Off To

I was photographing this polar bear in the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History (a staple of these museums; doesn't this one look like he belongs in Scooby-doo?) when I noticed the family nearby was testing out different gloves in ice water to see how polar bear fat keeps them warm. I wanted to try, but I find doing such things alone in museums kind of awkward. Them: "So, why are you visiting today?" Me: "Oh, I study you guys for a living." Then I do my best "researcher squint."

As I made my way on, I overheard the museum staffmember ask the family a question. I was curious, so I listened: 

On average, how many penguins can a polar bear eat in a day?

What do you think? Got an answer? Good.

Here's a thing about me: I love questions. They're such powerful tools for rejiggering your thinking or illuminating a point. A well-formed qeustion is half-solved. I forget who said that. One of the coolest things I picked up a few years ago was The Interrogative Mood: A novel? by Padgett Powell. It's nothing short of brilliant. 

So questions shock thoughts because we assume there's an answer. I explored this in the Race exhibit. There the exhibit started off with the basic question: What is race? And because we're conditioned to answer with something substantial, something definitive, when the exhibit responds with "Race is a social construction," we find that the question wasn't entirely honest. Yet the experience is powerful, for it clarifies something fundamental about what race really is. "Is" here denotes being, existence, core features; "social construction" denotes just the opposite.

So, how many penguins can a polar bear eat (on average) in a day?

The answer, of course, is zero. Polar bears live in the arctic, penguins in the antarctic. I would argue (because this is what happened to me) that being tricked by such a question creates a more memorable experience. It is much more memorable, I believe, than questions like: "Where do polar bears live?" or "Where do penguins live?" or some other exhibit prompt. The experience of being set up to fail helps us remember important geographic knowledge. 

What's the rhetoric of trick questions? And how can I use them more often in my teaching to provoke, shock, and promote learning?

This example, from the first section of Ocean in Paris, does a nice job of showing why excellent exhibits are based on excelent technical writing skills. This is why museums should take our discipline seriously and why our discipline should continue to take seriously the communication practices of museum exhibits.

I spent a surprising amount of time in graduate school concerned with an odd question: What's the scientific status of archaeology? The question emerged because of my work with the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk exhibit at the SMM, an exhibit on the post-modern archaeological methods ongoing in Turkey. My argument then and now is that the representation of archaeology in this exhibit — of the cultural and social approach to thinking about what archaeology does and knows — is one of the most sophisticated pictures of science I've seen in a museum. But was this kind of archaeology really science? Is a post-modern, post-structuralist anthropologically infused archaeology that goes post-post-process a good example of the scientific method? Simple answer: Yes, because it's put on display in a science museum. 

Now that I've visited too many science and natural history  museums to count, I continue to be surprised at the way archaeology is used to set up the basic ideas of science. It seems that the drama of digging, finding, collecting, cataloguing, and inferring things based on evidence is an efficient way to capture science as a way of looking and thinking. (See forthcoming post on archaeology at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History.)

So it wasn't really a surprise to see the open diorama of an archaeological site as the starting point and centerpiece of the Creation Museum's route (read: tightly controlled argumentive pathway).

Because I honestly don't feel equipped to really tear down the museum's approach here, let me describe what it does and what it means. 

The key move in this opening section is to put science and religion on the same footing: both begin with assumptions and both lead to different conclusions. What's fascinating is the use of this very traditional diorama and an appeal to "nature" to make this case. The main panel here states,

Dinosaur fossils don't come with tags on them telling us how old they are, what they ate, or how they died. We have to figure that out from a few clues we find.

On its face, this seems a rather nice way to introduce visitors to the scientific method, for it gets right to the heart of the problem of science: making inferences about things in the natural world based on signs and evidence. 

Just as the first two sentences here capture the foundations of scientific thinking, the next one subtly undermines it: "But because we never have all the evidence, different scientists reach very different conclusions, depending on their starting points."

But does this undermine a scientific worldview? After all, we never have all the evidence — that's why science never stops, and it's true that different scientists work with different assumptions and, as a result, come to different conclusions. The history of science — if viewed through the lens of Kuhn's paradigms — is exactly this shifting of assumptions. So there's nothing in this panel that's problematic. Place it in a museum on the historical development of science — one that explained Kuhn's paradigm shifts — and it'd be a sophisticated way to engage the visitor. In short, then, this can be viewed as a very scientific opening, because it takes seriously a fundamental problem in the theory of scientific knowledge: how do we know from the evidence we see?

