German Education Forum, 01 Documents of the time

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Documents of the Time

“University, Universality and Consciousness”

This e-mail was sent to all major universities worldwide

Harvard University
President
Prof. Lawrence H. Summers

Cambridge Massachusetts
USA

Dear Professor Summers,

About two years ago we approached approx. 2,000 university heads on an international scale on behalf of Peter Huebner, the classical composer and musicologist, with the following question:

“Dear Sir / Madam

We would like to ask you whether your university has knowledge of what the approximate percentage of intellectual capacity and /or brain capacity is that human being in general utilizes nowadays. We hope that you will be able to give us some information in this matter with the help of one or the other institute at your university.

We would very much appreciate a reply to this perhaps unusual but surely interesting question at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely
Micro Music Laboratories”

We received an enormous amount of different replies and you will find an assessment of these answers at the end of this e-mail.

Peter Huebner, the classical composer and musicologist, is now asking you through our channel - the Micro Music Laboratories -, whether you at your university take the aspect of “universality” in any way into special consideration: whether you teach universality as such in your faculties, that is to say whether you pass on the syllabus of the various faculties to your students as universal knowledge, or whether you have perhaps set up a separate faculty, which teaches universality as such.
And if not, whether you have ever contemplated equipping your faculties with universal knowledge, and/or working on such knowledge - as the term university, derived from the word universality, would actually suggest.

We are looking forward to your reply, also on behalf of Peter Huebner, the classical composer and musicologist.

Yours faithfully
Micro Music Laboratories
http://www.MicroMusicLaboratories.com

Appendix:

Assessment of the replies of the universities to our question on
intellectual capacity and brain capacity respectively.