国内外数字博物馆现状比较与述评

博物馆作为社会文化基础设施的重要组成部分,具有收藏保管、科学研究和教育传播等基本职能。数字博物馆作为传统博物馆在时空维度的延伸,其在公共文化服务体系中具有重要的作用。本文对比分析国内外典型数字博物馆的功能和具体业务,阐述国外数字博物馆建设可借鉴的方面,针对我国数字博物馆的发展建设总结出当前所具有的优势,并提出未来发展的对策建议。     

The tail end of the moth: clarifying species boundaries

The search by naturalists for good characters upon which to base both classifications and determinations of species led some 19th century entomologists to put their faith in insect genitalia as a criteria by which they could differentiate between and classify forms. Karl Jordan was such an entomologist, who turned to these tiny structures as an aid to his work as a museum curator to identify, describe and classify moths and butterflies. In his writings on the subject he also demonstrated how the attempts of systematists to order the diversity of nature had profound implications for the efforts of biologists to explain the origin of that diversity. However, Jordan's plan of how to do systematics well required much more than convincing biologists of the importance of museum work. It also depended on refining the priorities of a natural history community that worked according to diverse means, priorities and methods during a tumultuous century.     

Duverney's skeletons

In 1730, shortly before his death, the Paris anatomist Joseph-Guichard Duverney wrote his will, leaving his anatomical specimens to the Académie des Sciences, of which he was a member. But the will was disputed by Pierre Chirac, supervisor of the Jardin du Roi where Duverney, as professor of anatomy, had performed most of the dissections that produced the specimens. The ensuing debate between Chirac and René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, arguing for the Académie, reveals the tensions surrounding both the concept of intellectual property in this period and the collective enterprise in natural philosophy. The differing roles and audiences of the Académie and the Jardin were central to this debate. In addition, this essay explores the origins and significance of the anatomical specimens themselves and their changing role in instruction and display, as well as the transition from the cabinet of curiosities to the natural history museum.     

The accidental conservationist: William T. Hornaday, the Smithsonian bison expeditions and the US National Zoo

In 1886 William T. Hornaday, the Chief Taxidermist of the US National Museum, led the "Smithsonian Institution Buffalo Outfit" to Montana. The American bison was fast heading toward extinction and the mission of the expedition was to locate those of the elusive animals that remained and obtain specimens for the scientific collection at the museum. The successful expedition produced the most complete scientific series, and the finest artistic grouping of taxidermied specimens of the American bison anywhere in the world. Haunted by the scattered skeletal remains of the millions of slaughtered bison that peppered the Eastern Montana Plains, Hornaday fought to establish the National Zoological Park, which would provide sanctuary for bison and other endangered species, and a captive breeding program, which would result in the eventual reintroduction of the American bison to the wild.     

The 'mandarin-missionary' strategy: Robert Kennicott, Spencer Fullerton Baird and specimen collection in the Hudson's Bay Territory

In 1859, Robert Kennicott, one of the most promising specimen collectors and young naturalists in the United States, was dispatched to Hudson's Bay Territory by Spencer Fullerton Baird, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian. Kennicott was chosen because of previous experience in Canada, the familiarity with biota of the American Midwest, and because he had a boundless, infectious, enthusiasm for natural history that was typical among Baird's closest protégées. Kennicott was a natural scientific envoy--or missionary--to the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and many officers were enthusiastically 'converted' to the cause of collecting and/or overseeing the collection of natural history specimens. Due to this collaboration between Baird, Kennicott and the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Smithsonian became a leading center of Canadian natural history in the Western hemisphere.     

From farm and family to career naturalist: the apprenticeship of Vernon Bailey

How are scientists made? How, as young adults, have they discovered a scientific vocation and career? Through formal schooling, typically; but in the field sciences also through practical apprenticeship--through work. This essay presents the story of a frontier farm lad who became a career naturalist as a hired collector of animal specimens in the American West. Family and work are the leitmotifs of Vernon Bailey's story. It was family farming--bringing in the hay and finding the cows--that connected Bailey's love of skilled outdoor work with a desire to know nature scientifically. Traveling and working with professional naturalists, he came to see himself as a professional as well. His socialization was less a replacement than a layering of two identities, family and career.     