In the context of the larger museum, however, it does something else. Instead of setting the visitor up for an historical discussion of the development of science, this panel creates the provokes the level of doubt — what can science really know and can it be trusted?  But the devious use to which this set-up is put isn't clear initially, at least not as clear as it will be later. Other panels in this room carry the theme, using evidence from the present to raise questions about the past. And this seems honest. For example, look at how the fossil of Lucy (Australopithecus) is introduced:

Again, this is not atypical, and if I found it in another museum, I'd praise it for the way it gets to the key questions and sets up  a discussion of how science knows. 

But the purpose of the set up is quickly made clear. It boils down to this question: which starting point would you rather rely on, fallible man or infallible God? 

Perhaps going out on a limb, but anyone attuned to a religious worldview — and probably  many who aren't — wouldn't choose to turn down the starting point of an infallible, omniscient being. Absolute ertainty is, after all, very comforting.   But the same appeals to "evidence" in this opening section quickly go out the window. We are not allowed to ask any questions about the evidence for God. We can't ask, for instance, "What do we know about God?" and we can't make parallel statements like "Evidence for God's existence doesn't come with tags" or even "But because the bible can be interpreted differently, different people reach very different conclusions based upon what they start with and what they include." There's a lack of symmetry here that's dishonest, which is where I get hung up. Science has no problems thinking about and honestly presenting its own epistemological hangups. It thrives on this. But you can't apply a deep skepticism to science and then let it go when you turn toward another way of looking at the world. The assumptions, in a sense, aren't equal. But the museum wants to make them so.

Why are there different views about the age of dinosaurs?

It all comes down to starting points: Where would you rather start?

This picture, I have to admit, isn't wrong. This is exactly why there are "different views." But the interrogation of both those views must be given the same airing. And if they're not, then this is dishonest and dangerous. It's an application of valuable critical thinking (how does science know?) to one side of the equation but not the other. It's the application of two standards. This is why it's not symmetrical. 

This exhibit, then, leverages the scientific drama of digging up dinosaur bones to go deep, hitting on the core problem separating a creationist view from science. It's a highly effective way to set the scene. Incredulity established, you won't be surprised where the exhibit goes next.

Dinosaurs! (technically outside the museum, but it is the first "museumy" thing visitors encounter. The dinosaur appeal never fails.)

Control! Authority! Check yer t-shirts!

Religion!

And these together preview the false natural history, the assertion of authority, and the selective nature of the museum's religious content. 

Introduction

With entrepreneurship and innovation continuing to serve as key terms for the second decade of the twentieth century (see Obama's 2012 State of the Union address), it is no surprise that universities and colleges have embraced this momentum, with programs and courses popping up at institutions across the country. Within this growing educational movement, the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN ) has set itself apart by securing an important niche establishing and promoting an entrepreneurial mindset among future engineers. The KEEN model recognizes that not everyone should or will become entrepreneurs. It is a model that results in a sophisticated, real-world cultivation of innovators across a wide spectrum of industry and skill levels.  

The KEEN model is also well positioned to take advantage of the expanding interdisciplinary movement in higher education. Most entrepreneurship programs exist in specific departments, offer courses, minors, majors, and certificate programs that reach only those students who choose to pursue a specific path. KEEN's goal of infusing the principles of entrepreneurship through wide-scale curricular reform recognizes that "innovation occurs at the intersection of disciplines" (Kriewall 16). By extending the principles of entrepreneurship across the university experience, KEEN's model harnesses the interdisciplinary power of inherent in the entrepreneurship experience produces graduates prepared to innovate.

However, KEEN's interdisciplinary approach has a distinct challenge. Unlike entrepreneurship programs housed in local departments, KEEN's goal of curricular reform does not come ready-made with faculty, champions, and the prestige and power of institutional spaces. This flexibility allows KEEN to have wide-reaching influence, but to achieve its goal, it also requires a degree of disciplinary buy-in not required when entrepreneurship has a formal location and departmental mandate. In short, KEEN's model requires commitment and support from departments and faculty members who might not identify with the principles of entrepreneurship. Often, that problem of buy-in can manifest as active resistance. While these challenges can emerge from a  variety of places in the university, because these principles threaten to shift the pedagogical value of their courses and programs, one of the most challenging academic audiences to win over are those faculty in the humanities and liberal arts.

