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  • Writer's pictureTomislav S. Šola

Mnemosophy, - Memory as Wisdom


Knowing that theory counts, museum curators spent a century trying to allocate a proper name to it. Still now, many think that Museology is a science of museums. The social psychologist Kurt Lewin said: "If you want truly to understand something, try to change it". As a curator I have tried to change museums. Being Professor of Museology, I have tried to change curators. Therefore, I have learned a lot. Yet, change can be produced only if we finally understand that we are but an occupation within a grand emerging profession, - that of public memory. Any profession is backed by its proper science.

Knowledge is but a raw, building material: its excess can even be a problem and its irresponsible use even a peril. When filtered to its responsible, ethically grounded values, knowledge becomes wisdom (sophia). It is the wisdom, not knowledge that we have to substitute into the formula of sustainable development so that it could finally function. So, we are not after any memory (mneme) and surely not (as it is the case) after oceans of it, but the one that has the quality of wisdom. That is the concept for the science to be built upon.

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