Unfalsifiable Aesthetics

Without the possibility of failure, "success" is meaningless

I

Easily the most widespread misconception about science is that “science” is just a body of knowledge, a list of facts or an accumulation of data. On the contrary, scientists insist, science is rather a methodology — a reliable means of getting at the truth, not the truth itself. There are several criteria which distinguish actual science from other truth-seeking disciplines, or from theories which purport to be scientific but in fact are nothing of the sort. One important criterion is predictive power: real scientific theories make specific, verifiable predictions, whereas “fake” or “junk” scientific theories do not. For example, Newton’s theory of gravity predicted that the force of gravity exerted by an object was proportional to its mass, a prediction confirmed over a century later after the invention of the spaceship.

But perhaps the most important criterion was proposed by the philosopher Karl Popper, which he called “falsifiability”: which is to say, authentic scientific theories have clearly established criteria for what it would take to conclusively prove the theory is false. For example, if a fossilised rabbit was discovered in the Precambrian geological stratum, that would completely demolish the theory of evolution as currently understood. This is why (for example) astrology is considered “junk science”, because astrologists do not acknowledge the existence of any hypothetical scenario which would demonstrate that astrology is false.

Thank you for the suggestion, Ms. Lanyadoo.

With all that context provided, I’m going to start taking the piss out of some bands I think are shite, assuming any of you are still reading.

Art, in its own way, can be falsifiable or unfalsifiable. Consider music. We’ve all had the experience of going to the local for a quiet pint and learning, to our dismay, that it’s hosting a karaoke night; then looking on in transfixed horror as some local inebriant howls and warbles their way through a tuneless rendition of “Someone Like You” by Adele. I don’t think it’s snobby of me to argue that such an experience is unpleasant for most, if not all. Anyone (even people with no musical training or knowledge of music theory) can instantly tell when someone is singing a pop song badly — or more to the point, singing it incorrectly. This is because pop music, like real science, is falsifiable: in much the same way that a scientist clearly sets out their criteria for confirming or disproving a theory while advancing it, the composer of a given pop song has clearly delineated their criteria for success or failure in performance of the song. Indirectly, the composer has done the following: “My song is written in A minor, in a 4/4 metre, at a tempo of 100 bpm. If someone sings this song and departs from the key, the metre, or the tempo, they are making a categorical, unequivocal mistake”.

Now: what would it mean for a noise rock band to “make a mistake”?

If you attended a concert by a noise musician (Merzbow, for example), and the performer made a mistake, do you think anyone would actually notice, in the same way that everyone instantly notices when someone sings “Someone Like You” out of key? Or to make the comparison more explicit — when watching Yoko Ono atonally shriek her way through her personal “interpretation” of “Someone Like You”, do you think anyone in the audience would notice if she “made a mistake” or “sang it incorrectly”?

This woman’s net worth is more than you will ever earn in your entire life.

Just as no hypothetical situation exists which would cause astrologists worldwide to confess “actually, we’ve been wrong all along, this theory is nonsense”, no hypothetical situation exists in which a noise rock band, or Yoko Ono, could play their music incorrectly and acknowledge that they have played in error — or in which it was obvious to their respective audiences that they had played in error. The criteria for composing and performing noise rock, or ambient music, or drone metal, or modernist music, are so broad and open that it is effectively impossible to do it “wrong” or “incorrectly”. Indeed, it’s often been observed that noise music and related genres don’t even require the input of a human musician to be effectively “composed”.

Credit: /u/lukecreedtechno

I’m using pop music as an example, but I should emphasise I’m not using this theory to criticise hip-hop. Even though most hip-hop does not require the vocalist to sing in key, this is compensated for by a greater emphasis on rhythmic precision and adherence to a beat; any rapper who chokes on the mic or flubs a lyric would instantly be ridiculed in the community for their obvious error, hence, the genre is falsifiable. Perhaps this is a contributing factor to why modern “mumble rappers” like Lil Pump¹ or Young Thug are so loathed, particularly by fans of more traditional styles of hip hop and indeed by mumble rappers’ more technically skilled contemporaries. Considering its minimal lyrics, unambitious rhyming schemes and weak flows, mumble rap is much closer to “unfalsifiable” hip hop than previous sub-genres of hip hop, and given how popular and visible the sub-genre is in our era, it threatens to bring the hard-won artistic credibility of hip hop as a whole into disrepute.

