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Object-Based Epistemology at a Creationist Museum

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Abstract

In a regional young-earth creationist museum, objects are presented as if they speak for themselves, purportedly embodying proof that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that humans have lived on earth throughout its history, and that dinosaurs and humans lived simultaneously. In public lectures, tours, and displays, museum associates emphasize direct observation over inference or theory. These emphases resonate closely with the “object-based epistemology” of the late nineteenth century described in Steven Conn’s Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. In Conn’s description, museum objects, artfully arranged and displayed, were intended to speak for themselves, and observation and categorization were valued over experiment and theory. The regional young-earth creationist museum is observed to partly succeed and partly fail in implementing an object-based epistemology. Although object-based epistemology represents a nineteenth-century approach to knowledge and museum display, it is compatible with an inductive approach to biblical interpretation and it confers various rhetorical advantages to creationist arguments. It is concluded that a focus on the theory-laden nature of data would likely strengthen nature-of-science education efforts to increase public acceptance of evolution.

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Notes

  1. Many thinkers contributed to the development of the geological column through the hundred-year period before the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species (Wyse Jackson 2006), but few quantitative age estimates appeared before the first edition of the Origin (see Darwin 1859/2009, pp. 224–225) and many multi-million-year age estimates appeared over the following 50 years (Wyse Jackson 2006). Availability of geologic data was likely a key factor.

  2. Dr. Nichols probably meant the miacids, thought to be ancestors to all carnivorous mammals.

  3. This astonishing claim is common among young-earth creationists (e. g., Whitcomb and Morris 1961; Morris 1980; Ham 2008). Fossil Museum arguments to this effect are critiqued in Wendel 2008.

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  1. Department of Chemistry and Physics, Grant Science Center, Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA, 16933, USA

    Paul J. Wendel

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Wendel, P.J. Object-Based Epistemology at a Creationist Museum. Sci & Educ 20, 37–50 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-010-9287-2

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