general, acquisition, conferences
Curators using their sense of touch
Continuing on Søren’s post (and Adam’s comment) and further on last week’s post about the short paper that Jan Eric Olsén and I gave at the Artefacts XII meeting at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology in Oslo, 17-18 September:
In the second part of the presentation we asked two participants to join us in a demonstration to illustrate the importance of touch. Here are some photos from the session.
To the left I explain the demonstration procedure to the audience while the two blindfolded volonteers (Gerard Alberts, Universiteit te Amsterdam, and Robert Bud, Science Museum, London) are waiting to give sensory evidence (Jan Eric stands in the background). On the table in the right picture you can see two of the enigmatic instruments: a rectoscope (ouch!) and a knee reflex hammer. Robert is holding a wooden stethoscop between his fingers (see next pic).
A close shot of Robert trying to describe the sensation of holding an approx. 1850 wooden stetoscope in his hands (he said it felt like something “plastic”):
This short, and of course not very systematic, semi-public demonstration suggests that curators use another, more emotional, vocabulary when they describe objects which they can perceive by means of the tactile sense only. For example, Gerard used the word “dangerous” to describe an artifical hip (not on the photo).
(Thanks to Frode Weium from the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology for providing the pics)
29 Sep 2007 Thomas
Thomas,
Judging from Robert’s performance, maybe we have to question how much time he has spent tending collections recently. Just kidding… However, do I think that collectors, curators, and other caretakers of artifact collections invariably acquire much tactile understanding and appreciation of objects. (An unexpectedly important personal preparatory experience for becoming a better curator was the summer job I had in a motorcycle shop while in college.) More important in my experience is the visual repertoire that technically- and artifactually-oriented persons carry around in their heads. I refer interested readers to the writings of Eugene S. Ferguson, specifically his classic article, “The Mind’s Eye: Nonverbal Thought in Technology,” Science, 197, 4306, 827-836, Aug 77, and Engineering and the mind’s eye (MIT Press, 1992).
Hi Jim, your experience from working in a motorcycle shop reminds me of another Robert, viz., Robert Pirsig and his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) (great book haven’t looked in it for 25 years!). Browsed around and found the following on www.robertpirsig.org:
“At a 1998 presentation in London for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Professor Harry Kroto unexpectedly spent his time elucidating the merits of meccano instead of discussing his recent Nobel award winning discovery of Carbon 60. His argument being that students require tactile experience to know when to stop tightening a screw and computer use alone doesn’t teach this. When asked at the end of the lecture, whether he had read Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM), Kroto replied: ‘Yes, and that’s what it’s all about!’”.
(I’ll look up Ferguson’s article and book)
Hi Thomas,
Pirsig’s book is an old favorite of mine, and of Gene Ferguson, too. Gene trained as an engineer at Carnegie Tech (Carnegie Mellon University today) in Pittsburgh before WWII and while still in school did a co-op stint at the Hoover (vacuum cleaner) Co., which he found invaluable for giving him hands-on real-world experience. Later, as an engineering school professor (before going over to the dark side of history and museums), he lamented that after graduation young engineers were customarily thrust into positions of responsibility without ever having been on the shop floor of a factory. The only thing worse was having to answer to business school grads who had no idea what the company actually made….
For more on Gene’s career and writings, see David S. Hounshell, Eugene S. Ferguson, 1916-2004. Technology and Culture - Volume 45, Number 4, October 2004, pp. 911-921
Gene’s Bibliography of the History of Technology (1969) is still worth a look after all these years, and The Early Engineering Reminiscences (1815-40) of George Escol Sellers (1965) captures the wondrous fledgling period of mechanical engineering like few other works.
Keep up the great work!
The Dark Side, hmm? — do you mean that historians of sci, tech and medicine are parts of an expanded Sith Order? Not a bad theory!