The New Age is the second exhibition in a project begun last year at
the Whipple Museum with Empires of Physics (Review, 6 March 1993) to look
at the cultural context of scientific and technological change in Europe
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Like the first exhibition, The
New Age challenges the view that science is a purely objective, morally
innocent activity, and tries to look at the ways science both moulds and
is moulded by society. The new exhibition focuses on the turn of the century
and the concerns of that time. It shows the optimism that existed concerning
the use of science and its products as the pathway to a better world. But
it also considers some of the potentially disturbing implications of the
intrusion of science into society.

The visitor enters the exhibition by travelling back in time – almost
literally – by means of an elegant recreation of H. G. Well’s famous time
machine (a contemporary reference). Stepping from the machine the visitor
ascends into the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. For the rest
of the exhibition the visitor is to feel that they are a part of that period.
At the Exposition the public saw the most impressive examples of the latest
technological advances. These, they were assured, would be the foundations
of a scientific utopia. The Whipple display centres on two of the most dramatic
pavilions at the Exposition – the Palais de l’Optique and the Palais de
±ôâ€ÍÖ±ô±ð³¦³Ù°ù¾±³¦¾±³Ù±ð.

After this technological manifesto for a new society, the visitor is
then taken on a journey inwards, for the second half of the exhibition focuses
on the individual. At the entrance each visitor receives a ‘portrait parle’.
This is a kind of identity card, the sections of which the visitor fills
in on their way round the second gallery. Each section concerns a different
way of observing, recording or measuring the body and relates to a station
in the gallery. This includes photography, fingerprinting, anthropometry,
phrenology and eye colour. After completion, the ‘portrait parle’ is handed
in for collation by the museum staff, who will return it by post (with photograph
added), and send each participant a statistical summary of the final survey
results for the exhibition population.

It is certainly this second gallery which should prove most appealing,
particularly to younger visitors. There is, however, a sting in the tail
of this apparently enjoyable exercise. The historical context of these measurements
and tests was in studies of character and of criminal trait, leading to
theories of a criminal physical type, of a direct correlation between intelligence
and head size and the the programmes of eugenics that flowered in the first
half of this century.

The aim here seems to be to show the cultural biases in the ‘objective’
work of the scientific investigator to the visitor, and to make them aware
of their own discomfort both at being the subject of investigation and at
the apparent (mis)use of what many still believe to be an activity that
lies outside subjectivity and prejudice.

Richard Dunn works at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Although the Whipple is a small museum, Empires of Physics is part of
an ambitious project run by the Department of the History and Philosophy
of Science in Cambridge, focusing on the cultural aspects of technological
change in Britain and Germany between 1870 and 1920. This exhibition, which
opened last month, will be followed by The New Age in 1994.

Both exhibitions will explore the creation and dissemination of physics
during the late 19th century, a crucial period in the evolution of modern
physics. In doing so, they will explore the processes involved in the manufacture
of what we now call science. In other words, rather than presenting science
as an unchanging edifice (which is the way it is often perceived in the
public mind), the exhibitions will show that science is a changing, man-made,
approach to the world that is characteristic of modern society. Science
has always had, and continues to have, social, political, technological
and commercial dimensions. And nowhere is this to be seen more readily
than during its formation.

Empires of Physics makes use of two of the three galleries of the Whipple.
In the lower gallery, ‘The Laboratory’, we look at the way 19th-century
physics was created in scientific laboratories such as the Cavendish, and
in the universities, and then incorporated into scientific instrumentation,
in particular at the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. The upper
gallery, ‘The Exhibition’, looks at how science was presented to the public
at the great exhibitions of the late 19th century, such as the Paris Electrical
Exhibition of 1881.

In designing the displays, the Whipple has tried to move away from a
traditional didactic museum atmosphere (a handbook replaces the traditional
museum-style labelling) to give visitors the ‘feel’ of what it was like
to be involved in the creation of science during the period. This is reinforced
by ‘hands-on’ exhibits, including a phonograph which plays It’s a Long Way
Back to My Dear Old Mother’s Knee, as well as recreations of crucial experiments
such as Joule’s evaluation of the mechanical equivalent of heat. In this
way, visitors can participate in the production of scientific ‘black boxes’
– those parts of science that are later incorporated as unproblematic entities,
but which began life as queries and speculative experiments.

The exhibition provides a refreshing look at science and at its creation.
In ‘The Laboratory’ we see how theoretical and practical laboratory work
became the foundation for later developments in instrumentation and technology;
for instance, the movement of the tangent galvanometer became the operating
principle behind numerous scientific instruments, and new discoveries about
electricity became integral to advances in communications. This is the creation
of scientific black boxes, involving a journey from the uncertain to the
unproblematic.

In moving to ‘The Exhibition’, we begin to appreciate the social and
political dimensions of science. Here we see science deliberately presented
to the 19th-century public as an indisputable and awesome entity. What was
on show to the public at the exhibitions was state-of-the-art science, in
the form of instruments such as the telephone and the phonograph. These
were items designed to impress the public.

It also becomes clear here that science is often hijacked as a vehicle
for national/imperial pride, and becomes a battleground for competing states.
In the late 19th century, this was evident in the rivalry between Britain
and Germany. Nowhere was this more explicit than in the development of communication
systems. This had been a key area of scientific research in both countries
and it was no coincidence that good communications were the key to effective
control of large empires.

Empires of Physics has many messages for us today. If the public is
to understand science adequately, is it better to present it as unproblematic
and awesome, as has been done in the past? Or would a greater openness about
its formation and the problems engendered be more instructive? The exhibition
certainly provides a challenging response to this question.

The exhibition programme includes lectures, workshops (aimed primarily
at A-level and university students) and publications. The Whipple Museum
(Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, Tel: 0223-334545) is open from 2-4
pm Mondays to Saturdays. Admission free.

Richard Dunn is at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.