In addition, natural history display specimens were increasingly subjected to contextual analysis:
		“It is clear that the acquisition of natural history specimen involves selection according to contemporary principles, detachment from the natural context, and organization into some kind of relationship (many are possible) with other, or different, material. This process turns a 'natural object' into a humanly defined piece, and means that natural history objects and collections, although like all other collections they have there own proper modes and histories of study, can also be treated as material culture and discussed in these terms.
The development of contemporary epistemology suggests that no fact can be read transparently. All apparently 'natural' facts are actually discursive facts, since 'nature' is not something already there but is itself the result of historical and social construction. To call something a natural object, as Laclau and Mauffe say (1987: 84) 7, is a way of conceiving it that depends upon a classificatory system: if there were no human beings on Earth, stones would still be there, but they would not be 'stones' because there would be neither mineralogy nor language with which to distinguish and classify them. Natural history specimens are therefore as much social constructs as spears or typewriters, and as susceptible to social analysis.” 8
< last  /  next > 7 [p10 Museum objects, Susan M Pearce] Interpreting objects and collections, Susan M.Pearce. Routledge [1994] 8 [p69 The first director: William Henry Flower 1884-1898] The Natural History Museum, Willliam Stearn. NHM [1999]