Evolution

In the Asma reading, I thought interesting points were brought up about evolution in the context of the museum. Evolution is constructed differently depending on the museum and its location. The scientific community is largely uninterested in presenting an argument or explanation for creationism as the concept is an unrelated discourse. Creationism is an absolute (with no way to be proven or unproven), whereas scientific theory is open to debate and reflection. Science has morphed into a discipline devoid of religion. The two practices are thought of as incompatible though historically the two work side-by-side. Science and theology both answer questions, but the answers are gathered extremely differently. Under the current heated climate of science and religion, I doubt the two will rekindle their romance. I am under the modern perspective that the differences between the two communities are too extreme to be reunited. 

Evolution

The second chapter, "Evolution and the Roulette Wheel" is particularly interesting in light of yesterday's visit to the museum, and the Hall of Human Origins. I understood Alan's letter about the roulette wheel and yet, I doubt kids were somehow subliminally influenced to take up the vice because of it. I personally have always thought chance plays a huge part in everything, even if one were to subscribe to a religious or non-religious view. Spinning a wheel or throwing some dice seem an excellent representation of all that is possible, both good and bad.
Anyway, I then wondered: was there any reference to God in the Hall of Human Origins? I know it was only yesterday, and yet I don't remember seeing anything about it. Does it belong in a scientific museum? Evolution is not "anti-religion," which Asma makes clear, but people have a tendency (I know I did originally) to put the two on opposite ends of the spectrum. There are, even today, plenty of debates in schools about whether or not to include evolution, or just the religious point of view, or both. I remember in my biology class sophomore year my teacher turned off the lights, made us close our eyes, and read from the bible of how life was created. He wasn't encouraging this theory, instead I think it was something he had to do, and wanted to do, because he saw the two things as being compataible in some way.
I found the Hall of Human Origins fascinating, and I wondered how it compares to other natural history museums on how it portrayed evolution. I would think America would be more likely than European institions to weasle something into the exhibit about God and religion, but maybe I'm wrong. As I was standing near the section on human creativity, I heard a man saying on a video nearby how science couldn't tell what was wrong from right; that was what philosophy, religion, art, etc was for. This was an interesting point of view, and maybe it was the museum's way of reconciling the two views. He, so as not to generalize, didn't act like science was around to give meaning to people's lives.
I think Alan (from this chapter in Stuffed Animals) would've been better off looking at chance from a religious point of view if he so chose. It is not incompatible. I like how Asma says that scholars and theologians jump to answer a question "not because they have an answer--it's because they can't stand the silence." I don't think it's just them, though, I don't think anyone can stand the silence. As cliche as it sounds, I'm not sure everyone is necessarily looking for "the" answer as much as a possible variety of answers.
As for a curatorial agenda in museology, it seems hard to avoid otherwise. Objectivity itself is rather subjective this way, as he alludes to with his soup example. I wondered, while in the Hall of Human Origins yesterday, if the curators purposely made the other hominids look more animalistic and then suddenly homo sapiens aren't at all? Was I imagining things? The dioramas connoted more primitiveness and distance. I understand this to an extent but for the most part they seemed very much the "other." Even though it was essentially us and our ancestors on display to gawk at, I doubt many people felt alarm because they didn't really look or seem like us. If one were to show up today we wouldn't be like, "hey, join my group!" We have placed ourselves out of reach of any kind of connection to these hominids.

no place on the family tree!

here's that hobbit article from today's Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/science/28hobbit.html?ref=science

The Importance of Our Origin

I am fascinated to learn from this article that there is a gap preventing us from pinpointing our origin. Having said that, as I continued through the article, I began to wonder why this information could be so important besides the thirst of our curiosity to know. Is there a disease of some sort we could cure if we knew of our origin? I continued throughout the reading in hopes of a mention of an outcome that could take place once this puzzle of our "evolutionary" line could be complete. This is what I ended up on:

“At a basic level, one wants to know when and where transformations occurred so one can put them into their appropriate evolutionary context,” Dr. Lieberman said.

I respect the idea behind knowing your past and history in order to learn from what has already taken place and in order to avoid repeating the same mistake again; it is crucial to know the past to advance into the future. However, as important as the beginning is to any story, how useful would this information really come out to be? References to the question we seem to be stuck on include "modern humans with the ambition to find their origins", "the redrawing of the human family tree", and most importantly, "our big question". When it comes down to it, is it just that? A big question that we are extremely curious about? Before the previously mentioned reference ("At a basic level..."), "Daniel E. Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist at Harvard, said that filling in the tree matters to scientists, and not only out of innate curiosity about human ancestry." Then he continues to refer to filling in the missing pieces into the "appropriate evolutionary context". So because these "experts" we call scientists want the information to fill in gaps of the human evolution it is much more important? In the end, isn't the completion of this line of human evolution to be a reference and a guide for anyone curious about that subject? In the end, I feel that it is another one of our results derived from a curiosity to know and collect.

April 28th

"Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins" made me think of an evolutionary theory I read long ago. The idea is that Homo sapiens were able to diverge and evolve from their more apelike ancestors due to a genetic mutation in the jaw, a biological feature all of us have today: "The provocative discovery suggests that this genetic twist -- toward smaller, weaker jaws -- unleashed a cascade of profound biological changes. The smaller jaws would allow for dramatic brain growth necessary for tool-making, language and other hallmarks of human evolution on the plains of East Africa...And, the remarkable genetic divergence persists to this day in every person...But nonhuman primates...still carry the original big-jaw gene."

(See articles on the topic here and here.) I mention this "finding" because it seems that the assumptions regarding where we come from contain all the parts of a fluke: mysterious, filled with mistakes (poorly preserved fossils?); the process was likely quick; what came before and after is, for the most part, understood, but the real toothsome stuff is quite literally buried or disintegrated. Think of the chance mutations discussed in Chapter 6 of Stuffed Animals & Pickled Heads. It seems we come from a number of different kinds of species that evolved from or even integrated with each other (leaving, returning as a more evolved species that would integrate with earlier kinds of beings - a good idea, but still just an idea), but there remains a search for this isolated moment: When? How?

