Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
development. Their evolution progresses in step with these human remains,
leading from the crude stone tools of our Cro-Magnon ancestors and culmi-
nating with a single modern artifact—a topic, but not just any topic. In fact
it is a great scientific work, the
Discours de la méthode
(1637), and the skull on
display above it once belonged to its author, the mathematician and scientist
René Descartes (figure 2).
Figure 2
This might be interpreted in a number of different ways. In choosing
a native son to symbolize the end of evolution, the exhibit's curators recog-
nizably display a kind of national pride that one often sees in public muse-
ums. Indeed, a nationalistic motive is suggested by the plaque that indicates
whose skull this is. The great mathematician is identified as a “Philosophe
et savant français.” Other exhibits in the museum, such as one depicting
France as the world's leader in population control, send a similar message.
But what draws my attention is the manner in which this particular exhibit
brings together the notions of biological evolution and cultural progress.
Jeanne Fahnestock regards science exhibits of this kind as visual instances
of
incrementum
, that rhetorical figure that orders elements into some cli-
mactic structure on the principle of “the more and the less.” She notes
that the sense of natural continuity created by such figures enables them
to integrate items into some single progression in which they might not
otherwise belong.
2
In the Musée de l'Homme exhibit, this occurs because
