WHY DOES MUSIC CHANGE US? The Ontology of Sound, Living Organization, and the Philosophy of Threshold Transitions

Music is one of the most remarkable forms of organization developed by humanity. Although it is physically realized through sound and vibration, its effects extend beyond hearing alone. A melody may bring a person to tears, a rhythm may move an otherwise motionless body toward dancing, and a song may revive the memory of a long-forgotten experience. The same music may produce markedly different responses in different individuals, or even in the same individual at different times. This article examines such variability through the relationship between the organization of acoustic energy and the existing organization of the receiving living system. The central thesis of this study has two interconnected dimensions. First, music cannot be reduced either to physical sound waves alone or to subjective perception alone; rather, it must be understood through the encounter between physical structure, organization, perception, and meaning. Second, under certain conditions, this encounter may alter the emotional, physiological, and behavioral states of living systems. This approach is developed within the framework of the Organizational Threshold Transition Hypothesis of Music (OTTM), which proposes that certain musical interactions may produce not only gradual changes in living systems but also qualitatively distinguishable transitions between states. Nevertheless, the hypothesis does not assume that every emotional or behavioral change constitutes a genuine threshold transition. The article maintains conceptual distinctions among ordinary behavioral change, functional state transition, and dynamic regime transition in the stronger sense. The relationship between the physical possibilities of music discovered in nature and the cultural forms created by humans is examined in the contexts of music and consciousness, rhythm and movement, melody and crying, language and meaning, individual experience, and collective synchronization. Acoustic responses in animals and plants are considered not as instances of the same musical experience but as comparative phenomena that help clarify the boundaries of organizational interaction. The article's central contribution is to interpret music not merely as an aesthetic object or an external stimulus, but as a relational process emerging through the encounter between physical structure, living organization, and experiential meaning.