The Adventure of Thinking

The Adventure of Thinking  at the Museum of the Enlightenment and Modernity (Museo de Ilustracion y Modernidad) is a sophisticated presentation of the intellectual history of Western Europe starting with Copernicius and Galileo, extending through the late 20th century.  The innovative installation includes projections, paintings, drawings, models and what their brochure calls architectonic elements, referring to the moving and turning structures that show you parts of the exhibit.

You are greeted by a robed and mute monk and a wall a sound.  I got the feeling we were about to be tried before the Inquisition.    The exhibit shows the early conflicts between religion on the one hand, reason and science on the other.

As the Age of Reason arrives the monk disappears – how appropriate- and a new guide appears, a woman dressed in an 18th century gown.  The exhibit takes you through the subsequent rise of the scientific method as we began to distinguish what we know from what we want to believe, a very important distinction indeed, and whose repercussions are still playing out to this day.

There is a turning room which made me feel as if i were traveling through time into the transition between relgion and reason.  There are paintings of important characters, such as Rousseau and Locke and a representation of Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Models of  buildings show parlors where people discuss the developments of the day and a rather strong emphasis on the movement of knowledge from the Bible to the Encyclopedia.

Garybob says check it out!