Abstract
“ART and intellectual speculation are the two ex ceptional realms of the mind of which the psychologist finds it most difficult to give an account” (p. 147). Too much has been expected from psychology since it presumed to stand in its own right as an experimental science. Many who looked to it for immediate solution of age-long problems disappointedly turn away as from a charlatan. In doing so the valuable little that it already has to give is lost. The author, with sympathetic knowledge of current musical and psychological theories, has given a capable preliminary survey of an interesting no-man's-land lying between suspicious armed camps. If at times he laughs at both from the exalted heights of philosophy, we forgive him, for he never loses himself in the realm where the problem is of more importance than its solution, but ever returns, to his theme with notes such as: "But this is not science, nor even musical criticism "(p. 142); "We step beyond psychology when, after saying what musicians and audiences do, we ask, What is music?(p. 40).
The Borderland of Music and Psychology.
Frank
Howes
By. Pp. x + 244. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; J. Curwen and Sons, Ltd., 1926.) 6s. net.
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B., R. The Borderland of Music and Psychology . Nature 118, 407 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118407e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118407e0