I, too, want to know the answers to these questions. It'd be interesting to see if there is a change in scientific paradigms and the idea that one thing happened, and then another, but the fact that there is some sort of 'mystery moment' in between said 'things' becomes acceptable - and why shouldn't it be? Species grow, they mix. Is the answer so important? To answer 'no' would be bold; it might even be incorrect. Maybe is there IS an isolated moment. Science is flawed, broken into different categories and continually proving itself wrong: but it remains constant in its search for answers and the development of a lineage of all forms of life. However, to put in a straight line that which might be more cyclical and whole is ultimately frustrating. Maybe a reworking of what's already been discovered is the answer.

what happened to all the fossils?!

In "Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins" William Kimbel tells us about fossils from 2.6 million years ago when the Homo Habilis roamed the earth. Apparently hominid fossils are hard to find from that period, he said,  “It’s not that sites containing rocks this age are particularly rare, or that the time period in eastern Africa has not been searched by several groups... The problem is that the fossil yield has thus far been low or poorly preserved, compared to the time periods on either side of this interval.” But why is that? He does not explain any further on the subject, but it is something that baffles me. Was it something in the soil that couldn't preserve the fossils? Or was it pure negligence from the paleoanthropologists? How can there be plenty of fossils from before and after that period but that one period in time there is not enough? Although this was just a short paragraph in the New York Times article, it struck me because it left me wondering. so I tried to answer these questions with my own research. I googled "dark Age," which was a bad decision because it seems like every continent or country had a dark age at some point. next i tried "dark age Homo Habilis" and i got this New York times article and a whole lot about how the habilis species were known as "handy men" and made tools, which i already knew. But i could not find anything on the lack of fossils from that period. So, overall i found the article frustrating to read because i read it waiting for it to mention more about this fossil dark age and it never did. Such a shame

Fossil Wars/Fossil Clues

Dinosaur Fossil Wars surprised me because I never knew about the legal battles that took place over dinosaur fossils and that there was so much competition among scientists, amateurs, and poachers, further complicated by private collectors and the federal government. Much collection is illegal because of the large demand and complicated, oblique laws and regulations, requiring permits on any public land. It seems pretty limiting that fossils are government property, but cases are deemed criminal based on intent, which would be difficult to prove. And it sounds like the more valuable the specimen, and the more money that's involved, the more the government is likely to intervene, like in Frithiof's case which wasn't a secret excavation (appearing on the Discovery channel and in the news, it was obvious that he didn't know it was public property and he wasn't a poacher. I wasn't sure how to judge the idea of amateurs taking valuable specimens away from scientific knowledge, but it would be ideal to maintain a balance where private collectors could obtain common fossils and scientists could study the most significant ones that offered new clues. I do believe nothing can stop illegal collecting, especially on a small scale, I've found fossils many times and never heard about such laws.

Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins related to our discussions of the evolution of theories and scientific facts, but in this case many solid clues are missing, and unlike the horse lineage, we don't know whether our origins were linear or more complex. Connecting the dots to our human origins with a large million year gap in fossil records seems like a major issue in our relatively short lineage. I was surprised to find out that only traces of our Homo ancestors from over 2 million years ago are loose teeth and fragments, and yet there is enough evidence that scientists believe our first ancestors arose 3 million years ago. Why have there been so few findings, or why have they been "poorly preserved" for this interval of time? There are suggestions that some members left Africa and evolved rapidly due to isolaton, returning later to Africa, so should they be looking elsewhere?

It was interesting to see how, in "Exhibiting Evolution: Diversity, Order and the Construction of Nature," different countries would represent and curate evolution differently. The author was slightly demeaning when it came to American students' lack of knowledge of evolution. He mentions a third believed in "ghosts, communication with the dead, aliens, Bigfoot, etc." There may not be "proof" in scientific terms of the aforementioned things, but nothing precisely disproves ghosts, aliens, etc. People just have ideas and opinions about these things. They don't lack cultural value just because they may lack scientific veracity. The discussion of race was interesting, although I find it more fascinating how it became such a powerful category. He says the clustering of darker skinned people near the equator was the "product of natural selection" because of the threat of skin cancer, not the product of a "designing Deity." To this I wonder how such distinctions are even made, or why can't they be both or neither? I don't think science (here I'm generalizing) is very comfortable with the "in-between" or the point at which things become blurred together. I liked this quote, "Not only do we see nature, we also see ourselves seeing nature." It helps to think of this and now wish I were more aware of what it says about our culture.

Tasting Our Tongues

The fifth chapter in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads provides an interesting, removed look at evolution. The fact that so many people don't understand it or merely won't accept it as fact is fascinating given how far we've come from the time when science accepted it in the first place. But even for those people, such as ourselves, who feel like they understand and accept Darwin's theory of evolution, we are too surrounded by it that we don't see it. Especially in the museum display sense, he says, that "stepping back and examining one's own paradigm is, after all, almost as hard as tasting ones own tongue." Yet no matter how obvious, too obvious, each of Darwin's findings seem to us now together they create revolutionary explanations for everything from fossils to skin color. 

As for the New York Times article "Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins," I didn't even know that the study of human origins was called paleoanthropology, let alone that we have no trace of humanoids for a period of a million years. But reading the article, I couldn't imagine why it mattered so much whether Homo habilis had a direct lineage to Homo erectus. Surely it was silly for people to be claiming findings as fact when there is always new ground, figurative and literal ground, to be uncovered in this area of expertise. I'm glad the author mentioned, despite it being at the very end of the article, that the importance of the habilis-erectus ties lie in the dietary and environmental factors of species change. Otherwise I would have found this article slightly arbitrary. 

What remains both fascinating and frustrating about human life is that we do understand why or how we came into existence. For centuries, religion has served a purpose of providing answers for these pressing but unanswerable questions, attributing existence to a being or force outside of ourselves and this world.  But as science improves and gets closer to unlocking the codes to human ancestry, we find an intrinsic desire in humans to find answers to these questions themselves, and to not relinquish the desire for this knowledge to a higher power. Finding a common human ancestry can work to bring cultures and peoples together instead of driving them apart, in the way that different systems of belief do, for instance. No one knows how far along we are in understanding the true path of our evolution, as the New York Times article admits, but the prospect that these discoveries could happen within my lifetime is truly amazing.

