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British Journal for the History of Science
Following the Darwinian approach, which describes a form in nature as the functional adaptation to its environment at a given time, I will explore the development of museums and collections of science as an expression of their function in historical and social context. This approach allows us to establish a classification of scientific museums where features like owner, user, role and use of the object and its social, cultural and intellectual environment act as discriminating factors. This approach may stimulate discussion about how a museum of science could develop to remain attuned to the characteristics and demands of its specific environment, and hence prove to be viable.
2010 •
Following the Darwinian approach, which describes a form in nature as the functional adaptation to its environment at a given time, I will explore the development of museums and collections of science as an expression of their function in historical and social context. This approach allows us to establish a classification of scientific museums where features like owner, user, role and use of the object and its social, cultural and intellectual environment act as discriminating factors. This approach may stimulate discussion about how a museum of science could develop to remain attuned to the characteristics and demands of its specific environment, and hence prove to be viable.
Journal of the History of Biology
Essay review: Museums: Revisiting sites in the history of the natural sciences1995 •
I reflect on the significance of the momentous historical changes that, over the last half century, have taken place in the New York Museum of Natural History, transforming it from its claim, as an institution devoted to the natural sciences, to possess an absolute knowledge of its objects—objects encased and entombed, to be viewed in passive wonderment. No longer conveying the uncanny feeling of a mausoleum filled with embalmed animals, prehistoric fossils, and eternally cold minerals, or the equally intimidating impression of a cathedral for the worship of a system of total objective knowledge organized into immutable classificatory nomenclatures and orders, the new, contemporary Museum, no longer drawing us only into the past but getting us engaged in the present and the future, invites its visitors to venture into a realm of ceaseless learning, interacting with its exhibits and its knowledge, in explicit recognition of the incompleteness and fallibility of that accumulated knowledge. This encouragement of interaction, the correlate of a new paradigm of the rationality of science, a new paradigm, in fact, of knowledge, truth, and reality, emphasizing the place and the role of the human being within the natural world, is the great virtue of the new Museum. It brings natural history to life. And, most importantly, it teaches the proximate consequences of our actual and virtual interactions, always reminding us that there is much we still do not understand and know. But despite these limitations, despite the finitude of earth and world, the contemporary museums of natural history do not at all encourage a mood of melancholy, despair, and fatalism. Without any temptation to embrace the triumphalism of the past, these museums communicate a measured hope for the future, still believing the claim of the Enlightenment, that it is in a greater knowledge of nature that mythic fate will be overcome and our best hope for surviving the destructive forces in natural history will be found.
Museum and Society, vol 6(2), pp. 152-171
"From Natural History to Science: Display and the Transformation of Museums of Science and Nature"2008 •
This paper explains how and why many American museums of science and nature moved away from the traditional content and methods of natural history in the period from 1930 to 1980. It explores diverse motivations for the shift from dead, stuffed displays to live, interactive exhibits, and the consequences of that shift for museums as both educational institutions and as institutions of research. Ultimately, it argues that debates over museums’ content and display strategies drew strength from and reinforced a profound transformation in the institutional history of twentieth-century American science and technology: namely, the separation of research and public education. By the late 1960s, the American museum landscape had been transformed by this development. Older natural history museums competed for visitors and resources with ‘new’ style science museums, and although both remained popular cultural institutions, neither had achieved a coherent new institutional identity because debates about the role of the museum in science continued. Thus, we suggest, in the mid-twentiethcentury natural history and science museums were more important in both the history of biology and the history of science’s public culture than has previously been acknowledged.
The museum is no longer just a space for reflection and wonder. It is beginning to take on the appearance of a laboratory. As such, it goes beyond a strictly educational scope and embraces other forms of participation by specialists as well as by artists and the public, all of whom find in it a place in which to share experience and knowledge. All this enhances the museum experience and takes to a whole new level. By fomenting creativity, the museum also becomes a creator of new forms of interaction and experimentation, while opening up multiple viewpoints. The end of an era is beginning -- an era based on a nineteenth century matrix that envisioned the museum as a set of disconnected boxes. Many people are hoping this is so.
Journal of Information & Systems Management
The Study of the Video Games’ Impact on Human Psychology2020 •
Quarterly Journal of Speech
White intransigence and the radical rhetoric of Blacks fighting back2024 •
International Journal of Academic Research in Business & Social Sciences
Exploring Online Learning Motivation among Undergraduates Through Social Cognitive Theory2021 •
Revista de Salud Pública
Prevalencia de bullying y factores relacionados en estudiantes de bachillerato de una institución educativa de Cali, Colombia, 20112014 •
Jurnal Sosial, Politik dan Budaya (SOSPOLBUD)
Politik Dunia Arab Klasik dan Modern: Studi Kasus Kepemimpinan Ibnu Saud dan Husni Mubarak2013 •