The Sources of the Challenge

KEEN itself has recognized this problem. In the flagship article of its journal JEEN, Kriewall and Mekemson admit that "KEEN leaders have run into strong resistance from key campus constituents" (15). While Krewall and Mekemson do not indicate the specific source(s) of this resistance, my experience as a part of the KEEN initiative at Kettering University has indicated that a portion of that resistance comes from faculty in the liberal arts.  The challenge of integrating the humanities in general is also indicated by the general lack of voices from the liberal arts in the pages of JEEN (The Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship) and at KEEN's national conference, the outlier being MSOE's presentation there in January of 2012. 

The source of the resistance to KEEN's curricular mission can be located in two places, one general, one more specific. First, is the general resistance to the economic hyper-pragmatism of business and entrepreneurship that has begun to pervade higher education. There is a very real concern that the economic model (paired with the "student as consumer" model) fundamentally alters the nature of the educational experience. Thus, KEEN's attempt at curricular reform embodies a larger cultural shift in higher education that many who remain committed to the traditional, civic-minded goals of a liberal education actively resist. Importantly, though it might find its strongest source of resistance there, this reaction is not limited to departments in the liberal arts. 

But the challenge of buy-in among faculty in non-technical fields is not solely a result of individual mindsets, commitments to the liberal arts ideal, or political and economic outlooks. The second problem with securing commitment to the KEEN mission is found within within the mission itself. Even though Kriewall and Mekemson recognize the interdisciplinary nature of entrepreneurship and admit that those in non-engineering fields "have much to offer to the entrepreneurial mindset," KEEN's stated "Attributes of an Entrepreneurial Mindset" fail to reflect or make clear room for the contributions other departments might make (16).        

The most obvious attributes in KEEN's list relevant to faculty in the humanities include items like tolerance for ambiguity, leadership, ability to resolve conflict, altruism, prescience, creativity, maintain high ethical standards. Each of these can be fostered by courses in fields like history, sociology, literature, philosophy, rhetoric and composition, political theory, among others. But there are two problems. The first is that these attributes are not distinctly linked to the humanities, which means that KEEN does not meet those faculty half-way. Because all of the above attributes can be conveyed in technical as well as non-technical courses, KEEN has failed to recognize the specific and unique contribution from the faculty in the humanities. As a result, those faculty must accommodate course themes and assignments to a set of goals that aren't a clear fit. This is exacerbated by the second problem, which is that those attributes are framed under headings like "Business Acumen" or "Understanding Customer Needs," a framework which quickly becomes unpalatable to faculty who wish to explore the way story-telling creates a shared vision or who wish to encourage students to tolerate ambiguity, but not simply (or even primarily) for shortsighted, economic reasons. 

Perhaps the most glaring instance of this is the role KEEN grants communication in the list of attributes. The importance of communication to a successful entrepreneur cannot be overstated, and yet writing, speaking and listening skills have been collapsed into a single item, with technical, economic, and business attributes comprising the majority. Communication faculty — many of whom already appeal to the practical value of their courses to engineering and business students — will be glad to find their discipline valued here. But by collapsing three skills into one item, KEEN does not afford them the respect or the space they deserve. After all, listening, writing, and speaking are at least as distinct as design synthesis, design characterization, and design verification, but these last three listed separately, which grants them an emphasis not given to the distinct communication skills. So not only do some non-engineering faculty initially resist incorporating principles of entrepreneurship into their courses, they will also have a difficult time time seeing how what they do is truly valued within the KEEN framework. This is true even where the humanities faculty can find what they do in the list of attributes. Thus, because KEEN has yet to fully recognize the potential of their unique contribution and make room for it, faculty in the humanities must contort themselves to fit a series of goals that are not their own. 

