--Posted By johannes to <http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/04/making-sense-of-things-tradescants-ark.htm>monochrom at 4/09/2009 05:51:00 PM
In a video published by Edge, archeologist Tim
Taylor conducts an experiment about making sense of things.
"There are 43 stones passing amongst you. It's
called the Tradescant's Ark Experiment and I've
named it in honor of John Tradescant and John
Tradescant, Sr. and Jr., father and son, who were
collectors of things in the 17th century. They
were the exhibitors of the world's first
pay-to-view museum and they had a cabinet of
curiosities set up in Lambeth, on the Thames,
which much later was sold to Elias Ashmole and
became the germ of the Ashmolean Museum. Not much
of it survives, there are little parts of it in
the Ashmolen Museum. What is more important is
the intellectual move they made in the catalog,
which John Tradescant the younger created and in
which he distinguished between 2 types of things,
naturalls and artificialls. He divided all the
things he collected into those he thought were
natural and those that were modified by human
hand—what archaelogists today call
artifacts."<http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/serpentine-edge09/taylor_vid.html>Link
