Fair enough, Jack, but what I am trying to say is that saying A mixolydian (sorry about previous misspelling) is just a shorthand for "The pitch set A B C# D E F# G with tonal centre A". It does not explain anything or require any understanding, it just makes it more convenient to talk about it.

Going back to your previous post, there are limitless possibilities in what can be done under the name of music. Each culture or idiom only uses a subset. The existance of one idiom does not invalidate another any more than French invalidates Gaelic.

Just because other cultures do not use the full close does not alter the fact that it is a cornerstone of Western European music or prove that it does not represent something with real physical/mathematical significance. It's use in western music may be learned but riding a bike is learned. What you are learning in that case is how to interact with the real physical world of motion, balance and tarmac. Could it not be that what you are learning with music is an interaction with the interplay of harmonic relationships over time? My grumble is that statements such as "this chord resolves to that chord", "this note leads to that note" really don't seem to say anything meaningful about it. They are just observations of subjective experience.