Inspiration in the harness of daily labor. Darwin, botany, and the triumph of evolution, 1859-1868

Charles Darwin hoped that a large body of working naturalists would embrace evolution after the Origin of Species appeared in late 1859. He was disappointed. His evolutionary ideas at first made painfully little progress in the scientific community. But by 1863 the tide had turned dramatically, and within five years evolution became scientific orthodoxy in Britain. The Origin's reception followed this peculiar trajectory because Darwin had not initially tied its theory to productive original scientific investigation, which left him vulnerable to charges of reckless speculation. The debate changed with his successful application of evolution to original problems, most notably orchid fertilization, the subject of a well-received book in 1862. Most of Darwin's colleagues found the argument of the Origin convincing when they realized that it functioned productively in the day-to-day work of science-and not before. The conceptual force of the Origin, however outwardly persuasive, acquired full scientific legitimacy only when placed "in the harness of daily labour".     

我国科技类博物馆发展现状及几点建议

科技类博物馆是面向公众弘扬科学精神,普及科技知识,传播科学思想和科学方法的重要阵地。近年来,我国科技类博物馆发展迅速,但与发达国家相比还存在较大差距,不论数量、类型还是展示理念、内容、展示手段都远远不能满足社会发展和观众多元化的需要。基于国内外科技类博物馆发展现状及存在问题,提出推进我国科技类博物馆建设的几点建议。     

浅析科技馆的运营管理

科技馆是弘扬科学精神,传播科学思想和科学方法,普及科学知识,提高公民科学素质的重要场所.随着科教兴国战略与《公民科学素质行动计划纲要》的颁布实施,目前全国科技馆建设事业蓬勃发展,科技馆的数量与规模不断壮大,科普展教活动不断创新,为推动社会科技进步与建设创新型国家做出了巨大贡献.本文以科技馆运营管理工作为切入点,通过对科技馆运营现状、运营管理目标与特点,以及科技馆运营管理措施建议等方面进行简要分析,以期能更好地充分发挥科技馆功能作用,推进科技馆的可持续发展.     

Linguists and their work: Epistemic and ethical challenges

This paper aims to show how the specific ethics of scientific undertaking tightly underlies epistemic reflection upon the nature of linguistic work and its outcome. The relationship between linguistics and ethics seems evident at the level of the narrative, i.e. the language in which the basic linguistic findings are established. The article is intended as an introduction to an interplay of linguistics, epistemology and the ethics of linguistic work. The departure point for the argument is the CONTAINER perception of language by linguists, which produces the well-established distinction between internalist and externalist positions. The paper, however, invites the reader to reconsider the tension between internalists and externalists and instead argues for a more general opposition, i.e. between the non-transcendental naturalists (naturalists) and transcendental naturalists (extra-naturalists). The polarity is seen as underpinning the present-day debates, while concurrently transversing the traditionally recognised dichotomies. The distinction promises to be productive both at the level of substantive assessment of linguistic research and at the level of epistemic qualification of the outcome of a linguistic study. Sharp and uncompromising as the naturalist vs extra-naturalist dichotomy seems to hold, the paper offers ways to bridge the gap between the apparently exclusive philosophies. The proposed solution, while seemingly only aesthetic, ultimately touches an ethical dimension as it centres on the appropriate construction of the narrative of linguistic fact-finding, which promotes approximative rather than definitive statements in the scholarly discourse. The desired effect is an ethical consensus underlying the work of a linguist.     

浅析博物馆网络教育

博物馆网络教育,是指在网络环境下,充分发挥网络的各种教育功能,以丰富的博物馆馆藏资源为优势,传递数字化内容,向受教育者和学习者提供一种网络教和学的环境,开展以学习者为中心的非面授教育活动,来提高全民科学素质和文明程度为目的的一种远程教育模式。     

浅析博物馆网络教育

博物馆网络教育,是指在网络环境下,充分发挥网络的各种教育功能,以丰富的博物馆馆藏资源为优势,传递数字化内容,向受教育者和学习者提供一种网络教和学的环境,开展以学习者为中心的非面授教育活动,来提高全民科学素质和文明程度为目的的一种远程教育模式。     

历史深处有回声(三):近代科技社团与社会的互动对当代的启示

科学与社会环境之间表现出明显的互动关系,一方面科学的发展需要社会提供宽松适宜的生存环境,;另一方面也需要科学组织和科学家通过其活动和行为规范来影响科学的生存环境。在近代科技社团发展过程中,科技社团通过发挥其功能,为社会的科学化、民主化创造条件,从而也为自己的自组织演化创造着条件。近代科技社团与社会环境的互动中亦有很多值得当今科技社团借鉴之处。     

The language of objects: Christian Jürgensen Thomsen's science of the past

The Danish amateur scholar Christian Jürgensen Thomsen has often been described as a founder of modern "scientific" archaeology. Thomsen's innovation, this essay argues, reflects developments within neighboring fields, such as philology and history. He reacted against historians who limited themselves to histories of texts and therefore abandoned the earliest human history. Instead, he proposed a new history of objects, which included the entire history of humankind. Thomsen's work as director of the Royal Museum of Nordic Antiquities in Copenhagen was especially important for this renewal. The arrangement of artifacts not only helped him formulate his theories, but also allowed him to present his arguments in a language of objects. At the same time, Thomsen's definition of archaeology as a museum science placed his branch of archaeology in a closer relationship with other museum sciences, such as geology and comparative anatomy. From the 1840s, Thomsen's museum became a model for how the study of human artifacts could deliver scientific insights into human nature and the laws of human development.     

