audrey’s Reviews > Tangible Things: Making History through Objects > Status Update

Things do not function or even exist independently of the way humans think of them. (reality is relative)

scholars in museums tended to regard the things in their collections as transparent, reliable indicators of reality !!independent of human cognition.!! Those who distinguished, gathered, sorted, and named all kinds of tangible things assumed that they were uncovering identities and relationships that existed regardless of what anyone might think about them. !!Their arrangement constituted actuality.!!

museums aggregate particular selections of material things for the purpose of thinking

In order to perform all these actions in a repeatable manner, humans, distinguished things from one another, name them, and group them. For the most part, however, things are radically unstable. They change physically over time, in their uses by successive human groups, and in their significance to various peoples.

By manipulating [things], humans articulate their own relationships with one another.

…historians must take into account the differences between them, both ontological and in terms of human cognition and use.

Ontology

While there may be considerable overlap in the skills historians need to interpret such a wide range of things, each also requires a particular, appropriate mode of address.
A taxidermy specimen of a mounted duck-billed platypus actually has more in common with an oil painting on canvas—both are crafted through the artifice of a skilled maker.

Antiquarianism

The growing willingness of major institu-tions…to share texts and images electronically makes it easier to connect written and material sources, and to connect objects housed in one collection with another or with the seemingly ordinary things found in people's bureau drawers and attics.