An introduction to Mnemosophy...

...As The General Theory of Heritage

The crisis of Museology is long as its existence. This hundred years ¹ of solitariness was spent in an ambiguous "status nascendi" ² , a state of never being born. Yet, only in the last three decades, with a few exceptions though, we can read relevant theoretical testimonies about our profession. What we had before was historic factography with no attempt to offer a value judgement: museums were judged only by the quality of their collections and curators by their scientific capacity. The number of museum professionals able to give solid,  critical and convincing account of their profession, analyzing its nature, its role in the society is steadily rising. Whether they consider(ed) themselves museologists or just concerned professionals matters little indeed, as Museology exists any time the critical and structured transfer of the professional experience happens, - the action aimed at the advancement of the profession and its service to the society.

Why did Museology appear?

The hundred years of ill success of theoretical endeavour would not be enough to produce alone the long expected change. The decisive impulse came from the crisis of practice. The professions of heritage care and communication started to need the usable answers to the questions their tormented position imposed. Compared to anything they used to experience this was partly caused by too much success. This time the set of the questions the theory was supposed to answer were practical in the sense that they were referent to the changing position of museums in the society. Anything that would explain and justify that position of museums (re-defining their social role) is bound to appropriate, in some latter instance, a shape of sound theory and cause radical conceptual consequences. For a quarter of century, this reflective critique of practice is producing a gradual change of the whole configuration of heritage concerned professions ³. On that way, the reflection appropriates structure, standards, criteria and vocabulary which signal the coherence needed for any distinctive discipline. What we live through is the biggest re-conceptualization of (dealing with) the past that ever happened, a matter too important to be left solely to practice. This discipline is born any time the collective experience of profession(s) is used, supplemented or transferred to others.

The basis of change

Museology was perceived as theory of the museum institution whereas it had to be concept based if counting upon any endurable coherence. The appearing concept was heritage in its totality, from dinosaur to Andy Warhol. This  common-denominator-notion still did not reach its full, fruitful legitimacy in the museum world: only ten years ago the discussions whether the term heritage refers solely to cultural heritage were still vivid even in the trans-disciplinary international body like the International Committee of Museology (ICOFOM, ICOM). The world's museum organization (ICOM), trans-disciplinary by the very existence, is going through a decade of stagnation whereas the museums and kindred institutions flourish like never before. The objective reasons are contained in a general lack of philosophy of heritage which leaves the entire sector rather defenceless in the face of competition, temptations and corruption of the modern world. The common denominator means: the similar conceptual basis, similar definition of the object, similar role in the society. It must be that the entire institutional configuration in the field of heritage shares the same general ideals of its fulfillment that run any true profession.

This broad concept includes obviously other institutions ⁵ from the field of heritage that do at least one part of the triple natured museum job: collectioning, care, presentation. It would be hard to find any institution devoted solely to collectioning and what it comprises (knowledge of the subject, research), or to the care (preservation, conservation,  restoration). The presentation, on the contrary, is quite often performed as an exclusive activity and one could regard different exhibition centres as a sort of temporary museums. The range of institutions around the same concept of heritage increases still significantly if we open up the notion of the object collected, cared for or presented. If museums collect only the three-dimensional objects as material evidence of some past, we stick to traditional definitions and allow no change. If museums also collect ideas, material objects being only one form of them, then only the concept of evidence decides what is a museum object. What is an evidence of past events, people, ideas, situations, deeds...? Anything that possesses scientific reliability, ethical relevance and quality of emitting its information potential when appropriately presented or demonstrated ⁶. Further on, the informatic society created the context in which museum tradition could only consent to regarding the information on a museum computer as yet another aspect of museum object or, as the reality brings it, as an object by itself. Wherever the broad concept of heritage represents the departure point in the activity, we are entitled to expect the same, general theoretical consequence.

Some more arguments within the broadening filed

There are still more practical circumstances to this unity, which theory (or science) can signal, inspire, enhance, spread: mission, legislation ⁷ , networking, ethics, professional education ⁸ and partnerships.

Idealist goal of any profession, when structured and supported by organization and management, defines its mission. Using the collective memory for the better understanding of present and preparation of usable future is easily, - aiming at quality of living within a frame of a balanced development, - that can easily apply to many an institution. Yet, all will readily define their methodology but only a few would seriously study their mission. Since they have no clear ideals and  maximum expectations, no wonder they do not achieve optimal results. On the other hand, to know one's mission requires full knowledge of the basic concept, ability of critical self-analysis, and de-institutionalized mind.