Fortunately, KEEN's interdisciplinary approach is flexibile enough to address these challenges. My task in this article, then, is two-fold. First, by drawing on research relevant to a number of non-technical fields, I intend to demonstrate the ways in which scholarship in the humanities and liberal arts enriches understandings of entrepreneurship. The purpose here is to show how KEEN's learning objectives can be extended to reflect and make room for that contribution. Second, I will then describe how KEEN's recognition of that contribution can be used as an appeal to faculty who might not see how their work or courses are relevant to entrepreneurship. To do this, I will be drawing from my experience at Kettring University, both as a communications and liberal arts faculty member and as a participant in our KEEN initiative. 

The foreman met me at the gatehouse. Mike, short with a mustache and an air of quiet annoyance, probably thinking "Another college kid…" He escorted me past the fence and into the choking and fuming and looming foundry. From the streets on the other side of these buildings — the streets in pristine Kohler, WI — you'd never know the grime and machines and noise was there. The ivy covered walls of the foundry on that side seemed civilized. On the other side, it was 5 a.m. late May. Still dark for another hour. This place, though, was alive. I was walking into a hell. 

Gear

Inside, I was assigned a lock and a brown mesh metal locker among banks and banks of the same. Mike handed me a generic pair of striped blue and grey coveralls, fire retardant, never to be worn twice. As I put on my coveralls and black boots with protective metal tongue that covered the laces, Mike attached the mesh face protector to a bright smooth blue hard hat. Then he set it on my head, adjusted it, and told me to never take it off up on deck. Next came a pair of tough leather gloves, dark as night sunglasses, and a black respirator. Change the filters every day, he said. New filters are up on deck. New gloves and earplugs, too. 

Orientation

Down and I was quickly lost. Rumbling, rolling machines muffled overhead contrasted the silent, dusty conveyer belts we passed below. Up again, and the din. Huge open spaces; bags on pallets; small carts shuttling back and forth; men arms white setting bricks in a new kiln; yellow lights sharply indicating just how much it wasn't day yet. Then quiet again as we entered the foreman's office. Nothing stuck in this 30 minute tour through a rule and regulation book. But the notion of "confined spaces" set my imagination awhir. I had no clue what my job entailed — I was going to be slagging and charging furnaces; driving a crane, and filling ladles; sweeping and sitting. But this notion of confined spaces, together with my new getup, made me feel like I was heading down a coal shaft, to a place where I'd not be able to stand up or turn around or exit as quickly as I might want. (Later, as a teacher of technical communication, I wish I could return to this moment and review what that manual said.) The deck held no real confined spaces, so the emphasis, in retrospect, was a distractor. I'd rather have learned any one step in the protocols I was about to experience.

Deck

Back into the yellow light, we made our way past three huge holding furnaces, past faceless men in respirators and sunglasses whose stares seemed immediately menacing. Judging, with no personality, like automatons in matching gear. I was staring right into my own face — shielded everywhere, only our height and weight set us apart. The deck was upstairs, and the men on my first shift crew were already slagging furnaces. They turned in unison to look at me — the college kid coming to inconvenience their system. Suddenly, loud and indecipherable, "Charge George" echoed over the intercom, and the men turned back, moving to another furnace to take up position. 

I was taken through the bathroom, past the Gatorade station, and into a back room where I added earplugs to close off the last of my sensory systems. I now couldn't see (sunglasses), couldn't hear (ear plugs), couldn't talk (respirator), and couldn't feel (gloves). And the early summer heat was just beginning.

Slagging and Throwing

My first skill was learning to slag. The furnaces had three stages — Charging, Throwing, and Slagging — after which half the iron would be poured out and the process would begin again. Charging meant dumping in fresh iron or pig iron, adding to the molten mix already in the furnace. Throwing meant tossing different amounts of pyrite, carbon, and silicon (in 25 lb bags) into the furnace to get the chemistry right. Slagging meant raking the unmoltenable gunk that floated on top of the molten iron into a slag cart. 

Two men worked either side of a long rake, moving in unison forward and back to pull the dark, dirty slag out of the furnace. Without voices, you coordinated the rake in silence, maneuvering it to this side then this corner of the furnace without conversing. Someone led this dance. The frustration the other men felt slagging with me, the new kid, was never spoken aloud. But it emanated, through glances, nods and shakes of the head, and shifts in the body. I wasn't welcome here. 

