Glenn Gould: Music & Mind by Geoffrey Payzant (review)

HUMANITIES 477 basic logic to second and higher orders. Invariance and objectivity, free logics and inductive logics are briefly examined. An appendix looks briefly at set theory, and a second even more briefly at the history of logic. Most interesting is the final chapter in which Gauthier looks at such traditional notions as the nominalism-realism controversy in the context of the philosophy of logic. He tentatively offers a constructivist philosophy of logic as providing an adequate resolution of these issues. For Gauthier logic is a form of discourse that examines the most general forms of discourse and in this self-reflective activity discovers and defines its own extension and its own limits. Like Hebert, Gauthier sees relevant analogies between the constructive processes of logic and, for example, the processes of economic production. But unlike Hebert, Gauthier is aware of the pitfalls of this idealist approach - which is not surprising since on the one hand so much ofthe logic Gauthier expounds derives from the work of Russell, and on the other hand Russell and Moore developed their critique of idealism as part of their efforts to develop an ontology adequate to modern logic. Gauthier attempts to avoid the relativism Russell and Moore discovered in idealism by making the truth of the present, in the present, judge the truth of the past and by arguing that this present which judges is not, strictly speaking, a temporal present but is rather the syntactical form of discourse. Assuming that the forms of discourse are shared, this clearly avoids the sort of relativism that has acceptability always relative to individuals. Assuming that language transcends social divisions, this also clearly avoids the Marxist sort of relativism that has acceptability always relative to social classes. We may even assume with Chomsky and Levi-Strauss that language is rooted in our native (genetic) endowments, so that the syntactical present is the form of human discourse as such, transcending all human differences. But does the fact that something is and must be acceptable to us as human make it true? That this remains a significant question shows, I think, that in his constructivism, in his attempt to develop an idealist philosophy of logic, Gauthier has not escaped the charge of relativism and scepticism. Yet it is an issue he wrestles with. Itis this - this which one might say is an awareness of an alternative philosophical tradition - that makes Gauthier's book in the long run both deeper and more interesting than that of Hebert. (FRED WILSON) Geoffrey Payzant. Glenn Gould: Music & Mind Van Nostrand Reinhold. '92. $14.95 By any standards Glenn Gould is the most fascinating musician that Canada has yet produced. For many people, however, he remains an 478 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 enigmatic figure who left a very successful concert career at an early stage to pursue recording, thinking, and writing. Musicians and the public generally consider him an unorthodox, if brilliant, pianist, a baffling, if sincere, radio and television personality, and a provocative commentator on such subjects as music and technology. It is the achievement of Geoffrey Payzant in his book on Gould to have come to our aid with the idea that Gould's life and art, from his personal behaviour to his choice of pianos, can be understood in philosophical terms. At the same time the work is a plea for us to take Gould seriously. The author has followed Gould's career, particularly the period since 1964 when he abandoned the concert stage, with remarkable tenacity and has assembled not only recordings, but interviews, articles, scripts from radio, television, and film appearances, and reviews. Payzant is a strong advocate for the opinions of his subject and he uses anecdotes, which would normally be passed off with a smile, to make telling points. It is the author's contention that, philosophically speaking, music is either idealistic or empirical in nature and that if we examine Gould's statements we will come to the conclusion that he is an idealist with a streak of empiricism. In the former case the composer supposedly has a mental image of the music prior to its realization in sound; in the latter instance the active sense stimuli are...