Murray (in Human Accomplishment) claims that knowledge of a field and judgement of the quality of items in that field follow each other. That’s testable.
What about this:
– Get a community sample.
– Divide into three groups.
– Teach group one about music, teaching group two about paintings and teach group three about chess (or nothing).
– Make a up a test of knowledge of the things taught to the groups.
– Make the groups evaluate a lot of items from the two areas: classical music and paintings. The items shud be unnamed, unknown to the people to begin with (except for chance happenings) and not covered in the teaching.
If Murray is right, we shud see that the higher knowledge group, i.e. the one that was taught about the relevant field, have different views what about items are good and are more in agreement.
The point of having three groups, is to see if there is a carry over effect from one aesthtic field to another (clas. music to painting and the other way around). The shud be no effect from chess theory.
