...

So many meanings. The imagination of people flew so condensed and so beautifully.

Now, I would have loved to see this video with my peers and end with the question. Does music have a meaning? I believe yes, but is it objective? John Cage shares his opinions about this...

So let's suppose the picture above is our new ideal at the MPC. Today we all sang, and we classified our voice range.
Gaby - Alto
Diego - Tenor
Isa - Soprano
Pablito - Tenor
Franz - Tenor
Chacho - Baritone
Bert - Baritone
Alejo - Tenor
Marce - Alto
Grace - Alto
Majo - Alto
Lola - Soprano
Javier - Baritone
Carmen - Alto
Kata - Alto

I didn't know about a concentration camp that was made specially for artists in order to distract the international community. That is sick, but still the power of music. Human creativity and that sublime feeling that music gives... is something unique.

Pablito shared this video about a survivor of one of those camps. Her name is Alice and she is a pianist. It is wonderful how she actually saw the best side of this. She doesn't even has hatred. She values life so much, and I was amazed.

Besides, Pablito shared a page were classical music can be identified. Really cool page: El poder de la palabra