In the New York Times article,"Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins," they discuss how the ancestor of the Homo species remains a mystery. The period of frustration lies in the period between three million to two million years ago. At around 2.6 million years ago, Hominids were using tools and then, around that same time the Homo species appeared - without any kind of link between the two. The problem with the research correlating with this spans of time is not a lack of fossils or people searching for them, rather the lack of properly preserving the fossils. For me this brings up a few questions to mind. Why wouldn't anthropologists use proper preservation techniques on these very important fossils? These remnants could possibly outline the link between ourselves and prior species, yet they weren't properly stored? I don't really understand. They have found a jaw at that time that could represent the homo species, but they are not certain. Scientists are confused about whether the Homo or the Habilis species came first because the two overlap each other for half a million years and they are always finding older and older samples. One theory states that the Homo species migrated awayfrom the Habilis species and evolved quickly and then ultimately traveled back and mixed with the former group - but this is just one idea. Scientists believe they can uncover the dietary and environmental changes that fostered the change of species over time, which I find very interesting. Is the evolution of species a result of diet and enironment or is it just some kind of normal evolutionary progression that arises as a result of survival of the fitest? While scientists believe that they have all of the clues necessary to bridge a common link between all the species, they are still uncertain about the specific order in which these clues are layed out. What will it mean for our species when we figure out our common ancestor? Is our way of thiking about ourselves going to radically change? Will there be a major paradigm shift? I guess we just have to wait and figure that out. Only time will tell.

hardy +response

Considering the indifference of our universe, to repeatedly capitalize on its ability to freeze, melt, and re-freeze our earth—and after reading John Wilford’s article, “Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins,” I’ve half-accepted the Zero of my role in the bigger workings of things. But the search for the actual “missing link,” to me, seems similarly *relatively worthless. I suppose all that really matters is that there used to be a number of different, contemporaneous human-likes, who had been and who continued to evolve into modern humans—and that we, now, will carry the torch of evolution. Why does identifying the exact species that we are a direct lineage from matter? If there’s just one, anyway. It seems we’ll never stop wanting to put the what to where and when, and ultimately to why. I think it’s taking it far enough—knowing it enough—to say that there was a mix of things going on, and that they will continue to mix and change and move forward. It’s just very sobering to think that we’re only a stepping-stone in this larger process. Maybe we’ll eventually evolve enough to have all this make sense.

Evolution, Revolution

This is an interesting article juxtaposing 19th century art and Darwin's revolutionary evolution theories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/nyregion/connecticut/0315artsct.html

The narrated slideshow is full of beautiful nature/Darwin-related paintings.

EK Response Week 13

The NY Times article,"Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins," discuses the uncertainties of the Homo sapiens ancestors. There is a lot of information missing from when human's first ancestor developed. Scientists are looking back millions of years to find fossils to fill the million year gap that is missing to solve the human ancestry puzzle.
Scientist estimate that 2.6 million years ago there were hominids and then Homo came but no one is sure exactly when. Habilis was the first of the species but no one knows where to place it in time an part of the reason is that the fossils of this time were poorly perserved. They have found tools that were from 2.5 million years ago but no one knows if they were are from the earliest form of hominids. Then there there was jaw from 2.3 million years ago that was found has also been shrouded in uncertainty. Some scientists believe habilis and erectus could have evolved together and that would explain part of the missing gap and others think the habilis may be several species. To support the idea that they were both around at the same time scientists believe some habilis may have left Africa for some time only to come back as Homo and live with other habilis.
There is a lot of mystery surrounding human evolution that this makes one question what species did they really evolve from and what type of evolution have other species and the earth gone through? I imagine the earth has evolves more than will ever know and scientist will keep discovering new things about our past that changes the way we view ourselves and the world. Also, a lot of land has been explored which only makes up a small part of the earth one can only wonder what mysteries the oceans hold.

Flexible Science

some fossils aren't whole at all!  they are made up of thousands of fragments.  how do they know how they all go together?

new scientific discoveries lead to reformulations of theories...

The Quagga, extinct 1883

The statistics presented in the Biodiversity and the Human reading are shocking to say the least. 

"Human destruction of species and habitats... is now global in scale, affecting a much broader range of organisms. Now invertebrates, other small animals, marine and other aquatic organisms, and significantly, plants are also threatened.  In other words, entire species clusters and the habitats they occupy are now under assault."

Another thing I found surprising was the necessity of plants and animals for medicinal cures.  Talk of rain-forest destruction always revolves around greenhouse gases and never the more direct destruction of human population (or at least the talk I've heard).  

The article really brought forward a viewpoint I had never really considered.  The pie chart on the first page visually exhibits how astounding it is that our species has destroyed so much of the planet we share with billions of other animals. 

E.O. Wilson

His book, The Diversity of Life is one of the most important works ever written in terms of introducing "biodiversity" to the public.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WILDIV.html

Here are some videos of Wilson talking about science, nature, knowledge and society.

Biodiversity

Biodiversity and its connection to the evolution of mankind is crucial. It is our "storehouse of potential cures and treatments" (6); it is essential to our survival. As I've learned from the Hall of biodiversity in the Museum, biologically diverse ecosystems are some of nature's most precious, as they house multiple kinds of unique species of flora and fauna together in one at least somewhat condensed area. Then again, it is also interesting to think about what nature's "most precious"areas are and what the most pressing issues face science today. The Museum's relationship with this advancement in science is crucial - not only because the world ought to know about biodiversity and how extinct much life is becoming, but because the displaying of such information allows the Museum to move forward as an entity, becoming more advanced in scientific opinion and displaying that to the public.

It is difficult for me to remove myself from the framework of "why" and the Museum's role in the subject. I should say here I agree with the article - especially the idea that "habitat loss is especially severe in areas where population pressures, poverty...leave people with little choice but to adopt overly intensive resource use practices" (11). As Kristen said, this is as much a problem with nature as it is with policy-making. As such, and as stated previously, the world ought to know - interest should be raised in the subject, and it should not be something just "on view" at the museum but an important way of the thinking about the planet. It may be the Museum's responsibility, then, to help popular culture move toward that way of thinking.