One can apply the same criteria to other artistic media as well: a portrait artist has to ensure that their finished product bears a resemblance to a human being, but an abstract artist has no such concern — there is no real way to do abstract art “wrong”. In traditional poetry, poets had to (at a minimum) adhere to a rigid rhyme and metre, and a poem which didn’t (or a poem in which the rhymes seemed forced or the stresses inconsistent) was deemed a failure. But how many of you could tell when a free verse poem is done “wrong”? (Aside from the obvious answer, which is “invariably”.)

A painting by Jackson Pollock. Did any of you notice that the image is upside-down and back to front?

II

One might argue that art in which it is impossible to fail — “unfalsifiable art” — is a good thing: it’s a more democratic mode, less likely to intimidate artists lacking in technical skill, a mode less limited by the snobbishness of high culture and its strict demands for music to sound in tune, or paintings to look like things, or poems to make sense and sound good. In much the same way that rock music became so popular with musicians and listeners precisely because it was accessible to amateur working-class musicians who hadn’t attended the conservatory, perhaps by the same token unfalsifiable art is accessible to musicians who can barely play their instruments, but still have something to contribute? I disagree with this line of reasoning, based on two principal rebuttals:

1. Falsifiable art is not necessarily technically demanding: one need not be exceptionally skilled to produce art that is falsifiable. There are innumerable bedroom producers who can develop a passable techno beat after an hour of fiddling around with FL Studio: but techno is still falsifiable, because if it wasn’t, you couldn’t dance to it. Likewise, there are innumerable acoustic singer-songwriters out there composing songs based on just three chords, requiring a vocal range of barely more than an octave. These songs are technically simple and do not require decades of expensive musical training to perform — but they are still falsifiable, because it would be immediately obvious if the guitarist fretted a chord wrong, or if the singer hit a bum note. By contrast, for an unfalsifiable genre like noise rock, the guitarist could fret a chord wrong and probably no one would even notice. Indeed, on the basis of most noise rock I’ve heard, the guitarist could likely go onstage with every string on his guitar snapped, and no one in the crowd would bat an eye or consider it worthy of comment.

2. Without the possibility of failure, success is meaningless. Good scientific theories, because they acknowledge the limits of their own theories and the possibility of being mistaken, are able to make brave and bold declarations and predictions, and have given us everything from the moon landings, to penicillin, to the laptop on which I am writing this article. “Bad” or “junk” scientific theories, by contrast, can never make a bold declaration or prediction, because they would then run the risk of being proven wrong; as a result of which, they have never given us anything of value at all. I think the same goes for unfalsifiable art: artists composing falsifiable art (like pop songs, or paintings that resemble things, or sonnets etc.) have the courage and daring to swing for the rafters, attempting to create something truly great, and boldly accepting the possibility of failure. Unfalsifiable artists, by contrast, always have to be cautious and conservative: never attempting to sing in key in case they hit a bum note (even though singing in key is a prerequisite for a beautiful melody); never trying to adhere to a metre in case they aren’t able to play in time (even though adhering to a metre is a prerequisite for powerful rhythms that make us want to dance). The range of artistic expression open to unfalsifiable artists is not expanded but dramatically curtailed by their refusal to risk making unambiguous mistakes; they are, for the most part, limited to making art which one notices and nods at, but which makes one feel absolutely nothing. There may, somewhere, hypothetically, be a person who has been moved to tears of ecstatic joy by a particularly “powerful” Yoko Ono performance. I hope more than anything that I am never forced to attend a dinner party with such a person.

