The defensio of the opus by the creator

I never wanted to make anything that should have been "useful" for the community in a sense of copious. Because, as already Adam Smith (1723-1790) noticed correctly, the work of the teacher, the microbiologist (physician) and the official is economically useful, but inefficient, since it does not flow into any physical product. It is not my intention that my realizations - whether creative ones nor adopted - have any interest for the commercial well-being of the community, and that my person thus may reach a purely the private sector of the economy serving, high employability. Although my wish is thus superficially superfluous, but perhaps it is a beneficial contribution to the aesthetic corporate feeling of the community and an essential factor for health maintenance of my physique and psyche. At this my wanting nothing will change presumably - despite or, more accurate, because of the in the meantime uncountable university - , study -, and science reforms I had the displeasure to experience within the time span of my apprenticeship. I helped to train other scientists, but with the intention to form scientists with a visio beatifica viri. In my opinion, this is the only way to deal honestly with science. Karl Popper (1902-1994) already stated that from a scientific-logical point of view it is a matter of pure convention what is allowed as an observation sentence. This results on the one hand in my refusal of the general acceptance of a possibility of recognizing an actual reality (= truth) and on the other hand the recognition that empirical sciences contain permanent self-deception. Because when applying consensually correct theories during observation, there is no difference between what experience shows and what is assumed by theory. What remains as a way out of this endless loop of illusion is the scientist's honesty as a yardstick for his scientific activity.

At least as far as I was allowed to train younger scientists, my instructions led to personally satisfying, but ostensibly economically useless activities. The reason is that nothing on earth is as cruel as the lost life of a Homo faber with its anhedonia and nothing is as humiliating as the pejorative verdict of the younger about the life's work of a mediocre natural scientist, ought to have justified authority, as eg the one over Herschel's opus. And nothing I abhor more than Francis Bacon's (1561-1626) delusion of a submission of pure science under the technical-​practical profit (Novum Organon) and its inevitably resultant parasitic manage­ment culture, which I never wanted to be a member of nor I ever was. Because I put to reason for my self-responsible actions the words of the Bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel Baron von Ketteler (1811-1877), who opined to the dictates of utility: "The principle of utility, that maxim of the lie that leads to the biggest self-deceptions, destroying the personal responsibility, honesty and justice; it undermines the conscience of the people completely, as man is more and more used to judge everything after that supposed benefit and not for truth and justice."

According to the current modish assessment yardsticks for a lifework in money terms the value of my scientific existence is equal to zero, and outside of the university teaching my working life is picayune anyway. I have only one chance to escape the judgement of perfect occupational triviality, and that is that the successors will concede having created something that was worth to be created. It is evident from the following explanations that I have created something. But, it remains open whether my opus holds any value able to be quantified in money - any prices have and had my oeuvre and my opera at no times and for nobody. This is my apologeticum auctoris for all of my working life - for my doings at the Universities, the extramural and the magisterial activities.

Name: Micro-Biology Consult Dr. Andreas Hassl Legal form: sole trading freelancer Company form: Self-Employment Enterprise balance sheet: not required metropolis: Vienna, Austria former branch offices: Gelsenkirchen, Gladbeck Ongoing business operation: since 1998 Sole Owner: Prof. Andreas Hassl, PhD Permanent employee: none Type of business: knowledge-based services Object of the enterprise: University education financing Accounting year: 01.01.2024 to 30.09.2024 VAT No.: UStfrei gem. § 6 Abs 1 Z 27 UStG Created value: 3 627 000

The conferment of the venia docendi and the commencement of a regular expertizing led to an increase in the number of demands for certificates and microbiological surveys. At the same time the basis of my, now autonomous expertizing, research and development in the field of hygiene related microbiology, diminished in quality and quantity at the University. For the beginning I took into account an autonomous, philanthropic funding of University-​based research; an intention I could not manage. Thus, the creation of a juridical correct framework for further self-responsible scientific, educational, and commercial operations became necessary. In 1998 the private office Micro-Biology Consult Dr. Andreas Hassl, an expert bureau, was consequentially established in Vienna. It is true that no rights, but primacy and the right to find a sympathetic ear in specific issues, can be derived from a founding myth, a ktisis.

The private office Micro-Biology Consult Dr. Andreas Hassl understands and understood itself as an enterprise with scientific tendency and with a non-exclusive earning animus for the purpose of a scientific and individual-educational activity. The bureau is and was completely independent of any persons or companies and it raised the financial resources for its activities from expertizing, investments, speculative assets in kind, and sales of products and expert opinions. Science is determined as any activity, which is directed toward the extension or systematic order of the knowledge material relevant for humans, exclusive with the help of such methods, which allow a falsification of a thesis. Only such methods are regarded as scientific methods by me. Thanks to the external basic funding, the link between the empirical-​analytical and the historical-​hermeneutical sciences (cit. Jürgen Habermas) is mentioned as the outstanding feature, which to establish the office tries pertinaciously. I believe that the scientific methods are also applicable in many, perhaps all, historical-hermeneutical sciences, as long as the underlying axioms of the science are not dogmas. The bureau processes problems of basic and of applied research, of education and administration of justice. The distinct branches were and are found in the creation of expert opinions and scientific attests about:

• The (micro-)biological evaluation of archaeological biofacts and their archeo­parasitological characteri­sations,
• the applied development of microbiological detection techniques,
• the establishment of culture and breeding techniques,
• the Hygiene-related Microbiology and Zoology,
• the Infectious Disease Ecology,
• the Conservation Medicine & Microbiology, and
• the debate and the interpretation of questions of law in connection with nature-, species- and animal protection and the generation of relevant transfer literature.