E.O. Wilson

The introduction to part II was scary to read. That biologist E.O Wilson said fifty percent of the world’s species will come to be extinct by the end of this century. I wikipediad this guy, being that’s a large prediction. It doesn’t really mention anything about his thoughts on biodiversity, but it did have something interesting: his theory of epic evolution.

Wilson explained the need for the Epic of Evolution - "Human beings must have an epic, a sublime account of how the world was created and how humanity became part of it (…) Religious epics satisfy another primal need. They confirm we are part of something greater than ourselves (…) The way to achieve our epic that unites human spirituality, instead of cleave it, it is to compose it from the best empirical knowledge that science and history can provide".[9]. The worth of the Epic he explained as -“The true evolutionary epic retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic”

So, combining his prediction and his theory, the epic of evolution will be very dark this century as thousands of species become extinct.

AMNH visits

The Dinosaur Wing

I’ve always been impressed by the dinosaur wing at the Museum of Natural History and this time I tried to pay special attention to the display, but I kept getting distracted and wanting to draw skeletons.  I noticed they actually made it clear when things were cast or if they were real.  I was surprised only 48% of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton was real, and I wondered why the skull on the skeleton was fake, and the real one was sitting on the floor separate from the body. Perhaps they wanted to display the real skull at eyelevel for better observation.  I also wondered about why they wrote directly on the skull, when it seems like it would cause damage, but on Friday’s tour I found out that it was the only way to catalogue the bones, which I can understand when there are so many bones to keep track of for just one animal, and now the writing can be removed but still the fact that they used to write and permanently mark the skulls is a bit shocking to me.

The bird section had a lot of explanations with illustrations and skeletons showing similarities and progression.  There was the cast of a giant prehistoric bird’s skeleton displayed with Charles R. Knight’s drawing of a Paleocene that looked really menacing.  I thought it was funny and odd that they had seagulls hanging from the ceiling, flying through.  I liked the interactive touch screens all over the exhibit, and they provided useful images and background that offered a further understanding.

Behind the Scenes

I was astonished by the meticulous systems of organization at AMNH, and I couldn’t believe when Paul said specimens were basically in piles before the catalogue system.  And it became so much easier to catalogue with the technology of an electronic database.  I was impressed by amount of equipment and careful climate control that was required to keep things sufficiently cared for, organized and catalogued by number in sections like a library. It sort of made me sad to think that only 2.6% of the collection was on display at the museum, and it really made me want to see everything.  Each continent had 10,000 square feet of storage and its own curator.  They had enough material to fill several museums, and I wondered how much of the collection never gets seen publicly, and how much of it gets accessed by visiting researchers.  I was impressed that they were working on digitally archiving the collection so that more is accessible online.

It was interesting to me that the only growth in the collection was in ethnography, since expeditions are no longer allowed to bring excavated objects out of their countries of origin, and in the country these objects become federal property so there is no new archaeology.  Of course with physical anthropology it’s illegal to take objects like human remains from their country of origin too.  The Museum has been build upon previous ideologies and ethical standards, which made me wonder could the Museum have existed under the rules of today?  It’s difficult to think about in the context of our time, but the Museum used to be able to do things differently, and I don’t think it would be possible to obtain such a vast, worldly collection unless it was seized or acquired before these laws existed. 

Also it was funny to hear that Paul agreed with our conclusion that the culture halls are outdated, limited, with insufficient representation, and desperately need to be redone.  

Notes and pictures from Behind the Scenes at the AMNH

this was our guide, Paul. here he is showing us the cabinets that line the halls of the fifth floor. he explained that because these cabinets are not air tight, and therefore not insect-proof, only archaeology artifacts are kept in these cases because archaeology is made up of non-organic materials while ethnography is typically composed of organic materials. 

Paul also told us that they organize the collection by location. this is from Mitla, Oaxca in Mexico. 
these are recently made cochina dolls in the climate controlled ethnography department. they were purchased directly from the artist for about 200 - 300 dollars. 
this the climate controlled ethnography department which has rows and rows of these cabinets. the room is kept at 73 degrees. Paul told us that the ethnography dept. is the only growing dept. now because it is no longer allowed to excavate in a foreign area and bring back the goods. 
this was a painting that was part of a set made for the Museum about health in tibet. i thought this was interesting because the characters depicted often have both penises and breasts. 
this was a kaiak that was out because it was being examined. 
this is a hand embroidered dress from China. 
this is a beaver. it was removed from display because too many people were touching it and such. damn kids. 
this is a bike made completely from paper! Paul explained to us that in Vietnam it is costumary when a person dies, to recreate his or her favorite things out of paper to burn them so their favorite things will be with them in the afterlife. this was created especially for the museum, so no worries, no deseased will be missing their favorite bike in the afterlife. 

Last trip to the AMNH Pictures & Response to Biodiversity, Science and the Human Prospect

I wanted to share some of the photos I took on our last trip to the AMNH. I am not a photographer by any means, however I tried to take pictures of the Dinosaurs from the perspective of how we actually view and experience them when in the museum itself. 

Also, I  found Biodiversity, Science and the Human Prospect particularly interesting. It contained allot of information that I did not know, as well as some facts

I had not considered previously. In particular I 

was intrigued by the idea of the evolution of a new interdisciplinary science.

I feel that so much scientific inquiry has actually been to the detriment of the biological diversity of the planet, and the evolution of a natural 

science like this

may be vital to stop this wide spread extinction. One fact in particular stuck out as something I would like to discuss in class “ biodiversity also contributes to out emotional and psychological well-being. recently,psychologists have begun to study ho mental health and social condition are affected by life in a human-dominated world increasingly devoid of the beauty of tranquility and stimulation afforded by contact with other life forms”

I am not so sure how I feel about this idea, and am curious to hear other opinions.

Kristen's Biodiversity Response.

Although I enjoyed Biodiversity, Science and the Human, it stresses issues that I believe that people fully aware of. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I think the public is conscious of destructive human activities such as pollution, exploitation of resources, extinction, and climate change.  Further more, I think we are all capable of understanding its influence/dependence on our social and political systems. 