Legislation defines the place of the professions in the social and political organization of the society. If bad, it can cause drawbacks: social (e.g. that the institution is discouraged from serving the minorities), financial (e.g. that other programmes and institutions get more as being better positioned in the public offer ⁹ , professional (that profession is neglected and backward, lacking standards and norms, disoriented etc.). Networking is aimed at functioning together, sharing the resources as well as responsibilities with a sole aim to do more and better, for the society or community, with less strain and less means.

Ethics is hardly perceived as important as it seem to have no practical consequence ¹⁰ . Yet ethics assures pride and emotional stability of profession(s); the constant effort to improve it will necessarily embetter the service: ethics affirms responsibility and represents the only basis for an idealist goal, - a glowing orientation point in discouraging practical circumstances. If perceived correctly, only the ethical definition of the museum service, to take one example, will firmly define museum as community oriented institution.

Heritage professions need the their common theory to understand the nature of their medium, to grasp the spread-up of the concept of heritage, to be able to form their own mission, to create a conceptual basis of their involvement wherever the heritage is, to be accountable partners, to state administration, to business and to hypermedia; they need the theory to create strategy of accomplishing their mission,  assuring thus their own survival. If they do not see clearly their own strength and weakness, they will give harmful responses to the offers of the other sectors, requiring too much or too little in any proposed deal. They should be able to take full responsibility for the public welfare they keep and represent so that it gains value and stays under control of democratic forces of society.

What theory?

Would a theory be able to take up such a set of ambitions or the name of science is more appropriate, it depends upon definitions. Politics, which is (ideally speaking) principles, methods, and practices of government, hardly a science in its own right, has its own philosophy. Why shouldn't heritage?

This may belong to the third phase of museological ambition.  In the first, Museology was the history of collections and museum institutions. Then it became further concerned with methods, techniques and technology of museum work and started as reflection upon institutional services and professional matters, including ethics. In that second phase of development, we have witnessed the tendency of seclusion between practical matters (which were supposed to be Museography) and "theoretical" which were destined to acquire the status of science i.e. Museology. This later meant also the transfer of professional experience. The third phase, which we are establishing for a decade at least, is continuing the museological development establishing it as history of past, cybernetics of human experience, and philosophy of heritage. Any conception of science will comprise double movement, - of theory towards the practical experience and of practical experience towards the theory. Although it may seem that the third concept describes the needed theory as rather esoteric, it indeed derives its motives form the very practice and, consequently, admits the verification by practice. 

Introducing Mnemosophy

Leaving the methodological field, where some practical solutions to specific problems are found, we move towards the substantive field. What Museography, Librarianship, Archivistics or Informatics have as specific differences, will rarely be obvious at the utter speculative level of their proper filed. But to go that far means the loss of professional identity (like leaving one's own fortress in troubled times) and the risk of  incompetence (as multidisciplinary approach requires fair insight). Yet, they all share the same subject which is information pertaining to the past human experience, its creation/acquisition, analysis, care and dissemination. The scientific community entrusted Museology with the status of science by allowing it to the Universities. Yet, it is far from being a rule ¹¹ . Museology, in whatever variant taken, is still disregarded an surely not among "mature" or "compact" ¹² sciences; it is rather "diffuse" and quite a "discipline to be". But, so are many other, well established and yet neither prepared to admit it, nor disposing with such capacity of development.

It is obviously about an information science, one that should be among other "cultural sciences" (like linguistics, ethnology, or history of art), "soft"(Hagstrom, 1965;) humanistic sciences as opposed to "hard" sciences (which are hard, as we are told, due to the level of impersonal in citation and capability of demonstrating their theories and laws in mathematic formula (Storer, 1967) ¹³ . Sciences grow and change, and others (usually transdisciplinary) are conceived: this way Biotechnology has been created or even such an amalgam as Sociobiology. Most of these new disciplines appropriated "gestalt" approach which is very "soft" indeed in its ambition to understand wholeness in things and concepts, admitting that the whole is more than the mathematical sum of its parts. The modern sensibility, which is so attracted by holistic views derives from it the religion of modern atheists as well as ecological concern. The things and the ideas seem to be so definitely interlocked that analytical paradigm obviously failed.

