OPINION LETTERS

摘要

Philip Ball writes about the universality of music (8 May, p 30). One reason that music is important to people around the globe is that making or listening to it is almost always a positive experience, be it joyful, restorative, transporting or cathartic. This is significant in an evolutionary sense, because we big-brained creatures fret about the future and our immediate circumstances, which can lead to apprehension and depression. We are sometimes desperately in need of pleasure as a counterbalance, and this need creates a selective pressure. Music does not soothe us savage beasts, it sustains us.