ABSTRACT

CO N S I D E R T H E S M I T H S O N I A N I N S T I T U T I O N : founded with a half million dollar bequest to the United States in 1829 by James Smithson, whose ghost still allegedly haunts the institution, and endowed in the city of Washington “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” 1 Most museums today include a wider range of objectives in their mission statements, but, consciously or not, they are grounded in theory, specifi cally the same epistemological and metaphysical doctrines that have guided western secular society since the seventeenth century. These, in turn, derive from philosophical ideas of much older vintage that idealize the notion of a singular and universal truth, selectively and with great diffi culty accessible to reason.