In that sense, we need an etiology, a science which will be able to understand the causes of our dependency upon the past. We need a dialectics of heritage to understand the laws that govern its changes and our expectations from it. Unlike Museology, this general theory should be an ontology of heritage institutions, not concerned with their history but the philosophy of their inception. We need a sinechology, able to embrace the dimensions of space and time and beyond them. It should not though be just another, all inclusive, theosophy, but enough to understand the logic of material world, maybe a sort of metaphysics as "the part of philosophy that deals with the nature and structure of reality" (Aristotle). The idea of having the concept of heritage in the metaphysical "high country of the mind" ¹⁴ looks ambitious enough for a theory with so many aspirations. Ideally speaking, Komensky's utopian science of Pansofia, contains some key words of our idealist construction. Its ambition was to present the results of the entire human knowledge with a  social and psychological objective of creating harmonious community of all people. The dozen encyclopaedic, gigantic, museums of the western hemisphere, harmonize with both the scientific and the ethical ideals of Komensky.

Visionaries and utopians always tried to attain some level of "sciencia generalis" (Leibnitz) which would synthesize results of all the sciences (Kropotkin). David Hume was trying to establish a "science of man", about human nature and the limits of human spirit. What we may rightfully strive for is a science about relation of man to his realities, the past and present. The relation is always there, but not subdued to the criteria of quality. If museums and kindred institutions are just about collective memory, things are so simple that cyber-space would make all those institutions obsolete. Are we asking for too much? Utopia is, in a strange way, part of museum reality as museums try to keep alive the past by preserving the material fragments of decontextualized, ultimately unknown reality. Modern science was born as discovery of infiniteness, and yet, we try to prove in our museums the finite and definitely material nature of our worldly reality as the scientific and sole truth. We need a science which would also function as a hermeneutics of past, able to de-code and give meaning to the inherited signs. We need principles of interpretation, beyond the clues given by each specialist science. In this respect, an individual, specialist analysis of a particular object should not exist without a parallel strive to understand the wholeness it makes the part of. This general science would excel the ambition of specialist sciences by undertaking the idealist ambition towards understanding of humans' "being-there" (Heidegger). Demonstrating the multi-faceted nature of an ideal science of heritage, let us remember that hermeneutics, itself a possible aspect of it,  was constituted as a science of understanding the historical reality, of understanding the world's experience (Hans Georg Gadamer). Besides, like heuristics, this new science should also teach us "methods" of researching new concepts and art of finding the truth. Once a separate body, this science of heritage, composite as it may be, could derive its coherence from practical use it may have in assuring that we profit most from the past.

When saying "heritage" museums and other institutions have usually meant the heritage stored in their premises, - the heritage they have accumulated. But, what about the remaining 70%? Or less? Be that as it may, most of that "un-stored" past has become someone's heritage, personal or group, and it is being acquired, kept, researched and disseminated. The lack of any standards of excellence and scientific responsibility for the most of it does not make it irrelevant. Placing the concept and not the institution in the middle of our concern, we see that institutions are only one solution to saving the past and, indeed, only part of the past. Unlike the useful memory of the primitive society, transferred to the living and those to come in the form of artistic expression, - this heritage is largely artificial. A past, namely, becomes heritage once we are aware of its value and once we manipulate it to become such. Selected and structured according to current value systems it becomes official heritage.

The general theory of heritage will have to be applicable to any heritage not just the official one. Once elaborated to the possible extent, it may inspire and assist the great conceptualization of the world and assure the conceptual shares of concerned professions.

With this comes another recantation: the science is not the paradise of certainty but a hell of mere probabilities. So called "theory of chaos" is a tacit admission from the part of Physics and Mathematics that the System must be there but we cannot grasp its regularities nor to understand its ultimate nature. This is hardly hinted in the temples of Certainty ¹⁵ . Even the physicists had to accept the heresy that there are physical things and phenomena which cannot be proved by experiment. In its final claims, Physics always liked to use the metaphor. Therefore, the science of heritage might well allow itself the lack of finiteness and bravely claim an openness of the system, able to anticipate the future, but already appearing circumstances.

The outline of Mnemosophy

It will certainly look preposterous and exaggerated to ask for so much from a supposed science. Yet, aspirations should not  be forbidden, so much more as harsh practice and a search for consensus will form their final profile.

When the term "heritology" was mentioned for the first time it was literally loughed out ¹⁶ . But the third museological paradigm was much on its way. Its concerns were becoming different: the very meaning of heritage and its institutional concept, the mission of heritage related profession(s), the needs of users (community, society), and perception of institutions as of system units of heritage action (meaning that institutions as we know them are only one and changing possibility of an institutional answer to a need). By that time already, Museology was splitting into several Museologies, the development reaching its summit in the last few years ¹⁷. Heritology was a welcome provocative thesis to end the useless academic discussion which was much away from practical causes of any theoretical endeavour. In the last ten odd years arguments for a radical brake with a century of museological frustration only augmented even as far as terminology. 

