Touch, and the Limits of the Rational Museum or Can Matter Think?

Abstract

ABSTRACTLike many other museums, the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum provides handling objects for visitors. As Enlightenment notions of science and rational thought have all been predicated upon a shift away from multisensory experience towards objective vision, the introduction of these tactile objects could be read as a premodern anachronism. In contrast, this paper uses a close analysis of the Hans Sloane's approach to collecting and John Locke's empirical philosophy to ask whether it is possible to locate touch as part of the Enlightenment rational project. If so, then how do our conceptions of empiricism, museums and visitors change?I argue that for Sloane and Locke touch functions in rational terms, indeed it may be the basis of rational thought. At the same time, a careful reading of Locke and of Condillac's work on Locke shows that touch simultaneously opens up other, imaginative, speculative and emotional ways of knowing material objects. Crucially, these forms of knowing are not in opposition to rationality but form part of the rational project. Thus, this analysis of touch disputes the accepted transition from multisensory, non-rational and premodern experience to visual, rational and modern knowledge, questions accepted characterizations of empiricism and also considers contemporary visitors' complex understandings of museum objects.