Field Week 1 responses -sm

1. Everyone was allowed to view the collection if they could pay too. This was unique to the time time but I wonder how in practice it really played out. In theory - it is great and beautiful that it was open to all in such a time, but only certain classes had money to spend on entertainment and or education.

It was known as the ark by the owners because it was this vessel that held all of the worlds unique wonders, much like the idea of Noah's Ark in the readings previous in this semester of the zoo. The zoo holds onto things that may not be valued and/or respected in the hands of society and/or in the wild.

2. The Wunderkammer is more than a souvenir case of a circus show, although its should be dismissed that it can be that only to some. For the owner of the Wunderkammer, the collection shows society their wealth as well as intellect and compassion for  the preservation of history of sacred objects of nature as well as man-made objects. The Dawn of Zoology reading references the same time in history 17th century by presenting German naturalist Jacob Thomasius and his work on the mole. In his book he presents every aspect of the mole without ever reaching a conclusion. I feel like the Wunderkammer and natural history museums of today do this also. They all don't directly add to the the store of knowledge in a traditional way that draws conclusion, but in a way that allows for reference and reflection - a way which I, I would guess many others, and the case of Thomasius, Aristotle's followers - really didn't understand. The ability for collectors and museums to do this "imposed an order on the natural world…collecting and controlling material objects was not and end in itself, but an integral part of a continuing process of self-discovery" - from Cabinet to Museums

3. Tradscant's collection leaned towards strange objects both man-made and nature-made. Dion's cabinets seem to have more of a theme. The Dion cabinets try to, as I mentioned above in Answer #2, do what the Tradscant's collection does not, and that is to draw conclusions and make more direct knowledge from categorization that is displayed to the public.


4. The wonder cabinet and the natural history museum differ today because now it is used for scientific research and education whereas before it was used more for entertainment and a way of placing ones self in the world. I think in the current day we do not see museum, or at least to the same degree, as a place we go to in order to place ourself in the universe.

 I didn't realized natural history museums did so much. Why Museums? sort of blew my mind because of this. I particularly liked the example on Agriculture that speaks about the role of the museum in knowing when pest, pathogens, and vectors were introduced to a crop. I thought of this idea in the way we back-up our computers in order to preserve our files and to see what point in time x went wrong. I also thought the idea of flu that was talked about in the article was close in ideology of agriculture. The flu carried by birds from the museum was compared with tissue samples of infected in humans in order to trace its origins. I wonder if researchers and doctors are using the collection currently to determine the origins of flu throughout mosquitos, birds and livestock.