Much of this article, as well as the other reading focused on the importance of classifying, and collecting data regarding the biodiversity of the world as a means to measure how healthy the earth is. .   I understand that there are millions of species we do not yet know, and millions of discoveries that could be made towards a better tomorrow. However, I believe the problem does not lie in science, but in policy making..  Also, the articles seemed to stress the need for science to become more accessible to the public and/or policy makers in order to raise awareness and protect the environment.  How much collection, organization and categorization is necessary to raise awareness though? I am all for a deeper understanding and advances in science, but I’m afraid the amount of knowledge we acquire has little to do with the progress we make concerning conservation.

            Maybe it has less to do with science, and more to do with corporations and capitalism. Regardless of where I choose to point fingers, I know that without science we would have no clue about the amount of damage we’ve done.  So in that sense there is nothing more important.  I just think knowledge isn’t getting us very far!  Our current situation is too wrapped up in economic success/greed.

 Haha, although my entire outlook could be influenced by the fact that I was just watched that documentary “The Corporation” last week…

EK Response Week 12

Both of these papers bring up good points and work together well to help save the ecosystem. Biodiversity Datadiversity is about the difficulty of classifying information so that is can be easily accessed and used and Biodiversity, Science, and the Human Prospect discusses the changing environment, the threat of extinction and the importance of protecting the species and environment that we have. Science needs to become more organized, find a way to classify information that it is easy to find and use, and make the information available to public in order to protect the environment.
Biodiversity Datadiversity has several good points that make clear how important classifying data in an categorized manner is. Bowaker points out that scientific work relies heavily upon data and that social studies in science are an important part of data collecting and information so this information needs to classified. He mentions that data usually ends up thrown out after a paper is written. This is a problem because it usually difficult to reproduce the experiment without all the original data/
I thought while reading this article that there should be one database for everyone to use so it is not difficult to obtain information that may not be classified or organized well. This would promote create more opportunities to make greater discoveries and new developments. Bowker stated that this idea has been proposed many times but is difficult to do because of different areas of interests and money.
Another point in this article that I found interesting was that things that the public is interested in gets studied the most and gets the most funding and things we already know about also get studied a lot because they are easy to understand. This makes sense because it is hard to push studying something that hasn't been discovered or that we know little about. Although, the things we know little about should probably be studies the most so we could learn about them before they become extinct or they could become a cure for something. The public should not have so much influence on science so it can flourish on its own.
Biodiversity, Science, and the Human Prospect discusses many of the pressing issues in today's environment that need to be addressed before its to late. For example, biodiversity is in trouble with many species near extinction. It is being threatened by human activity including, population growth, pollution, exploitation of resources, global climate change. This article points out that human induced extinction has been going on for thousands of years but is now more pressing because it is a global issue
In hindsight one might think that this problem should have been stopped when the issues were smaller and localized because it probably wouldn't be an issue if people had been more aware of their habits and consumption rates. However, that has not happened and we must work to prevent the crisis now. A fact mention in the article was that 99% of all species are now extinct. That is a lot of species that are now gone. Instead of accepting more species becoming extinct we should try to change our ways and become more aware to prevent it. After all 5-10 million years is along time for the earth to recover.
Pointing out the affects harming the environment has on human life is a good point because many people rely on medications and would not be able to survive without them.
Also another issue that I have never thought of before was that how biodiversity helps to maintain the stability of social and political systems. It helps to keep people fed and maintain jobs. It also enriches cultures by keeping many different cultures alive, providing activities for people to enjoy, being a part of people's faiths, and promoting thought and creativity
The general public needs to become more aware of these pressing environmental issues. Right now there is more a green movement going on but most people probably do not realize how pressing the issue is. There should be more advertising campaigns introduced stressing the importance of maintaining biodiversity. The campaign can focus how extinction for some species can mean that their medication will not be able to be produced or that without a sustainable environment population will not be able to eat or drink and jobs will be loss because the parts of the environment will have been depleted. Introducing a campaign that makes people realize the changing environment will affect them directly will probably cause more people to question their lifestyle and make a change for the better.

ego ego ego

The Great Disosaur "Gold Rush" from Dinosaurs in the Attic re-ignited my interest in dinosaurs. It's been a while since I've actually actively thought about them because their existence is so far removed from my day to day life. It's nice to sit back and ponder their enigmatic existence because it all just seems so alien. It's quite intriguing. 

The only thing that really bothered me with this chapter was the unnecessary rivalry between March and Cope. Why do people, specifically scientists, feel the need to compete with one another? Ultimately, this kind of rivalry only brings about slower production on both sides - making it not only counter productive but it also creates an environment that is not suitable for progressive research. I'm going to be honest - this rivalry really annoyed me, it started to make me think of human nature and how we are so innately drawn to think of each other as separate organisms. Only when we drop social distinctions and our egos and begin to work together as one will true scientific progression commence. There is so much ego satisfaction that goes along with personal accomplishment and career that it makes me sick. Upon reflection, immediately a quote from J.D Salinger came to the forefront of my consciousness: "I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting." This quote sums up what I think about competition in order to satisfy ones own ego, specifically the realm of scientific research because competition just brings everything to a halt when people (researchers) could just be working together to benefit society at large. 

Roy Chapman Andrews, 1928, Gobi Desert

As other people mentioned, the competition between the two men in discovering the most dinosaurs was enthralling, if not a bit sad. But on the other hand, I think most people can relate to wanting credit for something, and perhaps that is what it boils down to (although not entirely.) "Compromise" isn't quite an action people are naturally inclined to employ. Competition is "healthy" in a way--it fuels motivation to discover. It is a theme throughout our readings--perhaps everything in the museum can be traced back to some contest of wills--whether between two men over dinosaurs, or between the West and the cultures they were taking objects from. Dinosaurs seem almost unreal mythical illusions in contemporary society which is why I guess it's so important that we have records of them, and the people who were involved in their discovery. In a way, Marsh and Cope both won if we're still reading about them all these years later.

The Great Dinosaur "Gold Rush"

While reading this chapter in "Dinosaurs in the Attic" i couldnt stop thinking about how this story could be portrayed so well in a major motion picture (this is probably because film is my passion). Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, the two collectors at each other's throats to excavate the most and greatest dinosaur bones, could be played by Daniel Day Lewis and sean connery. 

