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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!vax135!houxz!houxm!ihnp4!mhuxl!ulysses!allegra!mouton!mwg
From: mwg@mouton.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: psychoacoustics
Message-ID: <86@mouton.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Jun-84 09:24:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: mouton.86
Posted: Thu Jun 21 09:24:12 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 07:26:45 EDT
References: <422@hou5g.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 11

++
I think the association of 'high' with pitches of faster oscillation
is similar to why we connect 'high' (as in height) with large numbers
(cost, loudness, percentage etc).  They are all continua which are
bounded on the 'low' side (usually by zero (ie the 'ground')), and
unbounded on the 'high' side (the sky's the limit).  However, this
still leaves unanswered the question of how our intuition knows that
zero is the lowest frequency, if we can only hear to 20 Hz, and that
pitches extend infinitely beyond our 20 kHz limit, in theory.  (In
practice you probably get stopped by quantum thermodynamics or something.