After slagging, I watched as the men poured out the furnace. Then we were onto the next task. The control tower, which stood above and behind us, opposite the furnaces, directed us to one of the five furnaces — Delta, Easy, Fox, George, and Hotel. Pick one. It needed bags of carbon to correct the chemistry. The control tower code indicated which furnace, then gave the numbers and types of bags. We lined up. One man picked up the bag and slung it to me. I turned, carrying his momentum, and threw it into the furnace. 

Splash! Not sparks but droplets of molton iron arced up and everywhere. I scoot quickly away. Dumb. A mistake. My first real sense that the danger here is real. 

Randy, my throwing partner, lowers his respirator and yells: "Not IN the furnace, slide it off the edge so it doesn't splash!" Though he has to repeat it three times, I do not make this mistake again. 

I don't yet realize how many of these rules are not in the orientation or the manual; they're idiosyncratic, not only to the deck, but to each activity and to each of the five furnaces. I don't yet know that most days I won't talk more than five minutes over my eight hour shift. I will eat alone, work in dim silence, make no friends here. I will learn that each of these tasks is easy but incredibly stressful. I will learn the meanings of all the secret chalk marks and blue lights. And I will learn when to disregard their obvious meanings. I will be shunted away in the crane until I screw up and overflow the holding furnace. I will cry. I will nearly knock over a forklift. I will crawl inside a furnace and brush its new, white brick interior. I will get burned, scarred, and singed. I will wake up every morning with fingers tightly clenched, fingers that pop open, individually and painfully, as I work them back into place. I will do this for two summers. But I don't know any of this yet. 

It was only day one. 

The final section of Ocean presents six scenarios, each from a different area of the earth that will be affected by the changing ocean. These areas include: the Mediterranean, the Arctic, the Netherlands, Senegal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. In each case, a general framing of the issues precedes a five minute "travel diary." Let me try to capture one of these experiences.

The Mediterranean

"Abundant, densely populated and at very low altitude, the western part of the French Mediterranean coast is also facing problems of erosion and submersion which could be compounded by rising sea levels. Recent storms have raised awareness of the risk. Will we be able to take the necessary sustainable measures?"

The following panel precedes three of the travel diary videos (the Maldives, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic):

Assessing Vulnerabilities 

"Geographically speaking, deltas, coral reefs, low-lying coastal zones and artic regions are facing the biggest threat. But the vulnerability of a territory also depends on its economic, social and political situation and therefore its capacity to adapt. Discover the strengths and weaknesses of some of the world's regions."

Another three are preceded by this panel (Bangladesh, Netherlands, Senegal):

How can we adapt?

"Building dykes, moving further inland, changing the economy? Local solutions will be as diverse as the situations. A global strategy could also be necessary with, for instance, mutual aid and insurance on a planetary scale. A prospect which raises the question of global governance."

As indicated by these brief panels, the scope and implications for adapting are global in scale. 

The five minute video in the Mediterranean case works like this. You sit down and the mayor of a coastal town in the Languedoc addresses you as someone who wishes to build a housing estate. The mayor is considering your request for a permit and is offering some feedback on the risks and problems your request raises. 

The mayor describes the low-lying geography of the area and indicates that this already fragile landscape is threatened by rising sea levels. He acknowledges that "the experts don't all agree", but still states, "it is predicted that the sea will rise between 40cm and 1 metre in the next 100 years." 

The mayor then provides an example (with photos) of how recent storms have made it clear that the coastline is at risk. He appeals directly to your experience as a housing developer: "If the coast was deserted that wouldn't raise any major problems and we could just adopt a 'laissez-faire' approach. But that isn't the case. And you are well placed to know it." 

Finally, after acknowledging there are unpopular solutions (like move housing and infrastructure back from the coast) and expensive solutions (like breakwaters) he comes to his final appeal:

"What's certain is that if we want to preserve the beauty of our region, if we want tourism which is the foundation of our economy to flourish, we must contain the erosion and maintain the coastline to avoid flooding. We must work together, politicians, business people, citizens, to find sustainable solutions."

In the end, the goal was a consensus and a partnership. THe mayor seeks accord. It becomes clear that the Mayor's goal was to convince you to alter your request — essentially, he's made a case turning down your request as it stands. But he would like to work together: "In any case, I suggest we meet up to discuss a solution for your housing estate. In fact, wouldn't it be better to build it inland rather than by the sea? I ohpe to see you soon in our delightful village."

