[Fis] Response to Mark Johnson

[Maxine Sheets-Johnstone]

Response to Mark Johnson:

?What are the conditions within which a coherent scientific discourse 
can
  address the phenomenon of dance (or music)??


Studies that recognize the essentially dynamic nature of movement
can offer a "coherent scientific discourse" on movement, but not
on dance as a formed and performed art. One may well pursue a coherent
scientific discourse on non-art forms of dance (social dance, folk 
dance,
for example)in terms of kinesiology, psychology, and even physics--all
such studies being centered not directly on dance but on the movement
that makes dance possible and on the people who are moving.

As for music: May I refer you to a 2014 article of mine in the journal
Mind, Music, and Language (pp. 1-12). the article originated in a 
keynote
address at the first international conference on Emile Dalcroze, a 
musician.
The title of the article is "Dalcroze and Animate Life."

I suspect Maxine is right to point to Darwin's 'descriptive' process. So 
a
  sub-question is:

  "What do we do when we describe something?"

In phenomenology, we begin by "bracketing" all assumptions and beliefs, 
and,
in Husserl's words, turn "to the things themselves." In so doing (and in
the common way of specifying what one is doing), we are making the 
familiar
strange. We are thus not clouding our description with prejudices of any 
kind
but hewing to what is there, sensuously present in our experience.

I hope the above sketches are sufficient beginning answers your 
questions.

Cheers,
Maxine