This page reports on instruments and instrumentalization

 

While the Greeks still turned to physical acoustics with great objectivity - recognizable by their understanding of mathematical relationships - this was an end since early Christianity. Since then, things have been twisted until they fit into the worldview. The names Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin are the best-known representatives of science, whose work contributed to a correction of this worldview, and as it turned out in the course of this work, it was the French Revolution that put an end to the theological claims of our sound system.

But was it really an end? The Church's efforts to influence how the world has ton be seen continued. How else is it to be understood when they advertise their own astronomical observatory today with the slogan: "Faith Inspiring Science"? What kind of inspiration does bias provide an open-ended question? "The Vatican Observatory works with the Vatican Observatory Foundation to promote education and public engagement in astronomy, and constructive dialogue in the area of faith and science." The desired mixing of teaching content with one's own worldview becomes clear - as well as the sought-after closeness to scientific prominence in the papal academy of sciences. Historically, it is to be understood that the representative of God must have heavenly competence, but lessons could already have been drawn from the tradition of the Tower of Babel.

Concerning the occidental sound system, the Pontificio Consiglio della Cultura has allowed to pick out a research result of the authors book manuscript Sacral Handys: "Musica Sacra, scala verso Dio" while rejecting the scientific-critical part of the study. Considering that music and cosmos have been looked at in connection with each other since Pythagoras and considering the theological appreciation that Bendedict XVI only recently attached to Western music (see blog B6), this method should simply suppress the realization that the last great pillar of the theological building had collapsed as early as 1795.

Outside the church, too, there are numerous interest groups and commercial enterprises who, under the same title of promotion, try to present things in a way that appears more useful and promising, even if scientific knowledge has to be negated. The history of the piano can be presented according to your own taste in your own museum. The required effort is quite expensive and here, too, science is used to whitewash the underlying intention. Teaching and advertising material are mixed together and the training is influenced. Everything happens as described above, only in a smaller format.

Interestingly, the term instrumentalization comes from the instruments. What is meant is what you grab when you need it, to do what you want, to immediately discard it when it has served its purpose. But the term instrumentalization is not about dealing with instruments with which one makes music, or about tools with which one works, but about people who are used. No word expresses this more clearly or sharply than that of abuse.

Let's move on to another place where money became a driving force: the museums have come under pressure. Economized, they are in competition with other leisure providers and the constant endeavor to find sponsors leads to dependencies. Although, due to the new requirements, museum didactic achievements were made that can only be appreciated, this often happened at the expense of the freedom of research, because from now on, it wa preferentially promoted, what emphasizes the importance of one's own holdings or praises the loan from a patron. To deal with the topic presented on this page, there would be nothing to do with individual museum collections and no museum would be willing to finance it over so many years. And what happens if the results ultimately benefits the "museum competitor", who can draw attention to themselves with impressive exhibitions without ever having invested in research? What happens when uncomfortable socially critical truths come to light?

In their 1998 volume Museum Strategy and Marketing, Neil and Philip Kotler presented principles of action that scientists have never been taught before. Right at the beginning, the authors refer to a statement by John Cotton Dana, the founding director of the Newark Museum, who remarked in 1917: "The Museum can reach only those whom it can attract."

Your own history and your own identity should always be able to do this. The same could be said of the contents of the school curriculum, but due to compulsory schooling, marketing in this area can be refrained from - and why is it necessary to compulsory schooling? Because content can be viewed as useful and valuable in the consensus of society even if it is difficult to acquire understanding and insight is not yet available everywhere. With a gap of only a few years, however, it will reliably set in.

At the universities, there are restrictions through academic specialization. Where it proves to be useful, it remains useful. Wherever polydisciplinary work is required, this becomes a considerable obstacle. Science must be allowed - in analogy to craftsmanship - to adapt its means of processing to the complexity of the research subject. This, in turn, has an impact on the way of presentation in museums. Creative research approaches need freedom and it is understandable that in an environment characterized by economic interest they appear like investments in the unknown. For this very reason, after spying on customer behavior, advertising is already pre-selected to determine which target persons the offers are best suited to. This could only be topped by direct access to the bank accounts and the contents of the ballot boxes. The desires are there.

All of this is only possible with a society that lets do it. Not for nothing did Immanuel Kant speak of a self-inflicted immaturity. With the simple question: "Who will benefit from it?" also suggestive maneuvers can be uncovered in a timely manner. A mere prohibition of the same is not promising, because there is too much criminal energy in people to gain advantages through unauthorized means, which are then downplayed with belittling terms such as sham packaging or cheating software - and what has reached the public is usually smaller in relation to what happens in the darknet, in cyber attacks, under military secrecy or in dealing with nature when nobody is looking.

It is all the more important to ensure an education system that deserves its name because it ensures that the benefits generated by science also reach society. At this point, reference should be made to the contributions by Harald Lesch, who rightly denounces the economization of educational institutions, because there are also values beyond money, and it is precisely these that are in danger.

The ethical content of the occidental theory of harmony is by far the most important of them, because it contrasts the strategy with the synergy and thus the exploitation with the cooperation. According to history, this is the highest level of difficulty at which people regularly fail - and this down-to-earth task is more relevant to the fate of people than observing the sky or the mental construct of a tonal scale to get there.

© Aurelius Belz 2021