Ivory tower
The ivory tower is the metaphor of a spiritual place of seclusion and untouchedness from the world.
Origin of the term
It has its origin as an ivory tower in the biblical Song of Songs 7.5 EU : "Your neck is a tower made of ivory". Since ivory is considered a symbol of noble purity in the Christian tradition, the Virgin Mary is also invoked in the Lauretanian litany with the attribute "You ivory tower".
Today's common understanding of the ivory tower as an immaterial place of seclusion and untouchedness, where writers and scientists in particular reside, arose in Europe in the course of the 19th century . The earliest evidence can be found in the French literary critic and writer Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve around the middle of the 19th century, who aimed at a literary-critical description of a possible author's point of view with the talk of the ivory tower. In German usage, the ivory tower first appeared in this meaning at the beginning of the 20th century . In the 1950s and 1960s, it served in particular as a symbol of the need for reform at German universities . For example, the Association of German Student Associations put the 6th German Student Day in 1960 under the programmatic motto Farewell to the Ivory Tower .
Today's understanding of the term
Research and production of art in an ivory tower characterize an intellectual who lives solely for his task and does not care about the social consequences of his activity, but only searches for scientific and artistic truth. In his book Gegen den Strich, for example, Joris-Karl Huysmans describes the life of a degenerate aristocrat who retreats from society in a self-made ivory tower. The book is known as the “Bible of Decadence” (cf. also l'art pour l'art ). In this use, the expression mockery of a secluded scholar is mixed with admiration for a person who dedicates himself to a noble task (hence ivory ) with all his might .
Today the negative connotation of the term prevails. This refers to a habitus of experts, which consists in the fact that the extreme specialization prevailing within the disciplines does not want to be recognized as a communicative problem in relation to the outside world .
In simpler words: In many subject areas, their representatives have developed a highly specialized technical language that is barely or not at all understood by the uninitiated. Nevertheless, this technical language is then used in communication with the general public, although or precisely because you know that as an expert you are not understood in this way. Rather, the fact that even an above-average educated citizen cannot necessarily understand the subject area in question through the specialized special language is accepted as an inevitable - sometimes also a welcome fact. The search for communicative solutions to overcome communication problems between science , experts and society is either rejected or corresponding proposals are dismissed as inferior with the argument “popular science presentation”. This phenomenon is particularly harshly criticized in medical language , whose expression, which is often hostile to patients, according to RM Epstein, is seen as a major cause of the lack of compliance with therapy and a. interpreted as medical vanity, inability to communicate or the need for professional separation from the patient ( see also paternalism ).
The so - called self - referentiality is also associated with the ivory tower, i.e. the attempt to name sources and references as an objective underpinning of the point of view, which in the end come directly or indirectly from one's own pen.
Contributions to the debate
- Heiko Eckard: The Secret of the Ivory Tower: Stories on the History of Philosophy . 2005.
- Jean Lindemann: News from the ivory tower. 52 essays on the natural sciences. 1998.
- Jens Radü: Watchdog in an ivory tower: Investigative science journalism as a possible control body for the science system . 2008.
- In Michael Ende's The Neverending Story , the ivory tower is the place where the Childlike Empress Fantasia lives.
- Peter Handke : I am a resident of the ivory tower . Collection of articles, 1972.
- Herbert W. Franke : The ivory tower, 1965.
- Res Jost : The fairy tale of the Ivory Tower . In: Lecture Notes in Physics . Volume VIII, Springer, Heidelberg 1995, ISBN 3-540-59476-0 .
- Erwin Panofsky : In defense of the ivory tower . In: The Centennial Review , Volume 1, No. 2, 157: pages 111-122.
- Erwin Panofsky : In defense of the ivory tower. In: Der Architektur-Rabe (Der Rabe No. 41), Zurich 1994, pp. 147–155 [first. approx. 1957].
- Boris Spix: Farewell to the ivory tower? Political behavior of students 1957–1967 , Essen 2008. ISBN 978-3-89861-966-0 .
- Association of German Student Associations (ed.): Farewell to the ivory tower. 6th German Student Day Berlin 4.-8. April 1960 , 2 volumes (preparatory reader and documentation), Bonn 1960/61.
See also
literature
- Steven Shapin : The Ivory Tower. The History of a Figure of Speech and its Cultural Uses . In: British Journal of the History of Science 45, 2012, H. 1, pp. 1–27.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ RM Epstein: Physician self-disclosure in primary care visits . Arch Intern Med 167, 2007, pp. 1321-6.