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Harmony (Philosophy)

Swan, symbol and metaphor for harmony

Harmony (lat. harmonia „conformity, harmony” , Ancient Greek ἁρμονία harmonía meaning “even measure” or ἁρμός harmós meaning “Fugue, assembly” and Indo-European *ar “to join”) describes:

• Generally: agreement, harmony, concord, evenness
• In art and aesthetics
  • Especially in art
  • Especially in music where harmony is a subgenre of Harmony. In music, Harmony encompasses every spatial interaction of tones, the order of the sounds together often referring to a generalization of chords. The harmony of C major can be realized, for example, by the Chord C-G-e-c¹, but also by c-e-g, e-g-c¹ or others. In the narrower sense, chords are considered harmonic if they contain notes that are also overtones of the root note.
• In interpersonal communication, there is a harmony of thoughts and feelings

Etymology

Harmony was first defined as an artisanal term (terminus technicus) for craftmanship. The original ancient term was related to the phenomenon of symmetry (Ancient Greek ἁρμονία “to fit together”, according to Dornseiff in relation to staying in the key and the key itself (music)). The Pythagoreans first argued the concept and centered the term on philosophical considerations. They saw harmony in beautiful proportions as the unity of measure and value. This thesis was initially supported by mathematical insights and the harmony of tones but was extrapolated later into the mystical. Thus, it was claimed that the movement of celestial bodies followed certain harmonic numerical ratios and produced an (inaudible) “music of spheres”. According to Dornseiff, “sphere harmony” was understood as the “musical scale of orbits” produced by the seven revolving planets.

Heraclitus attempted to grasp the concept of harmony dialectically as the unity of opposites: “When the conflicting unites, the most beautiful harmony arises from the opposing (tones), and everything happens in the way of conflict.”

Plato relied on the concept of harmony to support his Theory of forms. He developed thoughts about “atoms” consisting of triangles, the harmony of the cosmos, of tones, and others. He also applied this concept to The Republic.

Ancient medicine particularly followed this natural-philosophical concept of harmony. It derived health from the harmonious mixture of bodily fluids and disease from an imbalance. From that Humorism developed and based on the concept of imbalance, Humorism remained valid until the 19th century. Galen also applied the four temperament theory to the human character.

The theory of harmony in antiquity has two sources:

1. The mathematical proportions of the ancient Pythagoreans and the theoretical music teaching of harmonic proportions that developed from them
2. The dialectical natural philosophy, which sought the mediating links of fundamental opposites and saw harmony as the mediation of all opposites.

Numbers that are in a harmonic proportion must satisfy the equation (a-b): (b-c) = a:c (e.g. Golden Ratio)

Boethius introduced the threefold classification of music. His main argument was, that music is the epitome of all harmonious proportions.

• Musica mundana: that is the music of the cosmic world, the “music” was not actually audible and to be understood rather than heard
• Musica humana: that is, the harmony of the soul, the body, and the harmony between them two
• Musica instrumentalis: that is, the harmonious proportions of instrumental music-making

Boethius assigns the dominant role to Musica mundana. Humans, therefore, have the duty to recognize this and lead an orderly life. Medieval astronomy endeavored to explain the celestial mechanics with the harmony of the spheres / Musica universalis.

Methodology and Theoretical Function

In natural science, the term harmony was fully replaced by concepts of symmetry, totality, system, and structural laws. The concept of harmony could also be defined as a heuristic principle if it is understood as the invitation to search for structural laws in the diversity of objective characteristics and relationships.

Besides this methodological function and its theoretical uselessness in the natural sciences, the term harmony also bears a theoretical function. This theoretical function deals with the subject-object dialectic where itself is the subject of science. Values and norms are examined as factors of the objects themselves or to be designed by humans.

Harmony, particularly, means to coordinate the form and the function of all parts of a whole in such a way that the function of the other parts, and above all, the function of the whole is maximized.

Today, the concept of harmony has its relevance in Aesthetics, Arts (e.g., music, architecture, painting), and education (defined as a all-round developed personality)