Actually, the uke is equal tempered, not well tempered (though equal temperament is a specific form of well temperament). Well temperament means that some compromise pitch between enharmonic pitches (like #F and Gb) is chosen, allowing both to be played with the same key, fret or fingering. It does not imply that all semitone (or other) intervals are "the same size" (i.e. have the same frequency ratio between pitches), as in equal temperament. Even Bach's well-tempered keyboards were tuned in a manner that gave each scale a different sound; they weren't just frequency-shifted replicas, in the manner of modern keyboards (and ukes). His lutes, on the other hand, may well have been equal-tempered.
Unless it's a bass.
Whether such "sweetenings" are actually improvements on instruments designed for equal temperament (and only equal temperament) is highly dubious. I find that "sweetening" does more harm than good, particularly on ukes. But this has all been hashed out before, several times.
Or lowered. I was just reading today about tunings for lutes, vihuelas and the like. The author mentioned how many of the tunings were actually higher than those used nowadays. The vihuela, though mostly "matching" guitar tuning, was often tuned as much as a fourth higher than the modern guitar, the Renaissance guitar was mostly tuned about a third higher. Universal tuning standards had yet to be established, and tablature does not fix a key by itself—for instance, Luis de Milán simply directed that the top string be tuned as high as possible. But I realize the original article centers on more universal standardized pitches in more modern times, not on the insidious conspiracy to lower tunings on fretted instruments.
Maybe it's just that we live life at a higher, less relaxed frequency these days. Ironically, since we tend to be increasing in size, our voices have been lowering, so by all logic, reference pitches ought to be drifting down rather than up—so perhaps there is a conspiracy, and I suspect the Helium Consortium.*
Whatever the case, when I tried A=432, I found too much discord between my chi, my aura and the crystal pyramid vibrations, while my theta waves went totally epsilon, so I took some aspirin, did some yoga asanas in my magic underpants and returned to A=440. I think that answers the original question and, for me at least, debunks the theory that modern tuning is out of harmony with the cosmos. I'm more concerned with whether the reference pitch is in tune with power line frequencies and microwave signals, which surely have more effect on us than weak cosmic background noise from sources unimaginably distant.
* To avoid the spread of misinformation (and angry letters from Mrs Trellis of North Wales), I must mention that helium only changes vocal timbre, not pitch, but the popular belief is otherwise, and I didn't want to step on my own joke too soon. Similarly, to the best of my knowledge, the real HELIUM consortium has nothing at all to do with the controlled distribution of inert gases, apart from occasional bloviation.