Richard Owen and the sea-serpent

The well known naturalist, Richard Owen, had a career long engagement with monstrous creatures. In the 1830s he famously christened large fossil reptiles, Dinosauria. He investigated fossil marine reptiles as well as the giant moa. He also looked into the sea-serpents and sea monsters then drawing wide public attention. He actively collected letters and analyzed correspondence on the topic, consulted with the admiralty on reports of Royal Navy encounters and sightings, and commented in the public press. He concluded that such reports were based upon misidentifications of whales and other large marine mammals, and not run-ins with mythological creatures. His work on the sea-serpent shows that rather than discount the idea out of hand, a number of high profile naturalists were intrigued by monsters and attempted to understand what they were. His work is key to understanding the skepticism over monsters held by modern mainstream science. This skepticism opened the field to later amateur investigators.     

Construction Starts for Asia's Largest Aquatic Life Museum

The ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of an aquatic life museum was held on April 18 at the CAS Institute of Hydrobiology (IHB) in the city of Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province. High-ranking officials including CAS Vice-President Chen Yiyu and Vice-Governor of Hubei Province took part in the ceremony. With its abundant aquatic specimens,the forthcoming museum is believed to be the largest of its kind in Asia.     

民办博物馆的教育功能述评

民办博物馆是为了教育、研究、欣赏的目的,由社会力量利用非国有文物、标本、资料等资产依法设立并取得法人资格,向公众开放的非营利性社会服务机构。教育功能是民办博物馆首要功能之一,民办博物馆的教育功能不同于学校教育,但从一定程度上可以扩大学校教育的内涵,为学校教育增加特别的价值。民办博物馆既可以通过常设展和特别展的形式借助藏品发挥教育功能,也可以通过讲座、游戏、体验等馆内外活动来实现教育功能,还可以借助各种文化艺术形式体现其特色的教育功能,或借助出版物来延展民办博物馆的教育功能。总而言之,博物馆的教育功能是一种非程序性教育。但从某种程度上讲,非程序性教育较程序性教育更能开发一个人的兴趣和潜在能力,并对人的职业规划起到重要作用。     

Domesticated Animals on Exhibit at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1900–1928

In 1905 the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University began planning for a new domesticated animals exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder Louis Agassiz. The resulting displays of variation and heredity in poultry, pigeons, rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs proved surprisingly popular to museumgoers. Some of these specimens still exist in the museum’s storage facilities, namely a series of poultry donated by the biologist Charles B. Davenport and an elaborate set of guinea pigs from the experimental evolutionist William E. Castle. Situating these domesticated animal displays within academic and popular cultures of poultry fancying, animal breeding, and evolutionary science reveals how a nineteenth-century museum known for its ties to anti-evolutionary principles attempted to modernize its public exhibits.     

Trading in birds: imperial power, national pride, and the place of nature in U.S.-Colombia relations

Between the 1910s and the 1940s, American naturalists carried out a number of ornithological expeditions in Colombia. With the help of Colombian naturalists, thousands of skins were brought to natural history museums in the United States. By 1948 these birds had become an important treasure: American ornithologists declared Colombia the nation with the most bird species. This story sheds new light on the role science played in the expansion of U.S. political, economic, and cultural influence in Latin America in the early twentieth century, as well as on the relation between nationalist movements in Latin America and the study of the natural world. Recognizing a complex but fruitful interaction between nationalist policies and imperial practices proves important for understanding the success of the naturalists' enterprise in Colombia.     

浅析科技馆建设与效益的关系

浅析科技馆建设的参照标准、科技馆效益的衡量依据及两者的内在联系.以国内已建成的主要科技馆为参考,以观众为依据来决定科技馆的建设规模;以历史的回顾与现实的证明来确定科技馆效益的衡量标准;以国内外著名科技馆为例分析科技馆建设与效益的关系.并尝试对筹建中的浙江省科技馆的效益作一预测.