Status Updates From Tangible Things: Making His...

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.

The little trophy captured people’s excitement that new technologies had made the world smaller.

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.

attention to singular, physical things can reveal connections among people, processes, and forms of inquiry that might otherwise remain unnoticed.

To call something a "thing" rather than an "object" in certain disciplines indicates that it may have inanimate or numinous qualities.

In contrast to more traditional works. our topic is not the evolution of particular objects or forms over time, but rather a method of investigation that begins with a specific artwork, artifact. or specimen and then moves outward in an ever-widening circle

Dazzling things sometimes show up in ordinary places, and, as good poets know, common objects looked at anew have a dazzle of their own.

We did not write this book in isolation.

*history is never done in isolation; everything has context

What are the circumstances that shape our encounters with them, and how do those circumstances affect— perhaps even determine how we might use them?

How can we approach aspects of the past that written words do not record? How can we mobilize not just a few kinds of things that have survived from earlier times, but many, to create history? If we acknowledge that material things of many kinds are traces of the past, how can we make use of them to understand the past?