Musicnoise, there is no need to get nasty and insult mine or anyone else's intelligence in these forums. I am truly sorry if I offended you with the flippant nature of my previous post - it was not meant to be a personal attack; I was trying to be funny, very unsuccessfully I admit, and I was and still am exasperated by the fact that you are completely ignoring my real points. No, I am not a scientist, but I did work in the university library in school, helping the grad students with their music research (long before Google existed, and when the only computers were in the libraries, no one had their own yet). And I do have three full-time university professors in my immediate family, including two sociologists that do extensive research, one of them more than she teaches. I think you know very well what I meant by my comments, but you are obviously refusing, for whatever reasons, to take my points on the topic seriously, which is very disappointing. I really would like to hear exactly why, as a scientist, you think that there is no possible way the brain could perceive frequencies above 20kHz (for instance, what else would account for the increased brain activity in the 6 subjects?). As that article makes clear, it is NOT a proven scientific fact that we cannot - it merely stated that it was not a proven fact that we can. That was my main point.
The human brain is a much more sophisticated instrument than any piece of technology mankind has created, and there is a great deal about it we either don't know or can't prove. I have always contended that scientists and artists have very similar outlooks (and scientists are traditionally big supporters of the arts) - both are explorers, in a sense. However, I think in this case we are seeing a fundamental difference in temperament between you and I. You, the scientist, seem to be unwilling to even discuss seriously the possibility of something that is not definitely proven. I, the artist, am more positively imaginative about the limits of human possibility; perhaps overly so, but that remains to be seen.
The human brain is a much more sophisticated instrument than any piece of technology mankind has created, and there is a great deal about it we either don't know or can't prove. I have always contended that scientists and artists have very similar outlooks (and scientists are traditionally big supporters of the arts) - both are explorers, in a sense. However, I think in this case we are seeing a fundamental difference in temperament between you and I. You, the scientist, seem to be unwilling to even discuss seriously the possibility of something that is not definitely proven. I, the artist, am more positively imaginative about the limits of human possibility; perhaps overly so, but that remains to be seen.