The other videos are similar, though the visitor plays a different roles. The other two cases I have collected have you addressed as "professor."  

Like some of the interactives in Atmosphere (and distinct from the voting section at the HMNH), these well-produced videos are quite effective at creating a situation in which you sink into a particular roles, thinking through the complexity of a situation from the perspective of someone in the know. This allows the exhibit to make a stronger case — the individuals on the screen represent their countries, and so they're not expected to be neutral. And because the scene is set so that you're seeking information for some purpose, the focus is narrow enough to be dramatic and yet wide enough to allow for a wide range of relevant facts.

While each video captures the way that these geographic areas must adapt, they each end on a positive note, indicating how that adaption will make it possible to sustain the area into the future. 

This is a tempered optimism. In each case, the real impacts of climate change on ocean and coastal regions is already happening. And in each case, the expectation is that it will get worse. Yet, even so, the videos embrace adaptive practices that give hope to a world in which climate change can be successfully managed, even if that process requires the willing participation of large organizations and the willpower of stakeholders who may have to act against their wishes. 

Compared to Atmosphere, Ocean is a serious, sober look at global climate change. The playful, near-cartoonish games found in the London exhibit are missing here. And while Ocean creates a powerful, immersive environment, there's something tame, reduced, or controlled about it. Perhaps it's a result of the exhibit's more controlled pathway through three areas. But I think the color palate, font choices, and tone also contribute. This is not a "fun" gallery. 

This sobriety is found most clearly in the exhibit's fatalism, something that seems rare in science museums and science centers. Unlike other exhibits, Ocean is much more assertive about the existence and effects of global climate change. The first line of the opening panel does not hedge: "It's a fact, climate change due to human activities is under way." But it's not just that climate change is underway, it's that (also from the opening panel) "we must anticipate and, in order to adapt, it is better to understand the ocean and its role in the climate so we can identify applicable solutions acceptable to the populations at risk."

Adaptation — how we can manage the effects of climate change — is the exhibit's final message. This is not about preventing sea change — we are not admonished to adapt technologies or practices that might yet prevent a warming ocean. To carry this message, the arc of the exhibit walks us through the role of the ocean in the climate, how the ocean changes in response to the warming climate, and what we can do in the future to manage its effects. There's something a little depressing about this way of talking that is not present in the other two exhibits. At the HMNH there was a lot of certainty about the facts of climate change, but there was still a sense that we could skip the most dire consequences if we adopted choices now. The final video implied as much. In a different way, Atmosphere's playful, open experience allows visitors to construct their own messages about a variety of facets of climate change, but this same lack of control means that the stark assertion of future impacts was limited. 

Ocean is assertiveness at the outset is matched and reinforced in a panel titled "What are the future scenarios?" which offers four possibilities drawn from multiple climate models and reports. The scenarios range in temperature increases from 1.8C to 3.4C over the next 85 years. What's most telling, however, is that the factors assessed to determine these increases are economic growth, technological development worldwide, balancing of energy resources, and demography. Few of these have to do with personal choices. These are broad, big problems not easily answered by any one country. 

All of this means that the exhibit must end with a discussion of adaptation: the world is changing; we might slow it, but the ball is in motion. According to the exhibit designer I interviewed, this is the "positive" or "optimistic" section of the exhibit. Yet the fatalism is forceful, which is again different from the other exhibits: "By 2100, depending on the scenario, water levels could rise by [sic] between 20 cm and 1 m, impacting the 40% of the world's population living within 60 kms of the coast."

Ok, so strong assertions of fact, dire consequences, a need to adapt: how does this exhibit end on a positive note?

1. This is a very powerful experience. If you attend the exhibits with even a little skepticism about the veracity of evolutionary theory, I believe this exhibit will increase your confidence that evolution is a weak theory.

2. This museum is at war. I've never seen a museum so relentlessly or so aggressively attack the tenets of science — or even another ideology. A mirror image of this museum is nearly impossible to imagine, since the direct attacks against the foundations of religious faith in Genesis would be so vocally and passionately protested. But it's less the open mocking of scientists (evident only in the rather cocky introductory video) and more the unfair assumptions, the specific cherry-picked challenges, and the overuse of unsubstantiated Biblical authority to assert particular views that is so frustrating. 

