CP Snow’s classic The Two Cultures lecture, published in book form in 1959, is the usual go-to reference when exploring the divide between the sciences and humanities. It is a culture war that was raging long before the term became social-media shorthand for today’s tribal battles over identity, values and truth.
While Snow eloquently lamented the lack of mutual understanding between scientific and literary elites, the 21st-century version of the two-cultures debate often plays out with a little less decorum and a lot more profanity. Hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse certainly didn’t hold back in their widely memed 2010 track “Miracles”, which included the lyric “And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist / Y’all motherfuckers lying and getting me pissed”. An extreme example to be sure, but it hammers home the point: Snow’s two-culture concerns continue to resonate strongly almost 70 years after his influential lecture and writings.
A Perfect Harmony: Music, Mathematics and Science by David Darling is the latest addition to a growing genre that seeks to bridge that cultural rift. Like Peter Pesic’s Music and the Making of Modern Science, Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas’ This Is What It Sounds Like, and Philip Ball’s The Music Instinct, Darling’s book adds to the canon that examines the interplay between musical creativity and the analytical frameworks of science (including neuroscience) and mathematics.
I’ve also contributed, in a nanoscopically small way, to this music-meets-science corpus with an analysis of the deep and fundamental links between quantum physics and heavy metal (When The Uncertainty Principle Goes To 11), and have a long-standing interest in music composed from maths and physics principles and constants (see my Lateral Thoughts articles from September 2023 and July 2024). Darling’s book, therefore, struck a chord with me.
Darling is not only a talented science writer with an expansive back-catalogue to his name but he is also an accomplished musician (check out his album Songs Of The Cosmos ), and his enthusiasm for all things musical spills off the page. Furthermore, he is a physicist, with a PhD in astronomy from the University of Manchester. So if there’s a writer who can genuinely and credibly inhabit both sides of the arts–science cultural divide, it’s Darling.
But is A Perfect Harmony in tune with the rest of the literary ensemble, or marching to a different beat? In other words, is this a fresh new take on the music-meets-maths (meets pop sci) genre or, like too many bands I won’t mention, does it sound suspiciously like something you’ve heard many times before? Well, much like an old-school vinyl album, Darling’s work has the feel of two distinct sides. (And I’ll try to make that my final spin on groan-worthy musical metaphors. Promise.)
Not quite perfect pitch
Although the subtitle for A Perfect Harmony is “Music, Mathematics and Science”, the first half of the book is more of a history of the development and evolution of music and musical instruments in various cultures, rather than a new exploration of the underpinning mathematical and scientific principles. Engaging and entertaining though this is – and all credit to Darling for working in a reference to Van Halen in the opening lines of chapter 1 – it’s well-worn ground: Pythagorean tuning, the circle of fifths, equal temperament, Music of the Spheres (not the Coldplay album, mercifully), resonance, harmonics, etc. I found myself wishing, at times, for a take that felt a little more off the beaten track.
One case in point is Darling’s brief discussion of the theremin. If anything earns the title of “The Physicist’s Instrument”, it’s the theremin – a remarkable device that exploits the innate electrical capacitance of the human body to load a resonant circuit and thus produce an ethereal, haunting tone whose pitch can be varied, without, remarkably, any physical contact.
While I give kudos to Darling for highlighting the theremin, the brevity of the description is arguably a lost opportunity when put in the broader context of the book’s aim to explain the deeper connections between music, maths and science. This could have been a novel and fascinating take on the links between electrical and musical resonance that went well beyond the familiar territory mapped out in standard physics-of-music texts.
Using the music of the eclectic Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard to explain microtonality is nothing short of inspired
As the book progresses, however, Darling moves into more distinctive territory, choosing a variety of inventive examples that are often fascinating and never short of thought-provoking. I particularly enjoyed his description of orbital resonance in the system of seven planets orbiting the red dwarf TRAPPIST-1, 41 light-years from Earth. The orbital periods have ratios, which, when mapped to musical intervals, correspond to a minor sixth, a major sixth, two perfect fifths, a perfect fourth and another perfect fifth. And it’s got to be said that using the music of the eclectic Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard to explain microtonality is nothing short of inspired.
A Perfect Harmony doesn’t entirely close the cultural gap highlighted by Snow all those years ago, but it does hum along pleasantly in the space between. Though the subject matter occasionally echoes well-trodden themes, Darling’s perspective and enthusiasm lend it freshness. There’s plenty here to enjoy, especially for physicists inclined to tune into the harmonies of the universe.
- 2025 Oneworld Publications 288pp £10.99pb/£6.99e-book
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