ABSTRACT
Children are exposed to musical sounds at an early age. Indeed, cochlear function is demonstrable as early as the fifth foetal month, when both middle and inner ear structures have reached full adult size. In societies with a strong utilitarian ethos, however, creativity as composition is rare, because music is not valued and encouraged in and for itself. Rationalist theories of knowledge and learnability are indebted to Plato’s doctrine of reminiscence, according to which learning something is merely recognition of what one already knew innately, so that truth, which occurs by the coincidence of knowledge shared innately by humans, is manifested by a process of instantiation or exemplification in particulars—most especially, in naming and in rational discourse that are in harmony with reality. Empiricist doctrines of knowledge and learnability are perhaps indebted to Aristotle’s theories of sense perception, memory and logic of science. For example, empiricists agree that what is brought to the task of acquisition is inductive assembly.
