The Science Museum [antikvár]

Introduction The Science Museum is a crowded and a friendly place. It is not a place where people stand in silence before objects they feel they should, and possibly do, admire, and move quietly, as in a church. It is somewhere where people feel free, and often excited; where they talk loudly (sometimes too loudly) and even laugh. It is different from most museums. Are science and engineering less intimidating than art or archaeology? Surely not. They are, for the most part, harder to understand. A fine picture or a pretty cup may have more to it than appears in a short inspection, and an ancient relic may give many clues to an ancient civilisation; but all these things have immediate interest and convey a great deal to even the most casual glance. They speak for themselves. If anything, most objects in the Science Museum are less approachable, not more so. But the crowds press in to the Science Museum, and if we do not know exactly why these collections are so popular, we may still be allowed a few guesses. There are probably almost as many reasons as there are visitors. One reason may be that Science Museum collections are about things which are really important to everybody. The invention of the spinning-machine and the steam-engine did, in fact, change the world. The motor car and the television set have, in the developed part of the world at least, contributed enormously to individual freedom and individual knowledge, while the railway has transformed the economics and the way of life of virtually the entire globe. Another reason is that the Museum deals in facts, as far as these are at present knowable. Art is so largely a matter of opinion - a picture valued in millions today can be reduced to hundreds by the opinion of one expert - and the ordinary public is reluctant to take its own taste seriously (quite wrongly, in our view). Archaeology is still full of fascinating conjecture, but science is involved with trying to establish facts about our world which are verified experimentally, and engineering is concerned with ways of turning those facts to advantage. If art is the butter, science and engineering is the bread, and we still live in a world where bread is the staff of life. But we must not underestimate the sheer attractiveness of so many of the objects on display, which reduces the edge that art museums might be thought to have when it comes to visual appeal. We believe that Caerphilly Castle, the fine express locomotive of the Great Western Railway, is as noble a sight as any great work of art, and indeed that it is a work of art, an expression of human genius and human faith - as well as an embodiment of scientific principles. And it is not unique among our exhibits. On a smaller scale, what drawing-room or library would not be enhanced by some lacquered brass instrument of the eighteenth century - an orrery, a microscope, a theodolite, perhaps; or by a fine terrestrial or celestial globe? And if the art museums display teacups and writing-tables, are not the public equally interested in the fireplaces, cooking-stoves, table lamps and even the sewing-machines of their ancestors, to say nothing of those which they might decide to go out and buy for themselves in some nearby shop. The Science Museum has all these things, the old and the new. Familiarity and close association with our daily lives may also help the public to enjoy a museum which displays a cutaway Minicar, explains the ubiquitous pocket calculator, and demonstrates old gramophones like those that our parents used to dance to on the front-room carpet. The science in these things may be intricate and fascinating, but what makes people want to understand it is the impact it has had on their own lives. The Science Museum, then, is not a place which preserves rare and costly objects produced by gifted artists and craftsmen for the enjoyment of the rich or the powerful. Genius and ingenuity are equally to be wondered at in its galleries, but their application has been different, and the knowledge and skills which have resulted have produced their effects not just upon a small élite group, but upon the whole of mankind. I