A long practice of telling a puzzling story of genesis of museums from the temple of muses never clarified the possible derivation. None of the seven Muses was dedicated to anything like museum. It is their mother, by Zeus, Mnemosyne that should have come into mind instead. The daughter of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth), Mnemosyne is personification of Memory, a goddess of it. What we deal with in "arts of heritage" is memory and what we discuss in our theory of heritage is but qualities of that memory, including the quality use of it. The earlier classical mythology offers the possibility of terminological linkage, through Muses, though not to the proper name of the institution (a third of today's museum institutions are not  museums anyhow), but to the central concept itself, - the memory. Formerly, the Muses were only three, out of which the first two were "in charge" of song and meditation and the third one, Mneme, was concerned with memory. This fact was not unnoticed so we have mnemonics (the art of improving or developing the memory), but also "mnemism", a theory of memory by E. Hering which says that any organized matter has the memory ¹⁸ as its basic biological function.

The philosophy of heritage is not a science of collective memory, but the one selected and valued as necessary for survival of certain identity. The neologism Mnemosophy would imply the memory and the quality of it: sophia means wisdom. If we can object scientism and possessiveness to museums, we can regard hyper-media as insatiable, unselective omnivorae, and both are quite at ease with any quantitative analysis upon a sound basis of the official science. The old-fashioned call for wisdom is suggesting the quality as the only solution to the "easy" quantitative solutions. This, discipline should offer a common frame for all other specialist disciplines in the field of heritage, as their metaphysical super structure. Before we discuss its structure and other elements as it may contain them, let us claim that this philosophical discipline has for its aim the understanding of the essence and value of entire heritage. One should probably prefer the term as proposed, since this should not be only the study, the science of heritage (mnemology?) but rather a science about the usable, quality substance of heritage. Even in broadest interpretations, Museology suggested the ideal of unlimited memory, as a perfect recall with no value judgment ¹⁹ , - avoiding thus the ethical responsibility and earning to its unprepared self an easy access to the crowded informatic super-highway. There would be always quite a few museum specialists who will intimately consider museums scientific institution (even if the science has to be presented to the public) and they will tolerate Museology which can be interpreted as professional experience dealing with standards, methodology and management of institutions. That discipline stresses no creativeness, ethics and responsibility as deals with the formal side of the profession (so foolishly called practical). Besides being the information science, Mnemosophy should also be the cybernetics of heritage as it has the active principle inbuilt in its structure. Memory serves as survival tool and a basis for a coordinated response of the society, community, or a group when confronted with a situation, stimulus, challenge or aggression tending to disturb its normal condition or function. Memory is the basis for homeostasis of the identity, the complex balance which, if maintained, enables the harmonious change or development. Since this does not happen in a spontaneous way but is "engineered" through different institutions of the modern society, heritage institutions have to produce the filtered, adjusted, selected, appropriate wisdom to generate the proper reaction aimed at regaining the balance. Therefore, it isn't just any memory that restores lost harmony as a condition of successful survival. Wasn't Aristotle suggesting "the wisdom of the world" as a separate science? The philosophy may have forgotten the simple meaning of "-sophia" (wisdom) yet it is, ultimately speaking, nothing else that we are after. Needless to say, this approach changes radically the optic and mentality of present institutional tradition. It involves, namely, as the daily practice, the risk of institutional action in the real time and living circumstances i.e. taking part of responsibility for the destiny of the identity the institution stands for. Finally, the birth of community museums (eco-museums) coincided with the conviction that museums bear their part of responsibility for the development of the society. The notion of sustainable development, i.e. the one that retains balance and variety of vital forces, justifies well the notion of museum as a cybernetic mechanism of a society ²⁰ , and the theory that supports and assists such mechanisms.

To the configuration of museums, libraries, archives, sites, parks and alike, Mnemosophy as syncretic discipline, should strive to answer the main questions that arise from these disciplines, much to the same list as would be proposed by journalist procedure: WHAT is heritage? WHAT are the historical changes of the idea of the past and that of heritage? WHEN did they happen, WHY and in WHAT circumstances?  WHY is heritage collected, kept and stored?  WHO stores WHAT ? WHO is in charge of heritage? In WHOSE name? WHO should be served and HOW? WHAT is the future of the past?