I know some people will say that “art is subjective” and the only thing that matters about art is if it makes you feel something, or if it provokes thought and discussion. Fine, if your definition of art is that broad, then I can’t argue with you. But I do think that unfalsifiable art is detrimental to art as a whole, in the same way that a proliferation of pseudoscience is detrimental to science as a whole. Unfalsifiable art drags down the standard of the entire medium, in a way that badly-performed-but-still-falsifiable art does not.

III

The more I’ve been thinking about this pet theory of mine, the more I’m starting to think it can apply to narrative media (in addition to music, painting and so on). Obviously it’s impossible to tell when a surrealist film or experimental play has gone wrong, but on a broader level, think of that most reviled of narrative tropes: the climax of the film arrives, the protagonist wakes up, “it was all just a dream!”, roll credits. (This also extends to movies like The Usual Suspects.) Just about everyone I’ve ever met hates this trope; it was an established and groan-worthy cliché even when I was in primary school. But why do people hate it, aside from the usual complaints that the trope is “anticlimactic” or a “cop-out”?

Credit: How Not to Write a Novel (Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman)

I think it’s (at least in part) to do with falsifiability. As members of an audience, we have entered into an informal “contract” with the director and screenwriter of a film, in which we will pay to see their film and they will create a film which is, at a bare minimum, logical and internally consistent: plot developments will not strain credibility; characters will not act “out of character”; the universe of the film will not defy belief, even if it is not our universe.

The problem with the “it was all just a dream” trope is not merely that the film is illogical and internally inconsistent. The problem is that the trope relieves the writer or the director of the responsibility to ensure that the film is both of those things. With a falsifiable film, if plot developments seem illogical or characters behave inconsistently, the audience can legitimately criticise those elements, and the director is expected to take their criticisms seriously. With an unfalsifiable film, however, if I point out that the plot seems illogical or the characters inconsistent, the director simply has to reply “Well duh. The film is all just a dream. It doesn’t have to make sense.” In much the same way that a noise rock musician abdicates the responsibility of singing in key or playing in time, a director who directs a film with this twist ending abdicates the responsibility of directing a film which is internally consistent and coherent. Both individuals are creating art in which failure is impossible. But if failure is impossible, then any success is hollow.

IV

A few caveats with my theory: it’s entirely possible that there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved in distinguishing “falsifiable” from “unfalsifiable” art. Yes, for a simple pop song like “Someone Like You” or “Mamma Mia” it’s obvious even to a layperson when a singer hits a bum note, but is the same true of a frenetic Joe Satriani guitar solo, even if such a composition is nominally adhering to a specific key signature? I’m aware that there is lots of music I deeply enjoy which would probably strike the average person as unfalsifiable according to the criteria I’ve set out above; my mother used to find it impossible to tell the difference between whether I was listening to the album Filosofem or drying my hair. Hell, I even like David Lynch films, even though I know they’re probably mostly nonsense.²

So it’s by no means a hard-and-fast theory with clear criteria for inclusion or exclusion. It’s more of a framework to help us interpret and critique music in particular, and also art in general. When next you’re listening to a song or reading a poem, ask yourself “If the artist made a mistake, would I notice?” And then consider how that affects your opinion of the piece.

The Jackson Pollock painting from above, but in the correct orientation. Or maybe the one from before was the correct orientation, and this one is upside-down and back-to-front? Who can say? I’m not telling.

1. Leaving aside his political affiliations.

2. Almost every piece of art contains multiple layers, the falsifiability of which one may have to consider independently of the others. Consider a recording of a rock song. The drumbeat is falsifiable (must adhere to a rigid metre). The bass and guitars are falsifiable (must adhere to a rigid metre and be played in tune). The vocals are falsifiable (assuming that the singer is singing melodically, as opposed to doing that annoying “too cool for school” talk-singing thing that’s so in vogue of late). But layered on top of these basic elements may be unfalsifiable aesthetic elements e.g. atonal arrhythmic electronic textures meant to contribute to the mood and feel of the recording. Hence, the recording contains both falsifiable and unfalsifiable elements, adding up to a song which is falsifiable in totality.