Lumen Naturalis
Lumen naturalis: intuition, habitus and imagination
What is it that sometimes allows the ’question’ that is posed through a musical challenge - a new compositional idea, a new musical instrument to master, a new improvisational situation - what in these moments is it that sometimes makes the answer emerge with the question, in a way similar to how Descartes conceived of the fundamentals of scientific knowing? Just like to Descartes who would refer to it in terms of lumen naturalis (natural light) - the answer we are likely to give is,
’through intuition’1. But if this is so, how do these intuitions work, how does nature shed this light in our bodies? Was Benedetto Croce right when he, echoing the dualism of Descartes, claimed that human knowledge can be divided into two forms: ’either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect’(Croce, 2004, p. 13)?
On a completely different note, and beyond this ‘either or’, Mark DeBellis (2009) argues that intuition in our understanding of musical structures emerges through an interaction between sense perception and analytical thinking. This interaction takes place not only in the inner listening that characterises the silent reading (and writing) of a score, but he also claims this to be the case in concrete listening. What we perceive is not the unmediated projection of an ideal musical structure, rather, he suggests that ‘intuition is an active process, more plausibly understood as one that brings structured percepts into existence than as the inspection of a structure already present (ibid p. 125). We might want to consider this claim a bit further. What is the inter-relation between perception, imagination and analysis in musical intuition? James
Gibson discusses the relationship between imagining and perceiving in his book The Ecological
Approach to Visual Perception (1986) where he finds that the difference between
What is it that sometimes allows the ’question’ that is posed through a musical challenge - a new compositional idea, a new musical instrument to master, a new improvisational situation - what in these moments is it that sometimes makes the answer emerge with the question, in a way similar to how Descartes conceived of the fundamentals of scientific knowing? Just like to Descartes who would refer to it in terms of lumen naturalis (natural light) - the answer we are likely to give is,
’through intuition’1. But if this is so, how do these intuitions work, how does nature shed this light in our bodies? Was Benedetto Croce right when he, echoing the dualism of Descartes, claimed that human knowledge can be divided into two forms: ’either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect’(Croce, 2004, p. 13)?
On a completely different note, and beyond this ‘either or’, Mark DeBellis (2009) argues that intuition in our understanding of musical structures emerges through an interaction between sense perception and analytical thinking. This interaction takes place not only in the inner listening that characterises the silent reading (and writing) of a score, but he also claims this to be the case in concrete listening. What we perceive is not the unmediated projection of an ideal musical structure, rather, he suggests that ‘intuition is an active process, more plausibly understood as one that brings structured percepts into existence than as the inspection of a structure already present (ibid p. 125). We might want to consider this claim a bit further. What is the inter-relation between perception, imagination and analysis in musical intuition? James
Gibson discusses the relationship between imagining and perceiving in his book The Ecological
Approach to Visual Perception (1986) where he finds that the difference between
References: Croce, B. (2004). Aesthetics: As Science of Expression and General Linguistics. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing. DeBellis, M. (2009). Perceptualism, not introspectionism: the interpretation of intuition-based theories. Music Perception, 27(2), 121-130. Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, N.J.: LEA. Nancy, J.-L. (2007). Listening (C. Madell, Trans.). New York: Fordham University Press. Östersjö, S. (2008). SHUT UP 'N ' PLAY! Negotiating the Musical Work. Lund University, Malmö.