Heritage protection, technological culture and theoretical weakness

Abstract

In the last decades, the values that have guided traditionally the theoretical approach in the field of restoration (such as truth, beauty, authenticity, etc…) were more and more weakened. At the same time, the technical knowledge, traditionally seen as means to reach some goals conceived in a theoretical context, has had an impressive increase.  In the recent past, each one of the theoretical positions – such as conservation, restoration, re-use, renovation, etc – has bent technology to its ideas and has used the progress to reach its goals. However, now we have an inversion of trend: technology has corroded ideas and goals. As the philosopher Emanuele Severino has argued, the instruments which a man has, have the tendency to transform their nature: they turn from means into goals. Thanks to the capability to offer efficient and cost-effective solutions, technology has put theory into the background. Technology feeds on itself, generating needs that will be satisfied by further technological advances, while theory is suffering dramatically, as it is only able to rough out generic horizons. This paper proposes some reflections about the importance of integrating theory into the technological and scientific processes, in order to impose external restrictions related to ethics, authenticity and responsibility. 

Keywords: protection, heritage, theory, technique, restoration