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Sounds wonderful 听起来很美 The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why WeCan t Do Without It. By Philip Ball. 音乐本能：音乐的作用机理及人们欲罢不能的缘由。PhilipBall著。 Music is a mystery. It is unique to the humanrace: no other species produces elaborate soundfor no particular reason. It has been, and remains,part of every known civilisation on Earth. Lengths ofbone fashioned into flutes were in use 40,000 years ago. And it engages people s attentionmore comprehensively than almost anything else: scans show that when people listen tomusic, virtually every area of their brain becomes more active. 音乐真是神秘。它对人类具有独一无二的意义：没有其他事物可以无端发出如此精美的声音。它曾是且仍然是地球上任何一个已知文明的一部分。人类40000年前就开始使用骨头制成的笛子。而且，音乐较任何其他事物更能让大家全神贯注：观察发现，当人们聆听音乐的时候，大脑的几乎每一个部分都会变得更具活力。 Yet it serves no obvious adaptivepurpose. Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man, noted that neither the enjoyment nor thecapacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in referenceto his ordinary habits of life. Unwilling to believe that music was altogether useless, Darwinconcluded that it may have made man s ancestors more successful at mating. Yet if that wereso, you might expect one gender to be musically more gifted than the other, and there is noevidence of that. So what is the point of music? | 
