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Progress without exclusion in the search for an evolutionary basis of music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2021

Daniel L. Bowling Open the ORCID record for Daniel L. Bowling [Opens in a new window] ,
Marisa Hoeschele  and
Jacob C. Dunn
Daniel L. Bowling
Affiliation:
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94306, USA. dbowling@stanford.edu; https://profiles.stanford.edu/daniel-bowling
Marisa Hoeschele
Affiliation:
Acoustic Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1040 Vienna, Austria. marisa.hoeschele@oeaw.ac.at; https://tinyurl.com/marisahoeschele Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria.
Jacob C. Dunn
Affiliation:
Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria. Behavioral Ecology Research Group, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge CB1 1PT, UK. jacob.dunn@aru.ac.uk; https://aru.ac.uk/people/jacob-c-dunn Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QH, UK.
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Abstract

Mehr et al.'s hypothesis that the origins of music lie in credible signaling emerges here as a strong contender to explain early adaptive functions of music. Its integration with evolutionary biology and its specificity mark important contributions. However, much of the paper is dedicated to the exclusion of popular alternative hypotheses, which we argue is unjustified and premature.

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Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 44 , 2021 , e97
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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