主题：中国的又一发明：现代西方音乐与朱载堉
主讲人：Peter Simpson（纽约城市大学、教授）
时间：2017年6月19日下午2：00—3：00
地点：校本部C512室
主办：外国语学院
分类：外国语学院语言文化与世界文明系列讲座（十）
内容简介：
Modern Western music, and accordingly most world music these days, uses a tuning system called Equal Temperament. This system is standard for the piano or any instrument with fixed notes (e.g. the guitar), and in it the interval between every semitone is equal. As a result only the octave is a pure harmony, or an interval expressible as a small number ratio (in this case 2:1). All other intervals, as the fifth (3:2), the fourth (4:3), and the major and minor thirds (5:4, 6:5), are all slightly flat or sharp, or all out of tune.
The problem is that no number of pure intervals, when added together, will add up to an octave (no multiple of 3:2 etc. will produce a multiple of 2:1). So if, say, the key of C on the piano has all its sub-octave intervals pure (semitones, tones, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, sevenths), then some of the intervals in the key, say, of D or F# will sound so out of tune they will howl like wolves. Attempts to temper or adjust pure intervals to eliminate the ‘wolf’ intervals and still have reasonably sounding music were many, and in the end only equal temperament proved satisfactory.
The mathematical technique for tuning instruments to equal temperament (essentially finding the twelfth root of 2) is first credited in the West to the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620). But it was discovered slightly earlier in China by Zhu Zaiyu (1536-1611), whose interest in equal temperament may have had to do with the importance of bells (a series of which is like a keyboard) in Chinese ritual. It is, however, matter of dispute whether Stevin could in any way have been dependent, through European traders, on information about Zhu’s work. Nevertheless temporal priority seems to belong to Zhu. China beats the West again.
主讲人简介： Peter Simpson教授，哲学博士，主要研究领域为：古代和中世纪哲学、伦理学及政治哲学，目前主要的研究课题是亚里士多德的伦理学，其代表作有：
Goodness and Nature: A Defense of Ethical Naturalism (Nijhoff, 1987) (2005 online version available here) For a new supplement to Goodness and Nature, 2005 click here.
The Politics of Aristotle, Translated with introduction, analysis, and notes (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle, (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
On Karol Wojtyla (Wadsworth, 2001)
Vices, Virtues, and Consequences (Catholic University of America Press, 2001)
