Gary Tomlinson's lecture: 'Evolutionary Humanities and the Hard Problem of Music'
125 Convocation Way, Longmire 110
About the Event
The FSU Humanities Center will sponsor a series of eight lectures during the academic year 2026-2027. The lectures represent a range of disciplinary specialties within the humanities. Lecturers will present research that is taking humanities scholarship in new directions, deepening disciplinary expertise while demonstrating how thinking across disciplines is advantageous to the broader project of the humanities. The FSU Humanities Center anticipates that these lively afternoon events will advance discussion about the role of the humanities in higher education, and especially as an enterprise that teaches students to think critically, acquire competence in one or more fields, and prepare them for the responsibilities and opportunities of citizenship.
All lectures are planned for Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. in Beth Moor Lounge in the Longmire Building, with receptions following from approximately 6-6:30 p.m. The lectures are free, open to the public, and do not require advance registration. For questions regarding the lecture series: humanities.center@fsu.edu.
Abstract
Human sciences and life sciences might be presumed to cross in the topic of human evolution, but this crossing has proved fraught. On the one side evolutionary scientists doubt the value of humanistic contributions to their project; on the other, humanists seem to be divided between “cultural Darwinists” constructing specious evolutionary explanations for cultural phenomena and critical theorists who look to the often racist history of evolutionary claims and deem suspect any evolutionary humanities.
Musicologist, cultural theorist, and evolutionist Gary Tomlinson explores this set of problems through the case-in-point of human music. How can the capacities we gather under this rubric help point a true path for evolutionary humanities? How, conversely, can evolutionary explanation help account for the foundational nature of musical capacities in that other basic rubric, the human?
Gary Tomlinson is a Sterling Professor of Music and Humanities at Yale University. His recent research sits at the intersection of music, evolutionary theory, and philosophies of signs and meaning. In 2015, his "A Million Years of Music" set new terms for a basic question: How did humans come to be musical creatures? "The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning" of 2023 gauged the reach of meaning-making beyond humans in our world, while "Astrosemiosis: Grounds for Intelligent Life Beyond Earth," due for publication in January 2027, explores the requirements for meaning-making to emerge on any world.
Tomlinson’s earlier books and essays have concerned opera, early modern European music, indigenous New World musics in the era of European invasion, and more. His awards and honors include MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2027 he will deliver the Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music at the University of California, Berkeley.