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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2016
Although museums of all kinds continue to proliferate, they have lost the capacity to generate big ideas that characterize epistemic shifts, such as evolution, the labour theory of value, or relativity. They have become mere echo chambers for ideas proposed elsewhere. How might museums regain their capacity to generate big ideas? The development of a Tangible Turn in scholarly thinking is leading to a reinvigoration of knowledge claims derived from material things. Museums are well placed to participate in such a reinvigoration, and in some instances – notably in the natural sciences – already are. Yet to do so they must overcome the taxonomic and systematic divisions that in the nineteenth century stimulated but now inhibit creative thinking. How can disciplinary ossification associated with collection definition be overcome? Two possible models are artists' interventions and arrangement according to philosophical principles, yet neither is sufficient. Curatorial scholars should acknowledge the physical and cultural instability of tangible things, and work with these properties to combine things in revelatory ways, eschewing stable categories. This can be accomplished most effectively in museums associated with universities through collaboration among the scholarly staffs of university collections and with university faculty.
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35 Any thorough exploration of this issue would have to take into account Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects, especially in the Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., Part II.
36 See http://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/.
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40 I should like to thank the organizers of the symposium at the University of Glasgow at which I presented an earlier version of this paper for the opportunity to participate: Anna Bergqvist, Victoria Harrison and Gary Kemp. I wish to acknowledge the support in the form of ongoing Research Associateships in North American Ethnography, and in Anthropology, respectively, at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. Philosophical and historical work is incremental, and incurs many debts. I should like to thank those who helped me in these efforts: Marie Luisa Allemeyer, Ulrike Beisiegel, Mungo Campbell, David Carrier, Sarah Anne Carter, Michael Conforti, Lisa Corrin, A.W. Eaton, David Gaimster, Martin van Gelderen, Samantha van Gerbig, Garry Hagberg, Sherri Irvin, Laurel Kendall, Ross MacPhee, Andreas Pantazatos, Jeffrey Quilter, Sara Schechner, Daniel Lord Smail, Sue Spaid, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Peter Whiteley. As always, Jane Whitehead is my most stringent critic to whom I owe the greatest debt, and the most thanks.