Tukova I. Music and Natural Science: Interaction of Worlds in the Epochs' Mental Habits (17th - the Early 21st Century)

he main point of research is to give grounds to the understanding of art and science, in particular classical music and natural sciences, as different and yet complementary forms of human intellectual and spiritual activity. Holistic comprehension of culture of a certain epoch may be formed only with integration of both spheres. The aim of research is to define and to compare the basic principles of understanding the laws of nature and organization of the musical language of a certain era, i.e. the underpinning foundations that shape and at the same time are being shaped by a specific human worldview. Such postulate conditioned the use of the generalizing definition of a "mental habit" coined by the famous art critic Erwin Panofsky. The original methodology of research was formed on the basis of the author's interpretation of mental habit and the proposition to define the principles indicative for mental habit, employing the methods of analogy, comparative studies, structural and functional analyzes, and the concept of three-level structure of musical language by Sergiy Shyp. Such methodology provides analytical tools to determine the unity between different spheres of intellectual and spiritual human activity. In this research, this methodology is applied to the classical music and natural science. However, in the future it may as well be applied both to studying the connection between others areas and to creating a general picture of the mental habit of a certain epoch. The questions, which are the most important for this research, may be formulated in the following way: are the classical music and natural science of certain epoch united by a general mental habit? How the principles of mental habit manifest themselves directly in the organization of musical language? In the process of looking for answers for these questions, it was pursued the following objectives: to examine the academic tradition of studying the correlation between art music and natural science; to develop the basic approach to studying the correlation between these spheres of human activity; to determine the core of the primary level of musical language, as well as the elements of its basis; to study the unity of principles of mental habit in art music and natural science during the Modern and Contemporary eras; to examine the specific features of development of musical language during the 20th and early 21st century.