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The Dangers of Generalizing and Putting Things into Boxes

There is a tendency to categorise music, to give a name, not to the sound, but to whole groups of sounds. With music this seems to defeat the whole purpose of creating an individual sound, and rather than bringing people together, putting each style in a box artificially divides people and sets the music apart. As always, the problem with putting labels onto things is that the labels often say more about the person making the label than about the thing itself.

How is it that your mind makes "sense" of these phrases:
  • Cold pizza for breakfast
  • Breakfast served all day
  • We had sex for breakfast
If one takes even a simple word, for example breakfast, and tries to define it with a checklist of properties, many possible meanings of the word escape the definition, and yet the human mind manages to grasp all of these meanings.

Music is even more organic in the way it provides meaning. It can inspire meaning with lyrics as undefined as "Right here, right now" or as metaphorical as a Bob Dylan ballad.

Given the above, there is often a real need to be able to describe music, to communicate about music without having the music there. This is especially true about the written word, which still lives on even in the face of a new millenium where a return to aural records keeping seems inevitable. With computers, aural no longer implies oral, and many sounds will no longer have the same meaning they once did. Just as the radio changed the sounds of footsteps at night from meaning danger to suggesting drama, the computer will change both words and music in a fantastical way. Already, even simple words imply a definition that challenges one to explain it without Category Theory.

It would seem that the best way to go is to assume that meanings have "family resemblances." In the same way that members of your family are completely individuals, yet among you there is a cluster of traits which some of you share, some of you do not.

What is "breakfast"?

For argument's sake, one could say breakfast is:
  • A meal
  • Eaten in the morning
  • Consisting of foods such as
    • orange juice
    • cereal
    • eggs
    • sausage and bacon, etc.

Not all breakfasts are in the morning, but the most "breakfasty" breakfast will be in the morning, with eggs, and sausage, and a nice hot pot of coffee. Coffee, mmm, mmm. I could really go for one right now ...

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This page was last updated 21 July 1999