In a recent exchange with Dennis Waring, he introduced us to the term organology. Sounds like it should be the study of organs (like what are inside plants and animals) or perhaps the kind you find with big pipes on them at the back of a church. But no! Dr. Waring provided us with this definition:

Organology: A subset of ethnomusicology including the deep study of all musical instruments within their historical, cultural, material, scientific (and whatever else) contexts and manifestations. A wonderful field of study.

It’s kind of related to ethnomusicology and acoustics in some ways. Via Wikipedia, the origin of the term comes from Greek: ὄργανον – organon, “instrument” and λόγος – logos, “study”. If you visit the Wikipedia page for organology you’ll find all kinds of interesting tidbits and links to relevant stuff—like the existence of Experimental Musical Instruments magazine published from 1985 to 1999. Sorry we missed that one at the time!

And, if you do your organology late at night, then you are lucubrating. There, you get two new words for the price of one (free). You know what? According to wiktionary.org organology is also the study of the organs inside plants and animals. But, we have a feeling that is a term not used much these days in biology or medecine.

The featured image is a sketch of the viola organista designed by Leonardo da Vinci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_organista