3. Yet at times, it's clear the museum is less about science vs. religion and much more about religion vs. religion. It's about asserting a particular religious point of view. In other words, the impetus for the fight against evolution is not a fight necessarily against science. It's a fight against a non-literal reading of the Bible. So while I'm put off because science is misrepresented and a whole heap of metaphysical realities are asserted (and assumed) with no evidence, those who have a different faith, who understand that the "days" of Genesis can be read more broadly as "ages" or "billions or millions of years" will not feel at home here. This is the starkest version of Christianity, and I know plenty who would find this not to their taste. 

4. Coherence is the name of the game. According to the Museum's reading of the Bible, if God said at the end of seven days that things were "very good," then there was no death, no disease, no poison, dinosaurs didn't eat meat, etc. until after the fall. Similarly, those first six days have to be 24 hour periods. If they weren't regular, 24 hour days, then the whole Bible would tumble down like a house of cards. And because the museum seeks to set religion and science on the same level as starting points, this expectation for perfect coherence is transferred over to science. If science can't explain a particular phenomenon (or if the museum claims it can't explain it), then this starts to erode the foundations of the scientific worldview. Because the museum is not fairly comprehensive and fails to give science any voice for explaining why a complexity or perceived inconsistency makes sense in the bigger picture, science in this museum does come across as a house of cards, as a series of assumptions and failures to explain. To that end, the museum is highly effective. But science isn't a house of cards.

5. The museum moves through seven C's: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. Only the first four are on display. The last three are covered in a 15 minute video reminiscent of The Passion of the Christ. But jumping from the Tower of Babel to Christ's Crucifixion means a large majority of the Bible is skipped over — that's a heck of a lot of text that must figure in any attempt to make this literal reading coherent. 

6. I'm not a big fan of the form-content divide, but the amazing thing in this museum is that the museum/exhibit form is very authoritative, very powerful, very convincing. It looks and feels legitimate. And while the museum form lends this museum much of its power, the fact that it works so well reflects back on the museum form in general, making experiences in other museums feel a bit indoctrinating. I have much more work to do on this, but the initial feeling I had when I visited the Cincinnati Natural History Museum was that the tactics — spatial and linguistic — were the same. It made the Natural History Museum feel dirty. This went away as I appreciated more what that museum was after, but I'm not sure I can explain exactly why that happened. Was it because I buy the ideology on display? Or was it something more? Is the Natural History Museum more honest? More exploratory? More evidence-based? More comprehensive? Must spend more time here. 

Combining two really useful suggestions, I finally sat down today with my huge list of "museum ideas" and started to see how they might fall together into some kind of structure. This is my inductive approach. I banged my head against this for about five hours, and I'm not sure I'm any closer. I've arrived at three ideas; I'll lay them out here.

1. Five to seven chapters "Doing Interesting Things," each drawing from a multitude of exhibits, with an introductory chapter on the rhetoric of museums/exhibits and some kind of powerful conclusion.

2. Three Parts: Part I – two chapters on the rhetoric of museum/exhibits and the museum/exhibit as text; Part II – three to five thematic chapters drawing on small moments from the multitude of museums/exhibits I've seen; Part III – three sustained analyses that draw on and demonstrate the ways in which the themes from part II play out in specific exhibits for different ends (Race, Catalhoyuk, and the comparative case study Ocean/Atmosphere).

3. Introduction chapter on the rhetoric of museums/exhibits, followed by four to seven chapters organized thematically, each of which would begin or end with a sustained analysis of a single exhibit epitomizing the importance of that theme.

After describing the pitfalls and roadblocks to each of these approaches, Liz voted for the second approach. And after talking about it, that one made the most sense to me as well. It would integrate my broad "museum as text" reflections with the many exhibits I've seen with the sustained analyses that I think serve as the real demonstration of a useful approach.  

For now, I think I can roll with the second structure, and move forward "as if" it'll work out — heck, I know the race, catalhoyuk, and ocean/atmosphere exhibits will sustain chapters (and each for different reasons) — now it's time to continue to think about the themes and how I can build out that middle section of the proposed book.  

I still don't have a model for this sort of thing…

Thoughts welcome.