Creativity taken into account

Traditional heritage institution was formed as the end of the process of musealisation. The mistery of immense past was arbitrarily transformed into the classified, taxonomic quantity of museum or archival collection. Even scientific procedure could be arbitrary (as might already be obvious), but individual collectioneur's interest is, as a rule. Thus, majority of museums came into being without exact reference to some identity, let alone to the complexity of the reality of past. The entirely random nature of birth of museums is much corrected in modern times leaving the transformation to the scientific knowledge of curators. One has to know, however, that museum curator rarely creates science but follows it, choosing and structuring his or hers collection to illustrate, not the reality but the scientific view on it. Therefore, science is the authority which justifies the choice made. As result, the meta-reality of museum corresponds to a certain extent with the departing reality of the past. Devouring the future and producing more and more past, which is then put into museums, the world is turning into an immense museum. Once in secure hide of storage, the past becomes a reality of heritage. Researched and drastically selected once again ( to form some 15 % ,on an average, of the original quantity it is then presented in this form to the public. The public, besides fellow professionals, itself well selected, cultured and conditioned by the education, comes regularly to meet the Eternity exposed in the glass cases. Once out of the museum, it feels fascinated, knowledgeable, and secure being convinced in the omnipotent nature of science. Idyllic, but false.

The museum, contrary to traditional notion, does not happen in museum but in the visitor's mind. Like in any real theatre, the revelation, the ecstasy, happens by the stage but not on it. Thus, museum is not the end but the intermediary, the transmitter, selector and amplifier, a medium and means.
The process of musealization implies making choice, using analogy and abstraction, scientific knowledge and common sense respectively. But any act of choice, as known in physics or art, is necessarily a creative act. There is no way to avoid the fact as only "one-to-one" map assures accuracy but becomes ridiculous ²¹. The process of musealisation implies, therefore, the creative responsibility. If it is there, and as inevitable, it should be explored and used to the advantage of the professional effectiveness.

But, since museum institution is not an aim in itself, the counter-balancing process to musealisation is communication. It is the finishing part of the mediating role of heritage institutions. It should happen as a process of interchange, guided by the vital forces of development, life itself that is, and by the affective principle. If the professional on one side does not love the user on the other, and vice versa, the collaboration stands little chances as it ends up in cultural cliché. Inaptitude of institutions to take part in creative forces of living culture is the sign of their obsolescence and decadence of the society itself. A mission defined in broad strategic arguments of the survival, serves the purpose well, as there the theory acts as incentive of constant adjustment of institution to the context and needs. Working hard upon this dynamic quality of heritage institutions transforms them into (one of the) guiding mechanisms of contemporary society. Able to receive the signals, to analyze them and select answers then emitted to the community of users, - heritage institutions use the wisdom as filtered, sublimated knowledge, as catalyst, enzyme and hormone to produce corrective effects, acquire transparency and arguments for democratic decision-making. Knowledge can easily be useless, messages can become dangerous, but the creative dialogue that links the collective experience to present day needs rarely misses. Some years ago this seemed mere intellectualizing but now the whole concept of sustainable development depends upon these subtleties.

Any heritage institution is double-natured theatre: that of facts and of fiction. The factual side is scientifically sustained process of musealisation, whereas the "fictional" part pertains to communication, emission, - performance. Of course this part could not be properly done in a museum where curators are academic specialists who learned their museum job on the spot by an old method of "sitting next to Sally". This is why the need ushered architects, designers, media experts, artists, actors, stage directors, light engineers and, - consultants able to direct the entire production. The heritage "business" becoming complex in booming, will mean that the profile of new experts will form around the need. To remind ourselves, - the creativity here is double: that of performance (stage, script, dramatization) and that of effects (study of public and their needs, ways of mutual influence). Unlike the true theatre, heritage institution has to base its entire production upon scientific factography, but this isn't much of a difficulty once the dialog with the science is opened.