Henry Fairfield Osborn, the expert of vertebrate paleontology, could be played by an aged george clooney:

and the hero of our story, Barnum Brown could be played by that guy in the devil wears prada:

The final scene of the movie would be Brown and his crew excavating Hell Creek, Montana, in their flatboat which becomes a "fossil arc." This story has all the makings for a great film, conflict, competition, hope, history, dreams. it sounds like a winner to me! so whos gonna help me get funding going on this thing!

fighting for osteoperosus

it seems that most of us agree that fighting over dinosaur bones is petty and stupid. but i don't know. i'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone on the verge of a breakthrough. it's actually pretty easy. if i dedicated my life to studying something like... the universe, and i've been working my ass off to figure out how to prove that it is expanding infinitely. if some asshole that used to be my roommate in college or something discovered how to prove it before me, i'd kill him.

It sucks that humans are so territorial with things, even science which is supposed to be an enlightened subject. but my ex roommate would be the one in the history books, and my pride would get the best of me. science is important, and unfortunately we get caught up in the drama behind the scenes. But discovering something as exciting as a new dinosaur species, or even a new skeleton, is a big deal. Remember that skeleton they found under that Jefferson museum? That was a big deal, and even though I don't remember the name of the person that discovered it, they will get the credit. Not the person who said they should excavate 30 years ago, but the one who actually did it. Science is competitive too, and we forget that. But knowledge is power.

EK Response Week 11

The readings this week gave a lot of information about how the museum had gone about collecting specimens. The chapter on the "Gold Rush" discussed how the museum acquired its large dinosaur fossil collection and the other chapter, A Library of Bones, discussed how the museum has collector, displayed,and categorized the fossils.
I thought it was interesting how there was a "gold rush" for dinosaur fossils that resulted in intense competition between collectors, Marsh and Cope. They seemed to do whatever they could to obtain fossils before the other could. I was also a little surprised that when the museum had put together the fossil for the brontosaurus they placed the wrong head on and refused to admit it. The correct skull was discovered by Douglas (from Carnegie) when he realized he had a different skull than the museum. He challenged the museum but the museum refused to change their skull (which they had created in the first place). Years later the issue was brought up again and the museum built a replica of the Douglas brontosaurus next to their original brontosaurus claiming that if they were not able to replace the head because it would cause too much damage to the fossil. I thought it was surprising that the museum took so long to consider another idea. They did not have to accept right away but they should have examined the issue more thoroughly.
A fun fact that was brought up in the library chapter was the Frick building. I did not know that there was such a lager building in the center of the building that contained so many mammal fossils that the would collapse most structures so the building had to be reinforced with steel.
The way the museum cleans fossil bones is also really interesting. The two methods include bacterial maceration and "the bugs". Bacterial maceration includes allowing the carcass to soak in bacteria in order to get the tissue off then the bones are put in baking soda to get the rest of the flesh off and the remaining bits are taken off by hand. "The bugs" involves dermestid beetles eating the flesh clean of a small animal. I would like to see these beetles clean a carcass. They sound quite ravenous.

This is Anna and the American Bison the day we couldn't find the group.

Gold Rush

Reading about Cope and Marsh's caddy competitions over dinosaur bones in the name of science reminded me of the carelessly adventuring orchid collectors fighting to the death to be the first to bring back the rarest breed. The importance in the scientific field that is placed on the inventor or the discoverer of a certain specimen adds a lot of unprofessional behavior in the field. The difference between the orchid collectors and the dinosaur fossil collectors though is that the orchid men were risking their lives far from home and had a lot more at stake than the paleontologists in Wyoming and Colorado. Therefore I give them more slack for their perilous missions warranted violent self defense. (Which is actually funny because the things they were looking for seem the opposite... dinos=scary, flowers=not so much). I'm glad to hear of successful scientists who didn't spend so much time bitching abut their peers and focused on their work indifferently like, Barnum Brown. He succeeded in discovering so many things without the distracting feuding of his immature contemporaries. 

(This is written by Meredith Shank. I didn't set up a blog account. Very sorry.)

Kristen

I was very impressed by the picture  Douglas Preston had painted of Roy Chapman Andrews, and found everything about the man to be extremely fascinating on all fronts (not to mention he is rumored to be the real-life model for Indiana Jones!)  I never knew the movie was based on anyone.  What I found particularly striking was that Andrew's expedition team were thought to be the first men to ever set eyes on dinosaur eggs.  After reading this I immediately thought of a conversation we had in class a while back concerning the replication of artifacts.  There is something so overwhelmingly important and exciting about seeing dinosaur eggs for the first time, that it reminded me about the need to see "the real thing".   For some reason, a replicate of dino eggs just wouldn't suffice!

Even more interesting about the reading was the fact that it was later learned that some 20 thousand years before, humans had gathered dinosaur eggs and placed them in graves.  This gets back to what Preston called an "almost atavistic urge to collect".  Collecting obviously goes way back, and leads me to believe it is an instinct of ours; an instinct that may one day get the best of us.  What will happen when there isn't much left to collect( as far as artifacts and ethnographic field notes are concerned) ?Although,  I guess we will always find something new to study, classify, and put into our own language, libraries, and museums. 

Dino Goldrush

Reading The Great Dinosaur “Goldrush,” I couldn't believe the vicious competition between Marsh and Cope.  I’d be surprised if this represents the general nature of the relationships in the scientific community, particularly since we’ve been talking about the collective, conversational, cooperative, progressive nature of science that becomes more informed, and closer to solidified facts, as scientists build off of other scientists’ findings over time.  Such intense competition certainly seems counter-productive to science, taken to the extent of destroying their fossil findings in order to prevent any attempt at stealing the discovery.

hardy______!__post

I was a little bit disappointed, after all the anticipation Preston sparks in his preface, that Charles Sternberg was to be described as one of the “hardworking but unimaginative compilers of data” (73). In the preface to Dinosaurs in the Attic, he was mentioned, in all his awesome mystery, as “the free-lance dinosaur hunter . . . whom almost no one has ever heard of” (ix). A brief glimpse suggesting great romance and creativity and adherence to principles and no principles at all and danger! Whether or not Sternberg was any of these things is unclear, but Preston’s later description left me feeling, at the least, a bit empty.
But he makes up for his inadequate telling with his textual recreation of Roy Chapman Andrews’s mad, heroic life-charge. Fifteen years after scrubbing the floors of the Museum, he’s trekking through the Great Wall of China in a Dodge automobile, backed by a grand brigade. And the discoveries he manages! And the picture of him (I looked up the one he mentions, of Andrews sitting on the hill with his rifle and jackboots) truly is the Indiana Jones prototype. Huge dangers encountered (and handled) in the name of figuring human origin. There is no better movie.

