19-588: This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a popular science book written by the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin , and first published by Dutton Penguin in the U.S. and Canada in 2006, and updated and released in paperback by Plume/Penguin in 2007. It has been translated into 18 languages and spent more than a year on The New York Times , The Globe and Mail , and other bestseller lists, and sold more than one million copies. The aim of This Is Your Brain on Music
38-1000: A force that led to social bonding and increased fitness, citing the arguments of Charles Darwin , Geoffrey Miller and others. This Is Your Brain on Music was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in 2006–2007 for best in the Science and Engineering category, and a Quill Award for best debut author of 2006–2007. It was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail , The Independent and The Guardian . A long list of prominent scientists and musicians have praised it, including Oliver Sacks , Francis Crick , Brian Greene , David Byrne , George Martin , Yoko Ono , Neil Peart , Victor Wooten , Pete Townshend and Keith Lockhart , and it has been adopted for course use in both science and literature classes at dozens of universities including MIT , Dartmouth College , UC Berkeley , Stanford , Kenyon College ,
57-510: A letter to philosopher William Whewell , he wrote that the general public needed "digests of what is actually known in each particular branch of science... to give a connected view of what has been done, and what remains to be accomplished." Indeed, as the British population became not just increasingly literate but also well-educated, there was growing demand for science titles. Mary Somerville became an early and highly successful science writer of
76-419: Is presented in many forms, including books, film and television documentaries, magazine articles, and web pages. Before the modern specialization and professionalization of science, there was often little distinction between "science" and "popular science", and works intended to share scientific knowledge with a general reader existed as far back as Greek and Roman antiquity. Without these popular works, much of
95-682: The University of Wisconsin . Two documentary films were based on the book: The Musical Brain (2009) featuring Levitin as host, along with appearances by Sting , Michael Bublé , Feist , and former Fugees leader Wyclef Jean ; and The Music Instinct (2009) with Levitin and Bobby McFerrin as co-hosts, with appearances by Yo Yo Ma , Jarvis Cocker , Daniel Barenboim , Oliver Sacks and others. In 2009, Harvard University announced This Is Your Brain on Music would be required reading in its Freshman Core Program in General Education. In 2011–2012,
114-453: The general reader is the target audience consisting of those without a specialized knowledge of a particular subject. The American writer Brander Matthews described the general reader as "the average man and woman of average intelligence and of average education." In the Victorian era , the increase in scientific writing for general readers began as access to formal education spread among
133-493: The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin . Popular science is a bridge between scientific literature as a professional medium of scientific research, and the realms of popular political and cultural discourse. The goal of the genre is often to capture the methods and accuracy of science while making the language more accessible. Many science-related controversies are discussed in popular science books and publications, such as
152-563: The Physics Department at the California Institute of Technology adopted it as a textbook. Popular science Popular science (also called pop-science or popsci ) is an interpretation of science intended for a general audience . While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is more broad ranging. It may be written by professional science journalists or by scientists themselves. It
171-496: The general public, leading to the genre known as pop science . The idea of targeting books for general readers has been criticized by academics Alison Jones and Leah Tether, who both consider the concept to be ill-defined and unhelpful for reaching audiences. Tether notes the widespread usage of the term by 1931, with the American librarian Douglas Waples using the term to understand the genres of books which would be most useful to
190-542: The lay audience, and this "handbook" tradition continued right through to the invention of the printing press, with much later examples including books of secrets such as Giambattista Della Porta 's 1558 " Magia Naturalis " and Isabella Cortese 's 1561 " Secreti ". The 17th century saw the beginnings of the modern scientific revolution and the consequent need for explicit popular science writing. Although works such as Galileo 's 1632 " Il Saggiatore " and Robert Hooke 's 1665 " Micrographia " were read by both scientists and
209-473: The long-running debates over biological determinism and the biological components of intelligence, stirred by popular books such as The Mismeasure of Man and The Bell Curve . The purpose of scientific literature is to inform and persuade peers regarding the validity of observations and conclusions and the forensic efficacy of methods. Popular science attempts to inform and convince scientific outsiders (sometimes along with scientists in other fields) of
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#1732870036066228-529: The nineteenth century. Her On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834), intended for the mass audience, sold quite well. Arguably one of the first books in modern popular science, it contained few diagrams and very little mathematics. Ten editions of the book were published, and it was translated into multiple languages. It was the most popular science title from the publisher John Murray until On
247-456: The public, Newton's 1687 Principia was incomprehensible for most readers, so popularizations of Newton's ideas soon followed. Popular science writing surged in countries such as France, where books such as Fontenelle 's 1686 Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds were best-sellers. By 1830, astronomer John Herschel had recognized the need for the specific genre of popular science. In
266-646: The results. Statements in the scientific literature are often qualified and tentative, emphasizing that new observations and results are consistent with and similar to established knowledge wherein qualified scientists are assumed to recognize the relevance. By contrast, popular science often emphasizes uniqueness and generality and may have a tone of factual authority absent from the scientific literature. Comparisons between original scientific reports, derivative science journalism, and popular science typically reveals at least some level of distortion and oversimplification . General reader In nonfictional literature ,
285-553: The scientific knowledge of the era might have been lost. For example, none of the original works of the 4th century BC Greek astronomer Eudoxus have survived, but his contributions were largely preserved due to the didactic poem " Phenomena " written a century later and commented on by Hipparchus . Explaining science in poetic form was not uncommon, and as recently as 1791, Erasmus Darwin wrote The Botanic Garden , two long poems intended to interest and educate readers in botany. Many Greek and Roman scientific handbooks were written for
304-434: The scientific literature. Some usual features of popular science productions include: The purpose of scientific literature is to inform and persuade peers regarding the validity of observations and conclusions and the forensic efficacy of methods. Popular science attempts to inform and convince scientific outsiders (sometimes along with scientists in other fields) of the significance of data and conclusions and to celebrate
323-431: The significance of data and conclusions and to celebrate the results. Statements in the scientific literature are often qualified and tentative, emphasizing that new observations and results are consistent with and similar to established knowledge wherein qualified scientists are assumed to recognize the relevance. By contrast, popular science emphasizes uniqueness and generality, taking a tone of factual authority absent from
342-428: The use of scientific jargon. One particular focus of the book is on cognitive models of categorization and expectation, and how music exploits these cognitive processes. The book challenges Steven Pinker 's "auditory cheesecake" assertion that music was an incidental by-product of evolution, arguing instead that music served as an indicator of cognitive, emotional and physical health, and was evolutionarily advantageous as
361-615: Was to make recent findings in neuroscience of music accessible to the educated layperson. Characteristics and theoretical parameters of music are explained alongside scientific findings about how the brain interprets and processes these characteristics. The neuroanatomy of musical expectation, emotion, listening and performance is discussed. This Is Your Brain on Music describes the components of music, such as timbre, rhythm, pitch, and harmony and ties them to neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, cognitive psychology, and evolution, while also making these topics accessible to nonexpert readers by avoiding
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