Learning From Artifacts: A Review of the “Reading Artifacts: Summer Institute in the Material Culture of Science,” Presented by The Canada Science and Technology Museum and Situating Science Cluster

Abstract

Describing how the study of artifacts is greatly enhanced by an understanding of the history of museums, Ken Arnold remarks that there is “an implicit faith in the power of objects to tell, or at least ask, historians things that the written word alone cannot” (1999, p. 145). Rather than remaining mute objects or passive accessories to textual descriptions, artifacts (and the museums that house them) are tangible incarnations of the culture from which they emerged, providing unique information on the attitudes and behaviors of the past. In practice, studying and learning from artifacts can sometimes pose methodological problems, as a text-oriented historian may have no idea of how to “read” an object in order to reveal its secrets of the past. Historians and philosophers are trained almost exclusively to work with written and oral documents, limiting their analysis by neglecting such a valuable group of sources. However, as outlined in a special issue of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (2007, vol. 38, no. 2), it is apparent that a new historiographical tide has swept over scholars, encouraging new studies and methodologies for working with artifacts, objects, and images.