I’m currently halfway through reading Haskell’s Sounds Wild & Broken. It contains so many fascinating nuggets of information regarding the evolution of animal sound-making and listening. The total body immersion of hearing in certain fish and frogs, the relationship between floral diversity and expansion of sonic expression and the drum-like hearing organs of cricket are some examples among a vast array of others. By intricately demonstrating the complex links between our hearing organs (pinnae, cochlea and cilia) to that of other species and their overall origins Haskell attempts to demonstrate how the phenomena of sound making evokes “ancient connections” (Haskell, 2023, p.15).
In the opening chapter of the Book, he claims that exposure to the multitudes of sounds of snapping shrimp and other creatures had a profound effect on his sense of self. Upon piercing a ‘sensory barrier’ (marshland water surface) with a hydrophone drop-rig his “thoughts and feelings about identity shifted.” Interestingly, I found his transformative experience analogous to Naess’ musings on collective self-realisation and anthropocentrism.
“My unaided human senses utterly failed to convey to me the richness of the marshes.”
Haskell, 2023, p.16
Biological evolution connected creatures through the endowment of sonic ability, yet simultaneously built perceptual walls and determined our aural distortions. The limitations of our sensory biases however, geared towards survival, can be overcome by an awareness of the “thousands of parallel sensory worlds that co-exist.” Referring again to Naess’ philosopy we can see how this growing awareness is conducive to extended self-identification. I do believe that there really is no escaping our perceptions. By trying to we are ultimately denying our implicit nature. We experience sound in relation to the frequency ranges within which our hearing inhabits, the aesthetics of how we self-organise what we hear and a whole host of other inherited factors passed down by evolution, no matter the species. The phenomenology of sound then, is but another building block of the concrete contents that make up our overall aesthetic experience.
Considering this, the most pressing task is to cultivate a consiousness that our senses are not the centre of experience. If awareness includes things we cannot experience, such as the whole body listening experience of certain species, or infrasonic/ ultrasonic sounds made by elephants/ bats, then perhaps, in contrary to Naess’ opinions, knowledge of abstract structure works hand in hand with aesthetic experience in order to change one’s conception of the world.
The anatomy and sensitivity of any given being’s hearing organ are their personal portal to aural aesthetic experience. We now know that non-humans also have subjective preferences. Spring peepers, for example will only respond to particular mating calls they find attractive based on “knowledge embedded in the frog’s genes, body and nervous system.” Certain birds too, undergo cultural evolution by variegating elements of tone, rhythm and pitch in learned birdsong; sonic adaptation via aesthetic innovation. Aesthetic experience draws on genetic inheritance, lived experience, cultural teachings and bodily participation (Haskell, 2023, pp.124 – 190).
Aesthetic assessment, however, requires a deeper level of perception. Historically, human bias has been determined by our preconceptions. Darwin and his victorian counterparts projected ‘quiet domesticity’ in females and ‘loud conquering’ males onto songbirds. “Instances of female bird song were traditionally dismissed as rare or the outcome of hormonal aberrations.” This idea has now been overturned with female song present in 71 percent of surveyed songbird species (Langmore, 2014).
From a neurological standpoint, the sophisticated choices both we and other species make are all processed by the same nerve cells and neurotransmitters (Haskell, 2023, p138). This nullifies the strength of experiential walls and shows that we are all moved to live out our preferences in more similar ways than we would have ourselves believe. Our preferences of beauty have the power to dictate how we interact with the world. Unnoticed this can lead to ignorance and self containment. But a totalitarian objective truth is not the aim here. Rather an appreciation for the collosal diversity of subjectivity. This quote by Haskell sums it up the best.
“But subjectivity does not mean that we do not percieve truth. Aesthetic experience can, when it is rooted in deep engagement with the world, allow us to transcend the limits of the self and to understand more fully the ‘other’. Outer and inner worlds meet. Subjectivity gains a measure of objective insight. In an experience of beauty or ugliness is an opportunity to learn and expand”
Haskell, 2023, pp.137-138
In Irish Murdoch’s book ‘Sovereignty Of Good’ the notion of ‘unselfing’ is very much synonymous with the broadening perspectives of aesthetic experience. “Relaxing of the spirit, of our essential nature, into the shared pulse of existence” (Popova, 2019) might allow us to experience profound beauty, transcend the narrow walls of the self and connect us to a collective experience that include our non-human kin.
Bibliography
Langmore, N. (2014). Female birds rival males in bird song | ANU Research School of Biology. [online] biology.anu.edu.au. Available at: https://biology.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/female-birds-rival-males-bird-song [Accessed 8 Apr. 2024].
Popova, M. (2019). An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/10/21/iris-murdoch-unselfing/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2023].
Haskell, D, G. (2023). Sounds Wild And Broken, edited by Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, Faber & Faber Ltd, pp.15-190