Field Notes: Margaret Mead

It becomes harder and harder to be less cynical towards the presentation of information considered to be "factual". Cynical because I feel betrayed in the way information has been presented and how that has changed my attitude towards the information. But is it really bad to have been exposed to such knowledge in a linear fashion? There is a saying that less is more; if the victor or the surivor decides history, and history is a documentation for the benefit of mankind (and to satisfy our thirst to collect information and preserve it the way we want to remember it), why should I be cynical about history as I have been told or taught? Why is it that we find raw unbiased information to be so necessary and valuable when, in the end, individuals will take that information and alter it according to one's own standards and assumptions and knowledge? Wanting to obtain the purest form of information untouched by other people's opinions seems to be derived from a greed for the chance to form an idea or thought belonging to the one receiving such information. Originality, a way to be remembered perhaps.

Latour reading

It is commendable that Latour not only confronts the questionable objectivity of science but also HOW said objectivity has become questionable: "'How have we come to doubt that we are able to know objectively, to the point of seeing as proofs of skepticism and relativism the obvious features that allow truth conditions to be met?' I am turning the tables here..." (20). To agree with Sari, science cannot possibly deliver absolute fact. Facts are changing entities. Indeed it seems only natural that facts, that science, that evolution itself is not linear but instead shifting, for human beings (the discoverers of such facts) are also consistently changing. Latour lists the reasons why we do not always err: "we have time...we are equipped...we are many...we have institutions" (15). I would say that it is for these same reasons we DO err. Time is moving; we are equipped to adapt to new answers, new questions; institutions are vast networks of different sorts of agencies all discovering different things at once or challenging old ideas.

Revisiting history is a wise idea. Like Chiefly Feasts, an exhibit that presents facts and then quickly reworks them can be hard to stomach. As Aaron mentioned, there exists a history of knowledge about the world - not the world itself. Logic is not just the understanding of facts; it, too, is made up of ideology, of ideas and affirmations that eventually became facts. This seems like an existential crisis at its core but museum exhibits like the horse display prove that this need not be troubling. We ought to grow with our changes and accept that objects, explanations, even something like gravity have histories.

Photo from the Bird halls...

Some field notes from the M. Mead hall of Pacific People

"A Textbook Case Revisited"

Latour's "A Textbook Case Revisited" aims to show that evolution is not a linear, absolute progression that we often assume it to be. The article reminds us that our knowledge of the world is not based on "reality," but by how we interpret, understand and classify information. It can be easy to forget that events occur in the world regardless of people's understanding, or even awareness, of them; it is Man who place significance on these events and strives to understand and compartmentalize the information that comes to him. This is why it is important to not blindly accept science as truth, because science, as Latour and the Museum of Natural History show, changes. 

What attracted my attention while reading "A Textbook Case Revisited-Knowledge as a Mode of Existence" was its small focus on the idea of doubt.  Curators had boldly decided to "run the risk" of presenting the succession of our perceptions in relation to horse evolution. In doing so they  exhibited the scientific reconstructions of our past for everyone to see. For me at least,  there decision was a much wiser choice than the alternative, that of course being, to gloss over the largely controversial history of paleontology. 

What I am unsure of however, is why displaying a "revisited history" is controversial act in the first place?  Knowledge is undoubtedly on a trajectory, so why deny it?  I believe most people are aware that we can not possibly know everything, and  that people are even wrong about their interpretations of the past at times.   The author put in nicely in saying that "we don't know yet, but we will know, or rather, we will know whether we had known earlier or not".  This statement probably makes some people uneasy and skeptical about science in general, and I'm not sure why.  There was a good example I came across while reading that explained, if we were to misjudge the shape of a building from a large distance, once  corrected of it's shape we wouldn't go on doubting the buildings existence all together.  Furthermore, we wouldn't doubt our own capabilities from that point on. 

 Our knowledge is on its own path of evolution, and I find when we don't get the facts right the first time, people go up in arms. What exactly is it about not knowing everything, and not knowing it accurately that freak us out? 

In A Textbook Case Revisited – Knowledge as a Mode of Existence, the author discusses how scientific theory evolves just as animals do. He takes horses as an example. Throughout evolution these animals have evolved to have fewer toes and longer teeth. Simultaneously, human thought concerning their evolution has also developed over a span of time. Humans once thought that horse evolution (or all evolution in general) progressed in a linear fashion, with one horse species coming after another in a sequential fashion. We now know better - that evolution takes place in a much more dynamic and complicated way. For instance, evolution can be seen as a tree, with base species that branch - forming different sub species. This is an idea that is much more intricate and developed than we once previously thought. I also found the idea of scientific theory evolution interesting because most people accept what the scientific community has to say as the absolute truth. But the real fact of the matter is that the science can never really offer any absolute truths on any subject, something most people don't understand. The population needs to take into consideration that theory is evolving just like everything else is and that new theories are constantly changing and being updated to reflect the current research and ideas. But, that doesn't mean that any theory is absolutely true, it just means that we think it to be true based on everything we know. That is, human theory is just based on what we think we know: relating one supposed truth to another supposed truth. Once humans break out of this cycle, we shall discover that there can be no absolute truth in science and that everything we hear should be taken with a grain of salt. 

