"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." -- Plutarch
Even though Men in White, the opening propaganda video at the Creation Museum, explicitly mocked scientists and teachers, I was surprised at the extent that this museum took science seriously (indicated in part by its use of archaeology discussed previously). This, I think, emphasizes the museum's aggressive rhetorical approach; it knew its enemy. And however dishonestly it did this or however asymmetrically it applied its method, I have to admit that something striking happens in this museum regarding the public understanding of science.
In the middle of the museum and against all my expectations, the museum grants the truth of natural selection. The confusion this generated for me initially is hard to overstate. In a fundamentalist Christian creation museum, one that takes as literal truth the story in Genesis that the universe was created in seven 24-hour days and that believes the earth is only a few thousand years old, in that same museum, Darwin's core idea -- natural selection -- is accepted as fact. This seemed a dangerous and admission. The Bogeyman Darwin was welcome here.
A few fascinating things occur when the exhibit makes this move. First, the museum no longer seems completely "anti-science." It seems more reasonable. Science, after all, knows some things, and the observable changes that result from the processes of natural selection cannot be denied. Accepting this fact is a brilliant move. Even better, the museum's panel on natural selection doesn't seem that problematic. It says:
Natural selection is the name Charles Darwin gave to an observable process, which results in small changes in the plant and animal world, such as fur color or plant height.
A common perception popularized by many scientists is that natural selection is a primary mechanism for evolution. According to the National Academy of Sciences, "Natural Selection ... can have radically different evolutionary effects over different time scales.
Darwin believed that given enough time (millions of years) natural selection could lead to large changes (such as a dinosaur evolving into a bird) and was the underlying mechanism of unobservable molecules-to-man evolution. However, natural selection and evolution are different concepts, though today many mistakenly interchange the two.
I emphasize the last line, because this is the second fascinating thing that occurs in this portion of the museum: it rhetorically dissociates these two concepts. And before continuing on, try this exercise: Describe the difference or even the relationship between evolution and natural selection? Are evolution and natural selection two different concepts? How are they linked?
In a second panel, the museum employs definition, quintessential dissociative technique, to distinguish the two concepts:
Natural Selection -- the process by which plants and animals that possess as set of traits that have a survival advantage in a given environment pass on that advantage to their offspring (such as traits for fur color or plant height). These offspring then survive to reproduce in the next generation.
Evolution -- as commonly defined today -- is the idea that all life on earth has come about through descent with modification from a single-celled common ancestor. We refer to this as molecules-to-man evolution. Inherent in this process is the requirement for the origination of new genetic information as organisms evolve from simple to complex.
Again, on the face of it, these quite serviceable scientific definitions add to the exhibit’s ethos. Yet the definitions aren't just informative, they're thoroughly rhetorical because the second one on evolution builds in the seeds of its own demise (at least in this context) -- the requirement of "new information."
In order to establish the dissociation, the rest of this exhibit goes on to try to demonstrate that while natural selection is observable (note the recurring emphasis on empirical data that, again, is not symmetrically applied), evolution cannot generate new genetic information. A few panels will show the visual and textual aspect of this dissociation.
Then this portion of the exhibit concludes:
Ok, so there's obviously a lot more to say about the way the exhibit employs rhetorical dissociation to separate natural selection from evolution.
What is fascinating to me at the moment, however, is the exhibit's combination of reasonable scientific description and museum authority that is at work here. The reasonableness and serviceable definitions of evolution and natural selection establish the museum's scientific ethos -- we're not anti-science, we get this stuff. But that ethos is then used to make assertions that are not clearly explicated, described, or documented -- why the creation of "new information" is a problem. Thus, the crux of the exhibit's argument hinges on the authority of assertions we're not given the tools to assess.
And to be honest, I was stymied. In this moment, I had no counter-argument. I wasn't prepared to explain where this exhibit goes wrong, even though I knew it must. Is it impossible for natural selection to create new information? And what does that nebulous concept "information" even mean in this context? And how would scientists explain this problem or show that it's a non-problem? What I wanted was for this exhibit to explain why this was the case, not simply that it was the case. Yet for someone interested in the public understanding of science, who has read books on evolution and Darwin's Origin of Species, this exhibit made clear my complete inability to explain or answer or argue for how natural selection and evolution are related. In this context, I felt frustrated, inadequate, like a failure (and even now embarrassed to even admit these things).
Two really important things happen as a result of this experience. First, it suddenly flipped my world. Just as I knew this exhibit was wrong but couldn’t explain why, a creationist in a natural history museum might have a similar experience. This experience made the ideology and appeals to authority of both institutions suddenly clear. My frustration indicated my trust in the authority of science. That trust was based on inadequate knowledge. Hence my embarrassment: I really felt the “science is just another faith” argument.
But there’s something to take away here. I'd ask: how can science museums learn from this experience and create better exhibits that work honestly and from the ground up to explicate concepts and processes? Relying too much on museum or scientific ethos fails to convince, since in the opposite context, it clearly failed to convince me. Thus the Creation Museum indicates that all museums must do more to make way for a different type of understanding, one built through rhetorically savvy exhibiting.
This leads to the second and closely related important effect. The rhetorical definition and dissociation at the core of this argument creates (at least for me) a true moment for understanding science. The exhibit's rhetorical moves enhance an experience of "needing to know". Through its rhetorical framing and dissociation, this exhibit initiates a real, honest inquiry process, the core of which is to truly understand the relationship between evolution and natural selection. So what this experience does for someone who doesn't believe the museum's case is to illuminate a real lack of understanding and to take seriously a problem that I didn't really think I needed to grasp. This is the second lesson that science and natural history museums can be learn from this exhibit: rhetoric can be used to manifests meaningful exigencies for advancing the public understanding of science. The power of the Creation Museum's continual poking at what seem to them to be fundamental problems at the core of the scientific project create a real need to understand. This is powerful, and should be harnessed. This museum fills the vessel-mind of those who want to "know," but for me it lit a fire.
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