Space, time and music

Been reading a book on philosophy lately. Immanuel Kant most important work "The Critique Of Pure Reason" touches on the doctrine of space and time. It's always interesting to consider the question of humans perception of these two elements from a philosophical point-of-view instead of the normal scientific view.

"Space" is for extroverts. For they liked travelling, seeing and visiting new places, and liked visual stimulation more. Films, photography are their medium.

Those more in tune with "time" are often introvert. Sound is the sense of choice. And reading and music could fit that perfectly.

There's a very interesting take on "time" as a creation of our mind. It has been my belief that we are here in this world to experience the physical senses. And to learn lessons of life. Some prefer to indulged in the sense of sight, while others sound. Still others would prefer the other senses. We differ in the degrees of our preferences.

Image from here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yveslecoq/4887099769/in/pool-astralplane

For me, the sense of sound has always been fascinating. But music is the ultimate representation. How it flows through time, the sequence, the linearity and sometimes nonlinearity, it's quality or timbre. All of which only a human could experience.

As blogger etheorist wrote, "it is too easy a trap to learn music learning to a hobby about hi-fi equipment which is more about having money to burn than about the integrity music. A large chunk of the integrity of music is in the mind". i couldn't have agree more. Music is not something that should be treated as 'consumable'. Unless that piece of music is purposely made so. Music which is written without effort is in general listened to without pleasure, to adapt a phrase from Samuel Johnson.

The best music is still one that appeals to emotion. And still, "the integrity of music is in the mind" holds true. When i was young, the desire to get a high-end hi-fi equipment to play music is a priority. i had since learnt the phrase well. The crisp clap of the hi-hats, the short sweep of a synth note. To better appreciate the music, i thought i would have to hear all the small details that goes into its recording. It's much later i realized expensive equipment plays only a small part. It has more to do with how i feel towards a piece of music. Ah, the folly of youth.

Going back to my reading of Kant and his doctrine on space and time. His proposition of "space and time" as percepts of the mind, a "things-in-themselves" which seemed contradictory to the earlier article i'd read. But only for a better explanation of the laws of causality does time causes confusion. The classic dilemma of perception-the lightning or the thunder. We know that both happened at the same time. Yet we perceived them separately. Lightning first followed by thunder. Lightning causes thunder although both occurs almost at the same time. Cause and effect at work. Science explained that it is because light travel faster than sound so we perceived lighting first. Or is it, according to Kant?

Kant speaks of space and time as a "thing-in themselves", an 'a priori' form that doesn't depend upon human experience. Space is for the outer sense and time the inner. But all these i understand (it may be a shallow understanding, at most) not through my reading of Kant's work itself but through another philosopher's, Bertrand Russell exposition of Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason".

Russell questioned Kant's proposition of "time" thus, "I perceive the lightning before I perceive the thunder; a thing-in-itself A caused my perception of lightning, and another thing-in-itself B caused my perception of thunder, but A was not earlier than B, since time exists only in the relations of percepts. Why, then, do the two timeless things A and B produce effects at different times? This must be wholly arbitrary if Kant is right, and there must be no relation between A and B corresponding to the fact that the percept caused by A is earlier than that caused by B."

But is there really no relation between the two perceptions? Lightning and thunder exist as a separate percepts outside our mind? Science and our perceived reality says otherwise, of course.

i think i will stop reading philosophy from the aspect of the big question and move on to the philosophy of the human condition and some music. At least it is easier to understand. But is it not that music could only exist if there is existence of time. Or is it?