Aaron Frank

I have to agree with what Hardy wrote previously about the reading, A Textbook Case Revisited - Knowledge as a Mode of Existence. It is something that I've never really thought about until the last couple of years, but the idea that our fact is based on a logical conclusion that someone else came up with. What makes something fact vs. opinion? It is how we center the world around ourselves, and give ourselves supreme authority to create fact. As it says in this reading, "But if you now propose to say that the objects of science themselveshad a history, that they have changed over time, too or that Newton has "happened" to gravity, and Pasteur has "happend" to the microbes, then evreyone is up in arms, and the accusation of indulging in "philosophy" or worse in "metaphysics" is soon hurled across the lecture hall"(page 3). The idea that all these things were here long before we were (gravity, microbes, etc.) but we coined them. It goes on to say, "It is taken for granted that "history of science" means the history of our knowledge about the world, not of the world itself."
Our whole world is based around these ideas that our predecessors came up with. But these are things that exist without them. What is the impact of their discovery on our world? Is it anything at all? Or are they just giving it a name?

A Textbook Case Revisited

Latour’s two main points of focus in “A Textbook Case Revisited- Knowledge as a Mode of Existence”, seem to be knowledge, perception, and time. He begins with the example of an exhibition in the American Museum of Natural History on the evolution of horses. It displayed not only the horses as they evolved over time, but also the progression of scientific theory about these horses as they changed over time. This gives some history to the science, which he seems to think is difficult and not done frequently enough.
He brings up the issue of the timeline of these ideas, regarding the linear vs. non-linear. The course of science is not a linear progression towards an increasingly accurate truth. Instead it is something that moves back and forth between various theories that have developed. This is a frightening to show the viewer of an exhibition, because it calls into question the assumption that we are closer now to the truth about science than we have ever been.
Latour also brings up the important difference between “ideas” and “facts”. Many things in science that are taken as facts, may simply be ideas, or a certain mode of interpretation that will later change. There is also the problem that the object or artifact being analyzed, is not really moving through time. It remains static in itself, and only our representations of it are moving.
Ultimately Latour says that we are asking something of science that it can never really provide, ultimate truth or unquestionable fact.

hardy+ response

I thought Bruno Latour’s “A Textbook Case Revisited – Knowledge as a Mode of Existence,” was, though a bit worrying, really interesting. I suppose I always took all scientific observations with a grain of salt—minding their ethereality and flexibility, but I never considered that all facts are only ideas. While scientific conclusions are tested and re-tested, they are formulated through a series of logical assumptions and conclusions. But if scientific conclusions are based on logic (which responds to findings) then I think it’s worth some time to question the idea of logic at all. Even the most accepted truths, such as gravity, are based on logic—on human inference and reasoning: the apple falls, so there is a force making it fall. But what made reasoning? Why is it correct? Have time and experience compacted our great progression of failures and successes into logic? into a platform from which we can reason out our circumstances, and so have a better chance at survival? I don’t know, Latour’s notion that we exist through our own knowledge of our existence, and that it too is ethereal and constantly changing, rattled me a bit. He asks how did a dog run and jump before man created an idea for the way he runs and jumps? I have no answer to that question, but I do have a higher level of skepticism about all this universe. Then again, if I am human, why should I care to exist through any means but my own human mind? Is there any other environment I can live in besides the one fabricated by human knowledge? How do I think without my brain? Maybe there is an Everything star sitting bigly in space eternal, waiting for the right time not to be discovered and added to human knowledge, but to infiltrate the other way ‘round.

I think the idea of display or curation in the world of the museum is significant and extremely interesting. At first a superficial idea, display can communicate underlying concepts about the subject matter involved. First, it is interesting to compare how different museums attempt to show similar pieces. The AMNH shows mammals through dioramas that we are all familiar with. The British Natural History museum, however produced a large scale display where many animals are fit in together.

This makes gives no hierarchical order to the animals involved, but it lends little to no information about the figures in the display. Small placards give little information about the genus/ species but is the extent. This display seems more aimed to the artistic/ amusement rather than the scientific.

More specific, differences in display techniques can be seen in the curation of mummies/ human remains. The traditional mummy can be seen in many museums and gives little controversy over its display; they can usually be observed from behind a display case and are held as examples of how specific cultures deal with mortality. At the British Museum, however, these traditional mummies are displayed alongside other examples of human remains. the most shocking is an Egyptian man who was found lying near a tomb.

this figure seems to be less about the display of a culture and more about the shock on has from seeing a dead body. rather than displaying cultures of the past, the museum artistically crafts a display of a found object; sparking some controversy over the content.

A Gift of.

As a designer I began to observe the display system of the hall, such as the tone used to portray a certain mood and the typography used to deliver information to the audience. From there, the "Gift of" sign caught my attention. Underneath the label for what was being displayed was the "Gift of", directed to the person responsible for the museum. It is in capital letters, san serif, font size just a tad bit smaller than the label. I talked about this in my paper but it leads to the bigger idea of how we are used to information displayed. News and information is something everyone has the right to and, just as an observation, we have built a whole system around something as simple as information. We recognize the power of knowledge I guess. Everything is credited to somebody, as if the information wouldn't have existed without the person. In some cases it wouldn't have, but our possessive attitude on something that could benefit the world with its spread is intriguing.

I found that to have caught my attention and to be relevant to the ideas we are exploring in terms of collecting and displaying information.

Also... "a gift" for our obsessive nature in collecting. Anything and everything.

Museum of Natural History's Culture Halls

Amber's responses to our confusion regarding some of the culture halls' seeming inconsistencies got me to re-framework them, to a certain extent. First of all, the idea that keeping everything in present tense is very purposeful because such depicted events and rituals ought to be fluid...This is something I agree with. Perhaps it's "better," or less judgmental, ethnographically, to withhold from placing definitive labels on cultural phenomena about which we will never fully know. It is not as if the Hall of African Peoples is completely open to interpretation but the information is limited. This might be for a real reason of which we're not aware.

Again, such a re-frameworking applies to the way I thought of the halls before. I wondered why there was hardly any consistency: why are there mannequins in some halls, and not in others? Is there a way to tie all these cultures together, like patterns - a wedding in one culture, a wedding in another? Why are the layouts and lighting so different in each hall?

Thinking back, these questions were a little ignorant. To keep each hall consistent might imply that there really are "patterns" in these cultures. That's a narrow way of looking at them: everything is set up differently because everything IS different.

That said, the Culture Halls need, desperately (I think) some technological updates...

(I apologize for the late response.)