What heritage institutions perform is the transfer of wisdom, made possible through para-artistic quality of heritage communication. Even if compared to art it demonstrates some conspicuous similarities: the same source of inspiration (identity) the same capacity (creativity), the same method (interpretation) and the same quality objective (communication, as giving and taking). Since creativity means art and ethical standpoint, both mean responsibility. This position of serious partner able to request autonomous status from the state administration and ready to negotiate usable terms with corporate business is something that suggests a strong professional background. This, however, cannot be achieved without convincing and ambitious body of theory. It might have been ridiculous that only museum people and peasants had no any job training before starting to earn
their living from it, but it has become impossible to retain this curious luxury any more, - at least for museum people.    
Learning how to transform the immensity of past human experience into usable wisdom and learning why, how and to whom offer these glittering nuggets might comprise composing some Mnemosophy. According to the counter active satisfaction of any cybernetic thinking, the proposal makes sense even if it only corrects the present insufficiencies of the institutional field of heritage. 

by Tomislav Šola, 1995.
 

1. Neickelius, C.F. used the term "museographie" already in 1727, signaling <correctly its substance.
2. Stransky, Z. Zbynek used the term in his numerous texts upon the scientific <status of museology
3. What Mathilde Bellaigue calls "les grand etapes successives": Santiago de Chile, <Lourmarin, Le Creusot, Quebec.
4.  see the diagram No.1, explaining the "copernican" change by which the centre <of the theoretical speculation is not the museum institution but the concept of <heritage
5. The interpretation effort involved all secondary museum material (diorama, <models, charts, diagrams, illustrations, photography, informatic recording, audio-<visual information etc.). The need for the context and for the comparison (as <any instructive method would necessarily require) changed further the nature of <museum object towards ephemeral and ordinary.
6. In North America, where changes happen earlier, the theory seems to be <less important but the practice preceeds it well pushing towards the broader, <all embarcimg schemes; in U.S.A. Preservation Act (1966) was first of the <regulations that started the evolution: National Register of Historic Sites, <Advisory Council on Historic Places (1978), Heritage Conservation and <Recreation Service at the Department of Interior (showing thus the widening <tendency, both terminologically and finctionally); the same development, which is <topped by CHIN (Canadian Heritage Network) can be traced in Canada.  
7. In the last decade there is growing number of places where  professional <education (usually at post-graduate level) is offered cumulatively to the variety <of future professionals, from museums, art galleries, archives, historic sites, <libraries, interpretation centres heritage plannning groups and to those from <similar institutions: Advance Studies in Cultural Resource Management <(University of Victoria, Canada); Ecole du Patrimoine (France); Reinwardt <Academy (Netherlands); University of Zagreb (Croatia) etc.
8. That goes specially to heritage entertainment business, heritage parks, science <centres and alike which attract crowds of visitors and attract more easily public <and private funding.
9. The usual level of treating the theme is the professional conduct and <legislation; one could claim that all that would logically derive from ethical <understanding of the nature and role of the museum institution in the society. <For some novelties in this development see the book: Edson, Garry ed. <Museum Ethics, Routledge, 1995.  
10. Edson, Garry, from Texas Tech University is editing a book upon museum <ethics for Routledge of London
11. Toulmin,S., Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of <Concepts, Princeton University Press, Princeton N.J. 1972.
12. Storer, N.W. The Hard Sciences and the Soft: Some Sociological Observations, <Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 55, 33-52.
13. Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - An Inquiry <into Values. Bantam New Age Book, 1981. p.179 first published by William Morrow an Company, Inc. 1974. 
14. One exception, known to the author, is the science centre "Heureka" in <Finland and there might be some others in the science and technology sector, <but anything of the kind is hardly possible in other museums.
15. Šola, Tomislav. A contribution to a possible definition of Museology. A paper  <presented at ICOM/ICOFOM Symposium: "The system of Museology and <interdisciplinarity", Paris, 1982. The ethusiastic reaction came though from <G.H.Riviere. The main objections throughout the years were basically two: <linguistic clumsiness of the term and lack of any pragmatic relevance to the <museum profession (English disagreed, French refused, German never cared and <Americans saw no need for an applied science at all).
16. ecomuseology, new museology,  economuseology
17. Ewald Hering, German physiologist and psychologist (1834-1918); a very <inspirative and visionary author who wrote a book about a theory of memory, <regarding memory as "general function of any organized matter. In modern <technology of alloys, increasing the "memory" of material is actually acheiving <the extraordinary elasticity of these materials. It would be, therefore, normal to <use the analogy in its full capacity in the humanist field.
18. See page .... of this book for some further reflection upon values in <museums.
19. see the text re-printed in this book "The prologue to the cybernetic museum"; <"cybernetic museum" is part of my international lecturing from 1989, also <mentioned in some of my published texts; this analysis merits further research <beyond my amateurish try. 
20. Caroll, Lewis. as quoted in the paper by Frans Schouten