Cultural Accounts of Consonance Perception. A Lakatosian Approach to Save Pythagoras

In 1945, Norman Cazden published a groundbreaking article in the literature on consonance perception. In this seminal work, Cazden combined historical, musicological, and theoretical arguments to assert that the Pythagorean approach to consonance, based on integer ratios, lacked substantiation. Recent empirical evidence has bolstered Cazden’s perspective, indicating that the perception of consonance is primarily shaped by culture rather than by arithmetical ratios. Nevertheless, some scholars have drawn attention to other evidence from the bio-musicological literature that supports the Pythagorean hypothesis. Consequently, the current debate on consonance tends to center around the nature vs. culture dichotomy. In this paper, I endeavor to demonstrate that many of the “cultural” arguments can coexist with the Pythagorean hypothesis if we adopt a more epistemologically suitable framework, as proposed by Imre Lakatos’s philosophy of science. To achieve this, I conduct an in-depth analysis of Cazden’s arguments, along with examining both historical and contemporary reinterpretations of them. Then, I apply Lakatos’s concept of “research programme” to the case study of consonance, highlighting various research avenues that have drawn inspiration from the Pythagorean hypothesis and have been successfully pursued. I conclude by claiming that the Pythagorean account can be regarded, in Lakatosian terms, as a progressive research programme.